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Hun, Alan, Avar, and other Steppe Nomad Movements
#13
Evan, Michael, Nadeem, and all,

The Roxolani-- first eastern tribe to arrive in the west-- would have had an Asiatic admixture. I don't like to use "Mongolian" or "Mongoloid," as both are either confusing (racewise-tribewise, and also smack of ethnicity). The Iazyges were not Sarmatians, but western Sauromatae, and probably lacked an eastern admixture. They used no long swords or contus. All of the other tribes-- the Wusun, Kushans, Sirices, Aorsi, Roxolani, Alans, Black Huns, White Huns, Avars, Ephthalites-- had this admixture. In the East, in the Pamirs, and also at Filipovka and Zubov, the female graves were as high as 30% Asiatic. A lord buried in the Altai, 400kBC, also had Asiatic features and they gave him a honorary fake beard... because he couldn't grow one. Some people believe that Sheng Fei, the Three Kingdoms warrior-general, had Caucasian features. So admixtures worked both ways. :wink:

As for dominant language, the leadership of many of the later tribes was always shifting. Its likely we had language shifts-- from Eastern Iranian to Turkic, and in some instances even Gothic. Earlier tribes such as the Saka, Masagetae, Wusun, and Yuechi, formed long-lasting confederations that continued and spread Indo-Iranian dialects. Language becomes static between cultural "frontiers," pastoral delineation zones with shifting borders. The recorded Xiong-nu-- inherently a different culture than the Wusun, Kushans, Aorsi, and Chinese-- did likewise in spreading proto-Turkic.

I don't know when Turkic-speaking tribes entered the West, but the earliest advance, at least partially, was probably the Black Huns. Yet even here we see Attila with a Gothic name and also speaking Gothic. :whistle:
Alan J. Campbell

member of Legio III Cyrenaica and the Uncouth Barbarians

Author of:
The Demon's Door Bolt (2011)
Forging the Blade (2012)

"It's good to be king. Even when you're dead!"
             Old Yuezhi/Pazyrk proverb
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Hun, Alan, Avar, and other Steppe Nomad Movements - by Alanus - 02-21-2014, 05:35 PM

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