Iranian peoples first appear in Assyrian records in the 9th century BCE. In Classical Antiquity they were found primarily in Scythia and Persia (Eastern Europe, Central and Western Asia). They divided into "Western" and "Eastern" branches from an early period, roughly corresponding to the territories of Persia and Scythia, respectively. During Late Antiquity, the Iranian populations of Scythia in the Eurasian Steppe were marginalized and assimilated by Turkic and Slavic migrations. The Scythian language was mostly extinct by the 10th century, with the exception of Ossetic spoken in the northern Caucasus. Various Persian empires flourished throughout Antiquity, and fell to the Islamic conquest in the 7th century. Origins The Iranian languages form a sub-branch of the Indo-Iranian sub-family, which is a branch of the family of Indo-European languages. Having descended from the Proto-Indo-Iranians, the Proto-Iranians separated from the Indo-Aryans early in the 2nd millennium BCE. The Proto-Iranians are traced to the Bactria--Margiana Archaeological Complex, a Bronze Age culture of Central Asia. The area between northern Afghanistan and the Aral Sea is hypothesized to have been the region in which the Proto-Iranians first emerged, following the separation of Indo-Aryan tribes. By the 1st millennium BCE, Medes, Persians, Bactrians and Parthians populated the Iranian plateau, while others such as the Scythians, Sarmatians, Cimmerians and Alans populated the steppes north of the ...

• published: 06 Feb 2012
• views: 1279
• author: ASHRF1979