As long as we don't have any Autosomal DNA of Proto-Turks or Gokturks which shows from which race the first Turks really were we can only speculate about it whether the first Turks were Mongoloid or Caucasoid. Scythians were mostly Iranic steppe nomads who spoke an Eastern Iranic language. After the Turkic tribes had migrated to Turan they mixed with the Scythians and assimilated them linguistically. My theory is that the Proto-Turks were created by the contact between Mongoloids and Caucasoids. I don't like the racist agenda by many Turks and Azerbaijanis who characterize Mongoloid Turkic peoples like Kazakhs or Kyrgyz as actually turkified Mongolians.
Can you declare a language that does not have any grammatical, phonetical, or morphological connection with any and all members of the Indo-European family to be an Indo-European language? Can you declare a language that has only a sprinкle of the occupier or Lingua Franca language to be that language? One can, if he operates in the Stalinist Russia and is doing a Stalinist science. But what you would do when the dictator is gone, a sembalance of fresh air blows around you, but you spent 40 years proving the unprovable? Would you rescind your 40 years worth of muddying around, if you are an honest man, and admit that you were forced into slave performance? Or like Vasiliy Ivanovich Abaev (who in reality is no Vasiliy, no Ivanovich, and even not Abaev, but that is a separate story) continue pushing pseudo-science and insist on life-long fabrication? Abaev did just that, fooling uncountable masses and not a few scholars. A whole Scytho-Iranian theory is supported by the work the most debilitating excerpts of which are laid out below for public view.
Another dimention is the fact which all Ossetiono-Scythologists glide through. Imagine the headlines:
- Brits moved to Australia, and adopted the name "Aborigines", and started to call the aborigines "Brits", and started to call each other "Aborigine", and started to be called by the name "Aborigine" by their former aborigine neighbors. Wow!! And the aborigine neighbors started to call themselves and each other "Brit".
- Dutch moved to America, and adopted the name "Indians", and started to call the Indians "Dutch", and started to call each other "Indians", and started to be called by the name "Indian" by their former Indian neighbors. Wow!! And the Indian neighbors started to call themselves and each other "Dutch".
- Germans moved to Africa, and adopted the name "Zulu", and started to call the Зулу "Germans", and started to call each other "Zulu", and started to be called by the name "Zulu" by their former Zulu neighbors. Wow!! And the Zulu neighbors started to call themselves and each other "Germans".
-Balkarians and Karachais moved to Caucasus, and adopted the name "Alans and Ases", and started to call the Alans and Ases "Ossetians", and started to call themselves and each other "Alans and Ases", and started to be called by the name "Alans and Ases" by their neighbors. Wow!! And Alans and Ases started to call each other "Ossetian".
OK, these are just fake headlines, but in Scytho-Iranian hypothesis the Balkar-Karachai scenario is real and a major link in the chain of arguments. Balkar-Karachais do call themselves Alans and Ases, all their neighbors, including Ossetes, call them Alans and Ases, and nobody calls Ossetes Alans and Ases, including the Ossetes themselves. Wow!! This unreal scenario is implicitly or explicitly accepted by all "mainstream" and august scholars. Anybody else is looking for a Brookline bridge to buy?
All boldface highlighting was added in this posting.
The Scythian-Iranian theory follows the logic: Ossetians speak the Northern branch of the Iranian language, Ossetians are Alans, Alans are Sarmatian tribe, Sarmatians are akin to Scythians, hence Scythians were Ossetian speaking, hence linguistically the Scythians belonged to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages. A brilliant logic that, in the words of V.I. Abaev, "ends the light-weighted and irresponsible speculations on Scythian material which do not have anything common with science" (page 148). It is well known what fate in the Stalin's times met the people that pursued irresponsible speculations which do not have anything common with science. There were no peer reviews and no opposition to the book. The theory was unanimously accepted and voted "yes" by every surviving Soviet scientist. The dissenters were not eligible to surviv
The citations below provide the excerpts from the Abaev's book showing:
- that Abaev clearly understood the cardinal differences between the Flexitive Indo-European and Agglutinative types of languages.
- that unlike the Flexitive Indo-European or Afro-Asiatic language families, the Ossetian is an Agglutinative language and belongs to an Agglutinating language family.
- that there are insurmountable differences between the Ossetic and Indo-European type of languages in any category of the linguistic property analyzed: phonetics, morphology, lexicon, semantics, or syntax, .
- that Ossetian is no closer to the Indo-European or Iranian than any other language with a layer of the 20% admixture of the Indo-European vocabulary.
- that unlike the literate Alans and Bulgars who left masses of written materials, Ossetians did not have a culture of writing until the 19th century (?) and, since Alans were literate, the Ossetes must be the only people in the world which, per Abaev, lost their literacy.
There are other factors honestly illuminated by V.I. Abaev with profound impacts on the Ossetian-Alanian-Scythian-Iranian theory:
Ironian-Digorian relationship: V.I.Abaev casually refers to the one which is handier to use at the time. This allows the use of essentially two (2) languages. The Ironian and Digorian lexically differ as much as 25% in their vocabulary (900 out of 4,000 roots). This is more than, say, English and Portuguese from the respective Germanic and Romanic branches of the Indo-European family. And, notes Abaev, these differences belong to the different Caucasian substrates of the Ossetian language, not to its Indo-European layer. (This observation of Abaev is corroborated by genetic analysis which shows unrelated origin of Digors and Irons)
The graph illustrates the lexical structure of the Ossetian language verbally described on page 103 of the book, but graphically profoundly missing from the Abaev's book.
For a linguist Abaev to sample, say, 10 or 20 % of the lexicon and count the percentage of lexicon belonging to the professed Iranian, and the other Arabic, Turkic, Kartvellian, Adyg, and Nakh words was a matter of 2-3 days, out of his 40 years-long philological life. That he avoided doing it by all means is screaming about his professional candor.
Amazingly, it is universally accepted in the Indo-European scientific world that the Ossetian language, with 80% non Indo-European lexicon, 100% non Indo-European grammar and 100% non Indo-European morphology, is unquestionably an Indo-European language.
And so the Scythians, and later their linguistic kins Sarmatians, and specifically one of the Sarmatian tribes, the Alans, spoke an Iranian language akin to the uniquely opposed to the all Indo-European languages Ossetian language, which itself consists of 80% of non Indo-European lexicon. A lovely deduction, isn't it? Go figure that mechanics.