Scythians Between Russia and Ukraine

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=63123

by aebtebeten • 2 years ago

40 19 2 years ago

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

thriftwy3• 2 years ago

Interestingly, before Turkic and Mongol nomads there were Indo-European nomads which were just as convincing. I wonder if ancient Greeks could actually understand some Scythian. They didn't diverge that long ago.

There were also Finnic nomads which manifested as Ungri turning Hungarians.

johngladtj• 2 years ago

The huns and Hungarians are not related.

thriftwy3• 2 years ago

Thank you - checked and corrected.

4gotunameagain2• 2 years ago

The last common ancestor language of Hellenic and Iranian languages dates back to something like 1500 years before their individual classifications, so it's quite unlikely Greeks understood Schythian languages.

Scythians were also illiterate, which I imagine would not have been the case for long if the languages were closely related.

clort• 2 years ago

just by-the-by: if they did not have writing, they were a non-literate culture, not illiterate as such.

thriftwy3• 2 years ago

Even if Scythians were fluent in Greek, the lack of material to write on would keep them mostly illiterate.

scrollaway• 2 years ago

Related article (which is also giving context to why this appears, for those who don't follow the current events) - https://aeon.co/essays/how-russia-is-putting-the-ancient-scy...

FrustratedMonky• 2 years ago

I thought the Starbucks logo was a depiction of a Mermaid.

But I think 'Siren' is a much more interesting tie-in. Since they sell caffeine-sugar addictive drinks. The irresistible 'Siren' aligns more with the product.

"The Mixoparthenos (Greek: Μιξοπάρθενος) was a Greek mythological figure, a variety of Siren somewhat akin to a Mermaid, traditionally hailing from the Black Sea region"

brightball• 2 years ago

I first learned about the Scythians in a small book written in 1880 about the Jewish Tribe of Dan. There was a very interesting analysis in the book comparing their oral history and origins.

https://www.amazon.com/Dan-Colonel-J-C-Gawler/dp/B002YBHRIQ/

mdekkers• 2 years ago

If you find this interesting, I can thoroughly recommend the “King of Kings” series of podcasts by Dan Carlin.

podviaznikov2• 2 years ago

why even on HN comments on Ukraine are often so bad?

every time I read comments here I want to cry from the amount of bullshit.

Many comments are ok, but the proportion of quality is way off.

Apples to oranges all time. People quoting some crazy friends etc.

I really struggle to understand why it’s simultaneously oversimplification of the issue and mixing signals and noise.

kelipso2• 2 years ago

Pretty much everything about Ukraine has been propagandized to hell and back, including its history, current events and the war. So of course you're going to get some crazy takes no matter which side of the political spectrum you're on.

podviaznikov2• 2 years ago

I don’t really understand that. Before - yes. But now and on HN.

If people are really curious about Ukraine to the point that they want to express their takes why not to fly to Poland, cross the border and spend several month in Ukraine. See how things are, talk to people and so on?

Many people on HN definitely can afford that. Why just retell some story from one friend you have instead of going on the ground and talking to hundreds of people?

dralley• 2 years ago

I would extend it from Ukraine in particular to foreign policy in general. It's worse, genuinely, than large portions of Reddit.

On one hand there are the contrarian libertarian types that seem to flock to Silicon Valley and the VC sphere. Elon Musk, David Sachs, Peter Thiel, etc.

On the other hand there are are a lot of genuine tankies and campists, who (I assume) may have gone down that rabbit hole because of Snowden / Assange / Iraq and never taken a step back to re-evaluate their worldview as new events take place in less formative years.

And I think this is probably less of an issue on this particular website, but there's a third group of right-wing culture warriors that adopted the Russian propaganda framing Russia as the lone Christian Nationalist holdout in the war against the LGBT, multicultural, liberal West. Never mind that the Russian Orthodox Church is stuffed full of ex-KGB and FSB operatives.

082349872349872• 2 years ago

If you look at the "Selected readings" and "comments" sections you'll have a better idea of the sort of discussion I had been hoping for when submitting this link to HN.

(some nutty ideas mentioned, yes, but nutty ideas about things that happened thousands of years ago...)

Вибачте.

Scythians Between Russia and Ukraine

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