The Pyrrhic Dynasty : A Makedonian AAR

[gamegeek2]

Genetically, Skythians/Ukranians would be on average more similar to Afghans and Pakistanis than Persians. At least, this is what modern DNA tells us.



Haplogroup R1a distribution by nation.

Linguistically, they're both part of the Iranian language group, though the Skythian tongue would be East Iranian (seriously!) and Persian is a West Iranian language.

It's pretty cool, actually, how the Indo-Iranian tongues are very closely related to the Balto-Slavic tongues, and the Balto-Slavic peoples are also quite genetically similar to the people of Indo-Iranian heartland in Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and northern Pakistan. It's irrefutable evidence of the common ethnolinguistic ancestry of these peoples, and a major confirmation of Indo-European theory. The R1a group also significantly drops when you cross the Oder, which makes perfect sense, as in the EB time frame the Oder was the boundary between Germanic/Celtic groups and Balto-Slavic (mainly Baltic at the time) groups.

Even further evidence is the fact that R1a's sister group, R1b, is found heavily in areas that once had a heavy Celtic presence. It's in over 80% of people living in the British Isles, and over half of all Frenchmen, Belgians, and Spaniards, as well as a large percentage of Swiss, Northern Italians, Danes, and Dutch.