01/06/2026
Ethno-linguistically Iranic Peoples
c. 500 BCE
Long before modern borders existed, the Eurasian steppes and the Iranian plateau were dominated by powerful Iranian-speaking branches of the Indo-European peoples.
The East-Iranic Saka, Scythians and Sarmatians were famous nomadic horse archers feared across Eurasia, while the West-Iranian Medes and Persians built the Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great.
Greek, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and later Roman sources all described these interconnected cultures stretching from the Danube to western China.
A thousand years later, other ethno-linguistic groups, such as as the Huns and Turko-Mongol peoples also moved into this region from East-Asia. But those migrations happened only after the 5th-8th centuries AD.
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