So this series is going to cover major ethno-linguistic (connected by shared languages and cultural similarities) groups, and I thought, why not start with a group that has done a big part in written history and whose languages and culture are among the most widely-spoken and followed even today?
To start with a basic history, around 14,000 years ago humans thought “if plants grow from seeds that grow on plants, and I can grab those seeds, why can’t I just start farming a plant for food? I’ll never grow hungry again!” While this would have a few limitations, farming was a perfectly sensible idea. After all, humans had domesticated animals and bred them to their will already. Why not plants? This triggered the Agricultural Revolution, which in turn led to people settlng down in one general area. Since nobody moved around anymore, many groups became isolated and developed their own languages and culture.
One such group was the Yamnaya people of the Pontic Steppe in what is now Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, who were the first Indo-Europeans. The Yamnaya culture existed from 3300 to 2600 BCE. They spoke Proto-Indo-European, or PIE, and were polytheistic (believing in many gods). This religion would later become the Vedic religion, the Greco-Roman religion, the Germanic religion, and the Scythian religion.
A group of the Yamnaya known as Aryans left the Pontic Steppe and made their way to the southeast into Greater Iran and India. They would become the Indo-Iranians. The word ‘Iran’ comes from the word ‘Aryanama’ or ‘Home of the Aryans’. While the actual word Aryan refers to the Vedic culture of Northwest India, the Nazi ideology in WWII took the term to represent a race of ‘fair-haired, fair-skinned, and light-eyed people’ who were supreme above other races. The Aryans in India quickly assimilated the local population, but the Iranians split even further. One group in the East followed the old polytheistic religion and carried on the nomadic horseriding traditions of the Steppe people while the Western Iranians mixed with the Mesopotamians and settled down, believing in the henotheistic (believing in a supreme god over minor gods) faith of Zoroastrianism.
The Eastern Iranians returned to the Pontic Steppe and took control over there, becoming known as the Scythians (‘archers’). Scythians were extremely warlike and conquered huge swaths of land in Central Asia, Mongolia, and Eastern Europe. Some Scythians even made their way to India during the chaos that followed Alexander the Great’s death. However, in the Middle Ages, Scythians started to decline, being assimilated by the Slavs and Germans and being conquered by the Huns and Magyars in Hungary. Today, remnants of the Scythians survive in Georgia (Ossetians), Hungary (Jasz), and India (Jats/Nehra). Aryans constitute the main part of North India, while Iranians are the main ethnicity in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and parts of Pakistan.
Anay Ganesh 