Talk:Scythians/Archive 9

From fig. 3 in the cited paper (Gnecchi-Ruscone et al 2021), we can see that all Scythian groups have a BMAC component as well as an East Asian one (Khovsgol, Ekven). I therefore propose the following rewording of the section based on the source already cited:

"The Scythians (specifically Western or Pontic Scythians, as in differentiation from Eastern Scythian Saka) primarily emerged out of the Bronze Age Andronovo-related Steppe_MLBA population, with additional contributions from BMAC and East Asian populations. The (Western or Pontic) Scythians (such as Sarmatians) fall in or close to the European-related cluster and derive ~75% of their ancestry from the Steppe_MLBA population with 25% additional ancestry from BMAC and East-Asian-related populations. Eastern Scythians (such as the Pazyryk culture) are more heterogeneous, both genetically and culturally, and demonstrate high levels of East Asian ancestry which makes up about half (50%) of the Pazyryk ancestry and 30-50% of the Saka ancestry, with BMAC ancestry ranging from 10 to 15% and Steppe_MLBA ancestry ranging from 40 to 50% respectively." 91.140.28.116 (talk) 11:53, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

The genetic section in this article is just a short summary on (Western) Scythians. The main article is found at Scytho-Siberian world#Genetics, which mentions these admixture events in more detail.-Wikiuser1314 (talk) 12:34, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

I tried to rewrite much of the page to remove outdated scholarship, but it resulted in a 450k size page that was not unreasonably reverted back by @Carlstak: to the previous version, which however was the one which contained much scholarship that has since become out of date since the 90s.

Therefore, we are going to need a find way to bring back the up-to-date information while keeping this page within the limits of Wikipedia's standards for article size, ideally through splitting the "History" and "Society and Culture" sections into pages of their own as previously discussed in the former discussion on the article's length.

I will nevertheless also add a caveat that most of Wikipedia's ancient history articles are very poorly written and that, if, say, the page for the Neo-Assyrian Empire or the New Kingdom of Egypt had to be rewritten with all the up-to-date relevant information, then they would probably exceed the 450k version of this page. Meaning that Wikipedia itself will eventually need to adapt to better cover and convey topics consisting of extensive amounts of information. Antiquistik (talk) 09:51, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Antiquistik being up to date and accurate is not related to length, imo. The issue is that if new information appears then some outdated content needs to be removed (or moved to historiography/sub articles) at the same time to maintain the correct length. For example Armenian genocide covers a complex topic in a short number of words with all sources cited being both fairly recent and high-quality. (t · c) buidhe 17:41, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree with buidhe that an article being up to date and accurate is not a function of its length. Antiquistik, based on a cursory read of your massive addition, you seem to have command of the material, and have demonstrated proficiency in handling it. Surely you can write up a summary-style version that covers the updated information, and eliminates the outdated stuff—no need to retain it. Most of the content in excess of 100,000 bytes can be spun off into subsidiary articles. I have faith that you can do this.;-) Carlstak (talk) 01:01, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Carlstak: @Buidhe: I would nevertheless need to restore the version that you reverted and then work on trimming and condensing the page from there to do that, if you are ok with it. Antiquistik (talk) 05:14, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Why can't you do it in your sandbox? That wouldn't be disruptive, and other editors could track its progress, make comments, and edit it without the disruption of constant changes to the present article. Carlstak (talk) 13:33, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I'll work on it in my sandbox. Antiquistik (talk) 06:46, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

K, thanks. Carlstak (talk) 16:52, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

In the section Physical appearance it says that : "The fourth-century bishop Gregory of Nyssa wrote that the Scythians were fair skinned and blond haired". I looked at the original source but I could not find any reference for this claim in the text. Can this please be checked and, if nobody finds the reference, removed? Dominik3810 (talk) 00:45, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

This Wikipedia page paints a very different view of Scythian gender relations than this article here: . Does the 'gender roles' section need to be updated? 14.2.37.229 (talk) 14:11, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

https://translate.yandex.ru/?from=tabbar&source_lang=sv&target_lang=en&text=skiv 176.65.114.181 (talk) 15:44, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

yes .. it needs updating TheRightofHerWay (talk) 21:10, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

I will be making edits to this wiki to reflect the updated science regarding women in Scythian society. Anyone with a brain can do a mere google search and see National Geographic and world history encyclopedia tell a very different tale than this Wikipedia, let alone scientific research completed.

I plan on making it a sub-article for Scythian Women including a section on Scythian Warrior Women

if anyone would like to work on it with me, please reply.

For anyone who plans to vandalize edits made - understand that i will, as i have in the past, seek assistance from Wikipedia, who will hold you accountable for your efforts to discredit the veracity and faith that Wikipedia seeks to keep as a source of information. There is no question any longer - the science is clear. You have no argument in removing my updates, and you will be punished for not complying with Wikipedia terms.

I am saying this ahead of time - not as a threat... because its not a threat. I will simply do it, regardless.. so that you dont have to ask "who reported me?"...  i'm just forewarning everyone I am 100% a snitch who will run to daddy and tell on you.. so that you're not surprised if you decide to play games and find yourself getting in troubles. You can know, it was me. Hello. TheRightofHerWay (talk) 21:29, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

C. Beckwith has a new book out (2023) would be great if somebody could update the article with any new information. Beckwith, Christopher I. (2023). The Scythian empire: Central Eurasia and the birth of the classical age from Persia to China. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-24053-4.

Germsteel (talk) 08:05, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Using BC instead of BCE is a Christian centred view 74.14.53.231 (talk) 14:34, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Isn't BCE based on Christ's supposed birth? 2605:8D80:482:3E80:FD31:E942:BE95:2508 (talk) 02:25, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

This edit request to Scythians has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Change spelling of entartainment to entertainment 2605:59C8:2678:3300:E192:8D5:E423:9D44 (talk) 00:40, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

 Done. Thank you for your contribution to Wikipedia! Quadrantal (talk) 04:43, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

In the genetic study by Krzewińska, Maja; et al 2018 it is said that the Scythians have exclusively R1b, on some sites I came across information that the article of the genetic study incorrectly concluded that the western nomads of the Iron Age had haplogroup R1b, at first I did not know on what basis such an opinion was made. However, recently I came across a genetic study (Population genomics of post-glacial western Eurasia), there is autosomal DNA of samples, including those that were tested in the study by Krzewińska, Maja; et al 2018, and it confirms that there is an error in the article, that allegedly "western nomads of the Iron Age had R1b", only scy305 and scy009 had haplogroup R1b, the rest of the Scythians had mainly R1a, there were also samples with I2a and E1b. Therefore, in the article "Scythians" in the section "Genetics" it is necessary to correct the incorrect statement that the Western Scythians had only haplogroup R1b. P.S. to see the table of autosomal DNA samples you need to download the study or here is the link (table1 and table2). And the samples (Scythians) from the genetic study Krzewińska, Maja; et al 2018 are marked "scy". In another genetic study (The genetic history of the Southern Arc) in the tables at the very bottom of the study in the "Supplementary Materials" section, it also shows that the samples (scy) had not only a haplogroup R1b. User8638 (talk) 20:17, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

A solution I propose to short the article is to split it into time periods or at least have a separate article for the people and the history, but please feel free to discuss. Legendarycool (talk) 06:22, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

I would short the article of everything required to shorten it. The shorted material should go in other new shorter articles. The topic should not be shortened. It would totally be comprised, then, by a series of articles. I recommend we use more formal English for this making it sound more professional. No, I don't think time divisions best fits the material. Yes I do think people and history matches it. I would not simplify it to pigin-English. Use good English or at least defer to it. My two main divisions would be just Scythians, which would contain introductory definitions, etymology, geography, and history. The rest of the material would be under [[Anthropology of the Scythians]]. However there are a lot of specialized topics, such as [[Rulers of the Scythians]]. These can be taken out any time. I suggest we use anthropological terms for the anthropological topics. Botteville (talk) 02:37, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Last year I had endeavoured to overhaul this article, but this had the result of creating an unusually long page. After discussion with @Carlstak and @Buidhe, we decided that I should move the update to my sandbox and trim it there before moving it back here.

However, despite my best attempts, I haven't been able to adequately the rewrite to make it shorter without losing any essential information. Therefore, I would like to do some special pleading to be allowed to move this longer rewrite back into the mainspace and allow other editors to trim it as necessary. Antiquistik (talk) 12:20, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Antiquistik good news is that the length is much easier to fix than other problems, so if you think that your draft is an improvement over the current article, I would suggest putting it in with a length tag and hope that the length can get fixed later on.

Still, the length is something that should get addressed at some point because it greatly exceeds the recommended size. To me, it looks like a big part of your draft is the "history" section. So a good start would be to split that off per WP:SUMMARY to History of the Scythians and leave a much shorter summary in this article. (t · c) buidhe 12:27, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll move the sandbox's content to mainspace first, then I'll work on splitting the article. Antiquistik (talk) 13:08, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

The "Pontic Scythian kingdom" section should be largely split off to Scythia, which is already a political article. "Warfare" section should be split off into a Scythian warfare article. I am referring to the existing article here (not the longer one in the sandbox). Srnec (talk) 13:03, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Scythia was meant to be a geographic article while the political information was to be contained on Scythians, though, as per the discussions regarding the mergers which created the present Scythians page. Antiquistik (talk) 13:11, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

The article needs splitting. You just increased it by 163,223 bytes and yet seem resistant to the idea of splitting off political information... So what sub-articles are you planning, since the article is now prohibitively long? Srnec (talk) 16:03, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

We need to think positive on this. Antiquistik has done a lot of work so I vote we allow it in. We have to call a spade a spade here. The topic is a big one in ancient studies comprising a whole lot of topics. We are discovering this by trial and error. I think by now we all recognize that one article just is not doing it. Why don't we let Antiquistik do his thing and when we see where we are headed we can contribute better. The goal is a coherent topic of multiple articles linked togther with blue links. We don't need to trail off into an extended carp. Think positive. Botteville (talk) 00:07, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, @Botteville. @Srnec I am not against splitting per se, but the way Scythia was turned into a political article was sloppy, since it only consisted of summarising parts of Scythians there.

If splitting needs to be done, I would suggest that the "History" section be made into a History of the Scythians page, and the "Warfare" sub-section be made into a Scythian warfare page.

In general, this is being a headache for me, because the more documented a historical culture is, the more likely the page covering it is going to be similarly huge, e.g. if the page for the Neo-Assyrian Empire was properly overhauled, it would be as big or even bigger. And neither do I have magic answers for how to deal with such situations, nor do I think Wikipedia itself is equipped for these situations either. Antiquistik (talk) 06:31, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

We seem to be in a situation of "who is going to bell the cat." For myself I want to wait a little more to see where the article is going. Then I will study it again to see what can be chipped off. Previously I suggested Scythians and Anthropology of the Scythians. Your History of the Scythians can certainly be chipped off Scythians. It seems to me we need an initial main split with subdivision of those. I only want to point out we need to see the material as a collection of articles and get busy deciding what goes where. It won't be easy but there is plenty of time. Botteville (talk) 10:22, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

"If splitting needs to be done". The article is almost half a gigabyte—that is ridiculously too long. It must be split. As Antiquistik said in the edit summary for the addition of an excessive 163,223 bytes to an already very long article: "Moving content from sandbox to mainspace per discussion. Article to be split to reduce size later." The addition of so much content at once has made dealing with the article too burdensome and it should be reverted to its previous state to facilitate the splitting. The extra content should be apportioned among the resultant multiple articles. Carlstak (talk) 13:05, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

@Carlstak: I said so because I still want to try trimming the page first before we go for a split. Provided I am allowed to try, of course. Antiquistik (talk) 11:55, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

FYI that there is a Reddit thread about all this. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 17:36, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Just as an aside, the thing that strikes me most about that Reddit discussion is is how civilized and positive it is. Carlstak (talk) 18:47, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Since this discussion ground to a halt, the article has grown slightly with no trimming or splitting in sight. Is it really that hard to split a large article into sub-articles? Srnec (talk) 03:08, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

No, it's not that hard, and if Antiquistik won't do it, as it seems they have they no inclination to do so, I know that you are more than capable to handle the task, Srnec, if you want to do it. I'm working on an offsite project and checking in when I can. Carlstak (talk) 17:19, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Wiki article by this name reports Scyths allied with medes and babylonians toppling Neo-assyrian empire. 2600:1011:B30E:8F2F:D979:BEA1:3ACC:9316 (talk) 15:24, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

This statement in the preface is neither sourced, nor reasonable. Why would "authors" especially "ancient" (being much closer in time) persist in applying name Scythians to various non related people? Stupidity or just knowing much better about "disappearance"? 91.230.101.219 (talk) 05:12, 3 December 2024 (UTC) The statement needs to be deleted or replaced with something like "Modern historiography consensus on Scythians' extinction through having been totally assimilated ca 5th century AD disregards the abundance of references to Scythians in medieval and early modern sources". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.230.101.219 (talk) 10:18, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

This edit request to Scythians has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Under the "Culture and Society" > "Warfare" > "Weapons" > "Archery" section, there is a minor typo at the very end of the paragraph, "...possibly because *hey* might have been...". Presumably, "hey" is meant to be written as "they" instead, and should be edited to fix this. Karma12th (talk) 23:36, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

 Done tgeorgescu (talk) 00:19, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Hippocrates NEVER describes the Scythians as light skinned!!! REMOVE THE SOURCE IMMEDIATLY! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.31.180.144 (talk) 03:59, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm no expert on the subject, but shouldn't the topics discussing the periods be included within the history one? Maybe that would help with the problem concerning the large amount of headlines.

Also, shouldn't the topics and sub-headlines be organized in chronological order? It seems that some subtopics, such as initial interactions with greeks, at the early period aren't arranged like that.Icy Train (talk) 12:06, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

The Pagyritai are a tribe mentioned by Ptolemy in his Geography book. The name sounds rather similar to the Paralatai mentioned by Herodotus. So is it likely that the name Pagyritai was a corrupted version of Paralatai? Average Etruscan (talk) 10:50, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

@Average Etruscan: Per WP:FORUM, this is not the venue for discussing such topics. This question is beyond the competences of Wikipedia editors.

You should try asking this on Reddit's r/AskHistorians instead. Antiquistik (talk) 11:48, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

Alliance with Medes and Babylonians to destroy the Great City 2600:1011:B15A:4246:945E:1D08:100D:BF03 (talk) 01:29, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

The recent condensation of the page by @AirshipJungleman29 has removed too much information from the page. I have managed to salvage the history section by moving it to a separate page, but the rest of the article has still lost significant amounts of information during the condensation process and it keeps getting reverted by @Nikkimaria when I try restoring it. I know I am biased, since I am the one who wrote much of the pre-condensation article in the first place, but isn't it possible to condense the information without losing it? Antiquistik (talk) 22:18, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Having more detailed subpages is how it should be done, per WP:DETAIL. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:24, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

I have managed to salvage the history section by moving it to a separate page. False. You have merged three separate pages, of appropriate length, that I created to salvage the utter mess this page was, and created another page that flagrantly violates a simple Wikipedia guideline that young children should be able to understand. Your ownership of this and related pages is rapidly becoming disruptive Antiquistik, along with your tiresome misconception that "more equals better!!!!", fundamentally at odds with basic policy. You are not helping readers, and thus you are not helping Wikipedia; you are only helping yourself. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:27, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria: The information removed belongs on this page because it is essential to understand the society of the Scythians. What has been moved into subpages has already been, spinning the rest of the information off into subpages doesn't work.

@AirshipJungleman29: What I did was to copy the content of the history section from before you went through it and turn it into a new page, and then I redirected the pages you created to it. I agree that it is also long and also needs condensation.

However I am not trying to own this page. I have issues with how you condensed it because you merely removed paragraphs without editing the remnant so that the text now mentions information that is no longer within it. And you have also removed important information such as the list of tribes and of related cultures. This is not me being "more equals better," because as can been seen from my overhauling of the related pages Agathyrsi and Cimmerians, I have neither written huge pages nor tried to "own" these pages.

I am objecting to your removals simply because this information is necessary for this page. Otherwise, the source material I used would not have devoted so much to explaining these. Antiquistik (talk) 14:50, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

Your definition of "essential" and "necessary" is nowhere near the definition of the rest of Wikipedia. Similar to how you believe the 13,000-word Cimmerians article is not a "huge page"!—well, I suppose nothing else compares to the mess this previously was. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:41, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

@AirshipJungleman29: There is a limit on page size, but otherwise the rest of Wikipedia hasn't decided that the list of tribes or of related cultures or the explanation for what the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex is are non-essential or unnecessary on this page.

Additionally, many of the sources still in the page no longer support the statements they're meant to be supporting after your purge. This is shoddy work.

As for Cimmerians, the limit for what constitutes a huge page is 15K words; 13K is well within the limits making it not huge.

To reiterate myself: I am not against condensing the excessively long article I wrote, I am for doing so with minimal loss of information. Antiquistik (talk) 15:46, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria: I am not satisfied with the specifics of AirshipJungleman29's condensation of this article and I think their edits should be reverted altogether so someone can better condense and trim it. Could you abstain from reverting my reversal of their edits should I do this? Antiquistik (talk) 06:23, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

No. I think a wholesale revert would be a big step backwards. If you think you can do a better version, suggest you set that up in a sandbox. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:18, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Seems like a stalling move; we've done that, and the result was a still excessively long article. At 209,412 bytes, I wouldn't be complaining. Carlstak (talk) 00:47, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria: I can't do a better version because condensing articles isn't within my competences. However the present state of the article post AirshipJungleman29's edits isn't good either. Among other problems, many statements no longer have the citations that back them or are fragmentary or are now lacking context. The page needs to be re-condensed from the beginning.

@Carlstak: surely waiting with a longer article for a few days or weeks until it's re-condensed doesn't hurt, no? It's only temporary after all. Antiquistik (talk) 11:44, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

I believe that's effectively what you did last time. Carlstak (talk) 16:23, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

You agree that condensing should be done, but you want to revert the condensing that has been done, and you will not do any condensing yourself. So who do you believe will do it? Nikkimaria (talk) 23:52, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

@Carlstak: Indeed. And I still don't see what's the issue with that. After all, it's temporary.

@Nikkimaria: Surely there are other editors on Wikipedia who can properly re-condense the article, no? Antiquistik (talk) 18:52, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

You're welcome to see if you can find one. It might be better if they can somehow be assured you won't want to mass-revert all their work also, though. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:54, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

I meant to say, Antiquistik, that's what you requested last time, and neither you nor anyone else ever followed through with a rewrite, and the lack of action appeared to be your desired result. That's what I meant by stalling tactic, and we won't do that again. Carlstak (talk) 22:31, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria: I won't be reversing anything if it's well done.

@Carlstak: I did try to trim the page, even if I ended giving up because it turned out I wasn't capable of doing so. That's why I am proposing letting another editor properly re-condense this page.

Antiquistik (talk) 07:17, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

I was going to add a Wikilink to this article, but I was unable to do so because it appears to be locked from editing. Please fix this ridiculous situation! 96.28.65.49 (talk) 21:24, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

Shouldn't we add this information to this article (in order to help make it more properly encyclopedic)? Apparently there are just 7 specimens of human skin preserved from the Scythian period, and all of them (100% of the specimens) are tattooed, with each tattoo being unique. (The current version of this article does not mention the word "tattoo.") Source: https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/ancient-tattoo-archaeology/ 96.28.65.49 (talk) 21:28, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

A. This concerns the Sakas, not the (Pontic) Scythians.

B. If you want to add information to protected articles, make an account and become a Wikipedia editor.

Antiquistik (talk) 05:10, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

typo in expansionism section "Scythian rule over the forest steppe people became increadingly dominating and coercive" please fix Bigburrt (talk) 07:02, 3 November 2025 (UTC)