Science

Of all Indo-Europeans the Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, Iranian, and Thracian peoples did not participate in The First Great Migration. They only expanded their territories to varying degrees. The largest range was occupied by the Iranians. They settled on the wide space between the Dnieper and the Don. Here in the known ethno-producing areas separate dialects were distinguished from the Proto-Iranian language, which gave rise to current Iranians [STETSYUK VALENTYN. 1998: 73-76]. Almost all Iranians remained in these places for several centuries but in the XI – X cent. BC. Assyrian sources have already recorded their appearance in Western Iran [ARTAMONOV M.I. 1974: 10]. Following the first Iranians, their main mass migrated to Asia. The Iranian tribes that inhabited the most northern ranges, the ancestors of the Ossetians, Baluchis, and Kurds, remained the longest in Europe.

The Iranians, like the Turks earlier, used wheeled vehicles to move. Thanks to the invention of the front turning device, the wagons became more maneuverable, which was a technical revolution for that time. Thanks to this improvement, it became possible, on the one hand, to overcome long distances by large groups of people off-road, and on the other, to create new effective chariot fighting tactics, thanks to which the Iranians gained a great advantage over many Asian nations. We defined the area of settlement of Iranians in the territory of the Zrubna culture, but there is reason to believe that part of the population of the Andronovo culture in Western Kazakhstan and Western Siberia were also Iranians, although originally the creators of the Andronovo culture was some Turkic tribe. A significant number of Iranian languages could not be formed only in the territory between the Dnieper and the Don (and even the Volga). Some of them were formed (or separately developed on the basis of European dialects) in Asia. According to the archeology data, the Zrubna and Andronovo cultures are united by the following common features:

• using chariots;

• the cult of wheels and chariots;

• the cult of fire;

• manual pottery, wood-, stone-, and bone-working, spinning, weaving, bee-keeping, metalworking;

• type of housing – large half-earth-house [KUZ’MINA E.E. 1986: 188].

According to J. Harmatta, the expansion of «Indo-Iranian» peoples from the steppes of Eastern Europe and Asia up to the Indian subcontinent and China took place in two waves. The first wave took place from the beginning of the 2nd mill BC and the second one – from the beginning of the 1st mill BC. It should be noted that the problem of the migration of the ancient Indians and Iranians is confused by the notion of the Indo-Iranian (Aryan) language community. Some scientists believe that its separation occurred after one group of Aryans at the beginning of the 2nd mill BC from Central Asia through the Hindu Kush crossed into India, while some of them stayed on the old settlements, and hence in the 1st mill BC began its expansion in all four directions – in Afghanistan and Iran, to the Urals, Altai, and the Black Sea Steppe [SOKOLOV S.N. 1979: 235].

The close proximity of the Indic and Iranian languages can not raise doubts, however, certain dissociation of the Indo-Iranian languages from other Indo-European would not look so distinct, if we were sufficiently known about of the Phrygian and Thracian languages, which should be close to ancient Indic and ancient Iranian. So, it should be noted that the first wave, which was mentioned by Harmatta, were Indo-Aryans and later Tocharians. The Iranians formed the second wave. The ways of these waves can be specified by using both linguistic and archaeological data. Here is the thought of the linguist about the first and the second waves: