List of ancient Iranian peoples


This list of ancient Iranian peoples or ancient Iranic peoples includes names of Indo-European peoples speaking Iranian languages or otherwise considered Iranian in sources from the late 1st millennium BC to the early 2nd millennium AD.

Background

The Iranian languages form a sub-branch of the Indo-Iranian sub-family, which is a branch of the family of Indo-European languages. Having descended from the Proto-Indo-Iranians, the Proto-Iranians separated from the Proto-Indo-Aryans early in the 2nd millennium BCE.
Iranian peoples first appear in Assyrian records in the 9th century BCE. In Classical Antiquity, they were found primarily in Scythia and Persia. They divided into "Western" and "Eastern" branches from an early period, roughly corresponding to the territories of Persia and Scythia, respectively. By the 1st millennium BCE, Medes, Persians, Bactrians and Parthians populated the Iranian plateau, while others such as the Scythians, Sarmatians, Cimmerians and Alans populated the steppes north of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, as far as the Great Hungarian Plain in the west. The Saka tribes remained mainly in the far-east, eventually spreading as far east as the Ordos Desert.
Ancient Iranian peoples lived in many regions, and they had as farthest geographical points dwelt by them: to the west the Great Hungarian Plain, east of the Danube river, and to the east the Altay Mountains western and northwestern foothills and slopes, western Gansu and even Ordos in northwestern China, to the north southern West Siberia and southern Ural Mountains/Riphean Mountains and to the south the northern coasts of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. The geographical area dwelt by ancient Iranian peoples was therefore vast.
During Late Antiquity, the Iranian populations of Scythia and Sarmatia in the Eurasian Steppe were marginalized and assimilated by Germanic, Slavic and Turkic migrations. By the 10th century, the Eastern Iranian languages were no longer spoken in many of the territories they were once spoken, with the exception of Pashto in Central Asia, Ossetic in the Northern Caucasus and Pamiri languages in Badakhshan. Various Persian empires flourished throughout antiquity, and fell to the Islamic conquest in the 7th century.

Ancient Iranian Peoples

[East Iranians]

[Northeast Iranians] (Northern East Iranians)

[Northwest Iranians] (Northern West Iranians)

Mainly Iranian Background

Dacian-Iranian

Celtic-Germanic-Iranian

Iranian or Anatolian (Indo-European)

[Amazons]-[Gargareans]