Remarks on a major paper about Scythians.

 Remarks on a major paper about Scythians.

Despite more than a dozen ancient DNA papers about Scythians published till now the "true" Scythians described in ancient Greek texts, living in north of Black Sea remained poorly sampled. The Andreeva et al. 2025 filled this lacuna.

The main finding of the paper is that despite somewhat homogenous material culture labeled as "Scythian" by modern archaeologists, the real people behind this culture were quite diverse genetically.

The main Scythian cluster label as Scy_Major had expected autosomes. Mostly like Sintashta/Srubnaya plus some minor east Asian and Central Asian farner (BMAC) ancestry. The most frequent Y DNA was the R1a-Z93 as expected. Other haplogrouos found there were I2, G2, J2, N1a, Q1b, R1b. The G2 and J2 are remarkable because they apparently joined the Scythian communities from the North West of Caucasus. It's G2-L1266 and J2-Z6046 typical to that region.

Another interesting finding is the ancient DNA of Maeotians. They had typical North Caucasian autosomes different from Scythians. This confirm the theory that Maeotians were Caucasians most probably affiliated to Abkhaz-Adygheans.

While Scythians of Moldova and Hungary were apparently local Thracians and Pannonians rather than true Scythians.

And finally the finding that can be related to Armenia's history is that late Scythians of Crimea had some Iran Neolithic (South Caucasian?) related ancestry which they could have got while crossing the Caucasus and returning back to Steppe. If further research confirms this then the story of Herodotus about Scythians ruling in West Asia 26 years and returning back will find a support. The byblical Askanaz living next to Ararat/Armenia. Is usually linked to Scythians.