The empire had no boundaries

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

In a literary sense too, the connection was established. The Scythians/Sarmatians who were legendry for their deep oral traditions of story telling, greatly influenced Angelo-Saxon, and Irish folklore, to the extent in which some of their legends were adapted by the British, the most famous of them being 'King Arthur ', 'The Knights of the Round Table', and ' The Camelot'; the jewels of the British literature.

Even up to centuries later, some of ancient Iran' s popular folktales such as 'The Prince and the Pauper', and 'The Three Princes of Serendip' among others, became popularized in the British and Western hemisphere. The first became a classic via the sharp pen of Mark Twain in a book by the same title; the second was immortalised by Sir Horace Walpole of London who coined the English word serendipity, a la the Persian fairy tale 'The Three Princes of Serendip'.

Other noteworthy influences include the Sarmatians' introduction of the Windmill to the Dutch, which stands as the national symbol of today' s Holland/holt land/Neitherlands. And, Fenius Farsa [Farshid] (also Phoeniusa, Phenius, Fénius; Farsaid, Farsaidh, many variant spellings): a legendary Scythian King who is a frequent part in many legends of Irish folklore. According to some traditions, he was the creator of the Ogham alphabet and the Gaelic language.

Yet, one the most visible influences of the Scythians [modern Sarmatians whose off-springs are today’s Ossetian-Alans living in North Ossetia, Georgia] is the introduction of the very Persian way of dress, in the form of pants. The word pants is derived from Italian comics, 'the Pantaloons' who popularized the term and its usage; yet, pants itself refers to trousers, which is in turn derived from guess where? Yes, ironically it is from the Scottish Gaelic word, 'triubhas' [recall the legendry account of the origin of the Gaelic language itself mentioned above].

Interestingly enough, the ancient Greeks made considerable mockery of the quote-on-quote, Men wearing pants, even depicting the Achaemenid Persians, and Scythians wearing ultra-tight pants on their artworks. Nonetheless, those Scythians who by the 1st or 2nd century AD were now called the Sarmatians, had to escape, this time due to the wrath of the Turks, the Huns, the Arabs, and the Mongols, and in fear of their lives they fled deep into Central Asia and Eastern Europe along the Carpathian Mountains and the Danube River (Romania, Ukraine, Hungry etc.).

It was these people who first introduced the pants to the Ukrainians who in turn gladly exchanged them with their own attire, as such the pants kept them warm in the bitter winters of Russia. Gradually, via Ukraine and elsewhere such as the Ottoman Turks and Hungarians, by the 16th century, the pants spread to Great Britain and it slowly became the standard norm men’s wear (and women’s too), at first being worn as pajamas (an English word of Persian origin, pA; leg plus jAma; garment). Certainly we owe a debt to these ancient Iranians in more than just one way.

And in the case of trousers, today our culture would be unimaginable without them; otherwise, men at least (although fun at college parties) would still be stuck wearing the dirty white bed-sheets with holes in them that the Greeks called Togas, or the ballerina-tutus/the mini-s***ts that the Roman legionnaires wore called greeves. Now dude, that’s one rad-fashion-fad, we wouldn’t want making a come back any time soon -- do we?

Finally, I would vehemently recommend the following recently published books that shed some light on these subjects, and more,

1. From Scythia to Camelot: A Radical Reassessment of the Legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and the Holy Grail. By, C. LITTLETON.

2. Sassanian Elite Cavalry AD 224-642 (Elite) (Paperback)
by Kaveh Farrokh, Angus Mcbride (Illustrator)

3. The Golden Deer of Eurasia (Hardcover)
by Joan Aruz (Editor), Ann Farkas (Editor), Andrei Alekseev (Editor), Elena Korolkova (Editor)