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| 12 metre Buddha in Nirvana: Ajina Tepe, Tajikistan 6th - 7th Century CE) |
I was going through the paper by Guarino-Vignon et al (2022) again and was struck by some very good insights. The paper is titled "Genetic continuity of Indo-Iranian speakers since the Iron Age in southern Central Asia".
The paper studies the modern Tajik and Yaghnobi people of Tajikistan. While the Tajik speak a Persian dialect (Iranian > West Iranian > SW Iranian > Persian > Tajik), the Yaghnobis speak an Eastern Iranian language, a descendant of ancient Sogdian (Iranian > East Iranian > Sogdian > Yaghnobi).