This is MOST interesting.
The vast majority of Western and Middle Eastern scholars still want to place Zarathushtra around 1,000BC, so that they can put Egypt's Aknathen and Moses (who probably did not even exist but is rather a made-up fantasy figure) AHEAD OF Zarathushtra historically.
We should be adamant that Zarathushtra lived at least as far back as 1,700 BC or even earlier - since the linguistic and anthropological evidence says this explicitly - which makes his and his contemporaries' achievements all the more fundamental and impressive.
2010/1/16 ardeshir farhmand
ok, parviz, as i stated before i respond to valid arguments, and ur recent argument was valid. so here is my response. Prof Martin Schwartz in his article entitled HOW ZARATHUSHTRA GENERATED THE GATHIC CORPUS: INNER TEXTUAL and INTERTEXTUAL COMPOSITION, second page, lines 9, 10, 11 of the right hand column; states unequivocally: that he considers ZARATHUSHTA TO BE THE AUTHOR OF THE GATHAS, yet he ascribes the composition of hapt-hat or the seven chapters to another seer/poet.
also, Martin Schwartz and Almut Hintze are adamant that the the Gathas are not the work of an academic writing in a dead language; instead the gathas show all the signs of poetry composed and recited in an oral tradition, similar to the heroic poetry of Homer or the Rig-Vedas. a study that confirms a much earlier date for Zarathushtra.
IN OTHER WORDS, GATHAS ARE AUTHENTIC and COMPOSED BY ZARATHUSHTRA.
the other issue u are raising has to do with the alphabet. u are claiming that zarathushtra's indo-aryan society had no alphabet. although it is true that zarathushtra's poetic gathas as well as vedic poetry come from an ORAL/BARDIC tradition. However, the mumies found at NORTH WEST CHINA believed originally to be of european ancestry because of their extreme nordic features turned out to be IN FACT EAST IRANIANS. extensive genetic tests has shown that these people lived about 3700-4000 years ago and were indeed EAST IRANIANS, closely realted to the TAJIKS, CENTRAL KHORASANIS AND NOURISTANIS of today and apparently had a rune like system, very similar to formal alphabet.
it is commonly believed that the alphabet was invented by the semites, yet new evidence regarding chinese alphabet, old harapa civilization alphabet, a proto-vedic alphabet, and rune likes signs among east iranians all seem to greatly challenge such theory concerning the sole semitic origin of writing.
u can read PROF SCHWARTZ's article below.
Thanks for ur positive debate