Editing Saka (section)

=== Modern terminology ===
{{See also|Scythian cultures}}
Although the ancient Persians, ancient Greeks, and ancient Babylonians respectively used the names "Saka," "Scythian," and "[[Cimmerian]]" for all the steppe nomads, modern scholars now use the term Saka to refer specifically to Iranian peoples who inhabited the northern and eastern [[Eurasian Steppe]] and the [[Tarim Basin]];<ref name="B_68" /><ref name="eolss">{{cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UwueDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA380 |title=ARCHAEOLOGY – Volume I |chapter= The Archaeology of Eurasian Nomads |editor-first= Donald L. |editor-last= Hardesty |page=383 |author=L. T. Yablonsky |publisher= EOLSS |isbn=978-1-84826-002-3|date=15 June 2010 }}</ref><ref name="D_37"/><ref name="DiakonoffNomenclature"/> and while the Cimmerians were often described by contemporaries as [[Scythian cultures|culturally Scythian]], they may have differed ethnically from the Scythians proper, to whom the Cimmerians were related, and who also displaced and replaced the Cimmerians.<ref name="Cimmerians">{{cite web |last=Tokhtas’ev |first=Sergei R. |author-link= |date=1991 |title=Cimmerians |url=https://iranicaonline.org/articles/cimmerians-nomads |website=[[Encyclopædia Iranica]] |quote=As the Cimmerians cannot be differentiated archeologically from the Scythians, it is possible to speculate about their Iranian origins. In the Neo-Babylonian texts (according to D’yakonov, including at least some of the Assyrian texts in Babylonian dialect) {{transliteration|akk|Gimirri}} and similar forms designate the Scythians and Central Asian Saka, reflecting the perception among inhabitants of Mesopotamia that Cimmerians and Scythians represented a single cultural and economic group}}</ref>