Editing Zoroaster (section)

====Early date====
Scholars such as [[Mary Boyce]] (who dated Zoroaster to somewhere between 1700 and 1000 BC) used linguistic and socio-cultural evidence to place Zoroaster between 1500 and 1000 BC (or 1200 and 900 BC).<ref name="West Dating"/><ref name="ShahbaziAb"/> The basis of this theory is primarily proposed on linguistic similarities between the [[Avestan language|Old Avestan language]] of the Zoroastrian [[Gathas]] and the [[Vedic Sanskrit|Sanskrit]] of the [[Rigveda]] ({{Circa|1700}}–1100 BC), a collection of early Vedic hymns. Both texts are considered to have a common archaic Indo-Iranian origin. The Gathas portray an ancient [[Stone Age|Stone]]-[[Bronze Age#Iranian Plateau|Bronze Age]] bipartite society of warrior-herdsmen and priests (compared to Bronze [[Trifunctional hypothesis|tripartite society]]; some conjecture that it depicts the [[Yaz culture]]),<ref>{{citation|first1=J. P.|last1=Mallory|author2-link=Douglas Q. Adams|first2=Douglas Q.|last2=Adams|title=Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tzU3RIV2BWIC|year=1997|publisher=Taylor & Francis|pages=310–311, 653|isbn=978-1-884964-98-5|author1-link=J. P. Mallory}}</ref> and that it is thus implausible that the Gathas and [[Rigveda]] could have been composed more than a few centuries apart. These scholars suggest that Zoroaster lived in an isolated tribe or composed the Gathas before the 1200–1000 BC migration by the Iranians from the steppe to the [[Iranian Plateau]].<ref name="Boyce Background96"/><ref>{{harvnb|Boyce|1982|pp=1–7}}</ref><ref name="West Dating"/><ref>{{harvnb|West|2010|p=18}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Stausberg|2008|p=572}}</ref> The shortfall of the argument is the vague comparison, and the archaic language of Gathas does not necessarily indicate time difference.<ref name="WestDate13"/><ref name="NigosianDate"/>

It has been suggested by Silk Road Seattle, using its own interpretations of [[Victor H. Mair]]'s writings on the topic that Zoroaster could have been born in the 2nd millennium BC.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2002-05-07 |title=Zoroastrianism |website=Silk Road Seattle |publisher=[[University of Washington]] |url=https://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/exhibit/religion/zoroastrianism/zoroastrianism.html |access-date=2023-03-01}}</ref>{{sfn|Mair|1990|p=34}} 

[[Almut Hintze]], the [[British Library]], and the [[European Research Council]] have dated Zoroaster to roughly 3,500 years ago, in the 2nd millennium BC.<ref>{{Cite web |title=An introduction to Zoroastrianism |url=https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/ancient-near-east1/the-ancient-near-east-an-introduction/a/an-introduction-to-zoroastrianism |access-date=2023-03-12 |website=[[Khan Academy]] |language=en}}</ref>