Sorry Abbamouse, I did a mistake in the numbers (it is 1500 BC, and not 1700 BC anymore). I Had the wrong year in my head.
I typed the complete foreword as proof.
You are right though, it won't change the mod much, since you have placed it already as the oldest category. I think it can be very informative to set the records straight in the game's description. Since it is a good way to learn for kids and for adults.
Regards
Houman
Foreword to this Edition
"Zoroastrians: Their Religious Believes and Practices"
Prof. Mary Boyce
There have been notable advances in the study of Zoroastrianism since the book was published in 1979, and although a number of corrections were made in the text in the second edition reprint of 1983, it now seems desireable to indicate cetrain large developments which needs to be borne in mind during a reading of the early chapters.
The approximate date first proposed for Zoroaster, of 1700 BC, has already been modified, partly because the earliest compilation of Rigvedic hyms is now assigned to about 1500 BC, and the 'Old Avestan' language spoken by the prophet is very close to Vedic. It may be, however, that it evolved more slowly, because his people apear to have been more settled and conservative than their Indo-Aryan cousins; and calculations based on the language and content of the 'Old Avestan' and 'Young Avestan' texts suggest a date of about 1200 BC for former, and not later than 800 BC for the latter. Archelogists, however, have been led by their findings to assign the main movements by Iranians into the land that came to be called after them, 'Iran', to about 1000 BC, so that attributing the date of 1200 BC to Zoroaster still means that he lived
before these movements took place, somewhere, therefore, on the Inner Asian steppes. Sites have been excavated in northern Kazakhstan which may, it is thought, have belonged to ancient Iranians of about this time. Thei inhabitants were sedentary pastoralist with a mainly Stone Age culture, but making some use of bronze.