Iranian peoples

People who speak Iranian languages and have other cultural affinities with the Iranians are known as the Iranian peoples, sometimes known as the Iranic peoples.

It is widely accepted that the Proto-Iranians developed as a distinct branch of the Indo-Iranians in Central Asia during the mid-2nd millennium BC. Around 1200 BCE, Iran's territory spanned the whole Eurasian Steppe, extending from western Hungary to the Ordos Plateau, east to the Iranian Plateau, and south to the Great Hungarian Plain.

People who emerged from Iran after the first millennium BCE include the Alans, Bactrians, Dahars, Khwarazmians, Massagetae, Medes and Parthians as well as other Iranian-speaking groups from the West and Central Asia as well as Eastern Europe and the Eastern Steppe. Other Iranian-speaking groups were also found in the Persian Empire, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe.

As Slavic, Germanic, Turkic, and Mongolic expansions swept over Eurasia in the first millennium CE, many of the region's nomadic peoples saw their settlements drastically reduced in size, especially in the steppes and deserts. Most modern Iranians are Baloch or Gilak or Lurs or Mazanderanis or Ossetians or Pamiris or Pashtun or Persian or Tajik or Wakhi or Yaghnobi or Zaza or any of a number of other modern Iranian ethnic groups. There is a large concentration of Iranian-speakers in this area, which extends from eastern Anatolia, westward to western Xinjiang, eastward, across the Iranian Plateau. This area is sometimes referred to as the Iranian Cultural Continent, because of the extent of Iranian-speakers and the cultural influence they have as a result of Greater Iran's geopolitical reach.