I can just give my opinion - why not, but most of pattern weapons are not truly ethnographic weapons. "Pattern" community is very different; a big thing there is to have a sword typical for some high class and relatively small unit (like light brigade), especially with good provenance or even decorations. They have completely separate books, gatherings and forums that for example I do not know much about. It is just historically a different community.
Concerning sabre's origins - well it certainly not China (my unacademic and unguric opinion), even though they had sabres under Han dynasty, they just disappeared with no consequence.
In my opinion sabre appeared in VIIth century in Khazar Empire, essentially a little bit to the north of Dagestan. Khazars had a very diverse population, which somewhat artificially can be split by burial customs into settled "alanics" (catacombes), "turkic" (kurgans) and unknown (cremation). The division is highly speculative since turks also did use catacombes and iranics did use kurgans, so it is more cultural than language-related thing.
Concerning cremation-users, they were strange people, sort of shock-troopers. The only nation where you very often see full set of arms and armour - mail, spear, sabre, bow etc. Additionally you often see a lot of healed wounds on these soldiers. They also did not have infantry, only cavalry. There are many theories concerning who were these people (khazar nobility, avars and so on and so on, russian fashits obviously believe they were ancient russians), but they used sabres, i.e. weapons with initially small but noticable curvature. The sabre then spread both to the west and to the east (interestinly enough mongols per se, i.e. the tribes of eastern syberia were actually one of the last to hold on to straight swords) and curvature grew. Strangely it grew very extensively among circassians (something like twice the rate of any surrounding nation), so it is quite possible in my opinion that "shamshir"-like sabres appear in XIIIth century circassian areas, later to be replaced in these areas by a circassian sabre (which was actually designed for stabbing due to its peculiar points. I do not believe in hooking stabs made with shamshirs, never read about it. With a circassian sword - it was designed for it).
In Europe the sabre sort of stagnates until the "revival" of its popularity in XVIIth century (one can say due to the polish influence, or one can say due to tatar influence, often transmitted through the poles).
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