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Direct Link To This Post Topic: Armenian Origins ?
    Posted: 10-Jun-2005 at 11:24

As Topic / Who where the Armenian origins ?

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10-Jun-2005 at 17:09
Welcome to AE, [ARM]Paul.

There are many theories to the origin of the Armenians. Some scholars claim that the Armenians were a tribe of people in Thrace that migrated to the Armenian Plateau sometime before 1000 B.C. Others maintain that the Armenians were indigenous tribes of Caucasia that united due to similarities in culture. The indiginous Indo-European tribes of the Nairi, Hayasa-Azzi, and Arme-Shupria united to form the Armenian people. Under Urartu, the majority of the population was in fact Armenian, not Urartian. Urartians were simply the ruling class, and the Armenians had adopted their language as well as their own native tongue to better adapt to life under Urartu. When the Assyrian empire finally defeated Urartu after about 300 years of war, the Armenians emerged as the ruling class in the Eastern Anatolian/Caucasus region.

The 3 indiginous tribes of Eastern Anatolia/Caucasia:
Nairi --- is a comman Armenian woman's name.
Hayasa-Azzi ---  explains why we call ourselves Hay (Armenian) and our country Hayastan (Armenia)
Arme-Shupria --- explains why others know us as Armenians and our nation as Armenia.

This is just one of the many theories, though. But it seems to be the most valid. Even if the Thracian tribe of "Armens" did migrate, they were blended into the local tribes of Arme-Shupria, Nairi and Hayasa-Azzi, and formed only a minority within this union of tribes, eventually assimilating. When Urartu fell, some Urartians assimilated into Armenian culture, and others assimilated into neighboring cultures.

Just theories, though. Some more valid than others.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Jun-2005 at 08:17

Thx ! ArmenianSurvival

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jun-2005 at 03:04

I have also heard that Armenians descended from Hittites.

Is there much truth to this?

 

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jun-2005 at 04:23
No. Hittites were an Indo European people whose origins were possibly northern Caucasian, Circassian. Also, the Hatti people had central asian origins, just like Urartu...
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jun-2005 at 16:43
Ive never read that Urartu had central asian origins. Do you have an article?

And yea, Armenians didnt descend from the Hittites.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Jun-2005 at 10:44
Urartu's had nothing to do with anything related to Asia according to wikkpedia.Its probably another attempt of the Turks to claim them as part of their history i suppose.

Urartians spoke an agglunative language called Urartian,which was related to Hurrian in the Hurro-Urartian family,and was neither Ineo-European nor Semilitic,It had close linguistic characteristcs to Northeast Caucausian Langages.

Thus the theory that they are Asians just went to crap

About Armenia, its huge topic since it seems historians are not sure and there are many theories.But those are just few of what i found.

The original name for the country was Hayq ,later Hayastan  ,translated as the land of the Haik and stan(land).
According to a Legend,Haik was a great-great-grandson of Noah (son of Togarmah,who was a son of Gomer,a son of Noha's son,Yafet), and accoriding to Christian tradition,a forefather of all Armenians.
He is said to have settles below Mount Ararat, traveled to assist in building to the Tower of Babel , and, after his return,defeated the Assyrian king Nimrod near Lake Van.

The name Armenia was given to the Hay's by its neighbors ,as it was the name of the strongest tribe lviving in the historic Armenian lands,who called themselevs Armens.

It is traditionally derived from Armenak or Aram the great-grandson of Haik's great grandson and another leader who according the Armenian tradition, is the ancestors of all Armenians.

Some Jewish and Christian scholars write that the name 'Armenia' was derived from Har-Minni,i.e. Mountains of Minni.Pre-Christian acounts suggest that Nairi ,meaning land of rivers, was an ancient name of the country's mountainous region,first used by Greek historians around 800BC:while the first recorded inscription bearing the name Armenia,namely the Behistun Inscription in Iran ,dates from 521 BC.

Armenia was a regional Empire whith a rich culture in the years leading up to 1st Century ,spanning from the shores of the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean Sea during the rule of Tigranes The Great.

In 301, Armenia was the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its official state religion,twelve years before Rome declare freedom of religious beliefs.

Well  those are few about the ancient times i found from Wikkipedia.
If anything else Urartians must be related to Armenians since from what i saw there are still some words used by Modern Armenians which have Urartian or Hurrian Origin.
Armenian language is an own independent branch of its own in the family of the Indo-European Languages , with no living relatives.Manyb believe that Armenian is a close relative of the extinct Phrygian language.From the modern languages Greek seems to be the most closely related to Armenian.

Sources taken from Wikkipedia.

Armenia Highlighted.




Armenia and Cilican Kingdom of Armenia




Ancient Roman Map Armenia.














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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18-Jun-2005 at 03:10

The earliest attestation of peoples in what would historically be known as Armenia (i.e. the land about Lake Van and north) didn't include Indo-European speaking peoples.  If the Urarteans are indicative, the languages of the land before the ethnogenesis of the Armenians were Hurrian and Caucasian speaking.  Since there are affinities between Hurrian and Caucasian languages, we can say that the whole of Trans-Caucasia was Hurro-Caucasian in speech. 

We have the names of places, tribes and persons from Hittite, Assyrian and Urartean sources which just about exclude an Armenian presence, spanning the period from about 1400 to 650 BC.  From Hittite sources (c. 1400-1200 BC), we have the names of rulers and kingdoms which existed to the east of the Hittite Empire, including the kingdoms of Azzi (or Hayasa), Ishuwa, and Alshe.  Further east we have the Hurri-land.  The names of the rulers of these kingdoms are more or less decisively Hurrian.  When we turn to the Assyrian sources (c. 1360-650 BC) we have the same pattern of Hurrian names.  The same is true of the Urartean sources (c. 850-750 BC). 

Evidence for an Armenian origin in the west include the fact that among modern languages, Armenian displays enough of an affinity with Greek to postulate a time before the formation of Greek and Armenian of a "Southern Group"  of Eurasian proto-languages which included Greek, Thracian, Armenian, and Aryan (Adrados, 1982) or a "Aryo-Graeco-Armenian" nucleus (Gamkrelidze/Ivanov, 1985).  The Balkans could have been the origin of the Armenian language considering that further north, we have evidence of Iranian languages spoken on the Ukrainian steppe, and of course, further south of Greek.  Add to this, the evidence of a Luwian influence on the Armenian language shows at one time that the proto-Armenians had an association with the Luwians, which inhabited western Anatolia.  The tradition recorded by Herodotus that the Armenians were "Phrygian colonists" may not be far from the truth, considering that what is known of the Phrygian language also points to an affinity with Greek. 

Both the names "Armenian" and "Hayk" may have been acquired names as the proto-Armenians made their way from the Balkans to their ultimate destination to the land about Lake Van, in the aftermath of the destruction of the Hittite Empire by the Sea Peoples.  The Assyrians record of an invasion of their empire about 1165 of a people called the Mushki.  After about 50 years they invaded the province of Kadmukhi, a Hurrian-speaking Assyrian province immediately to the northwest of Assyria itself, but were destroyed by the Assyrian king Tiglathpileser I.  The remnants settled in a small region in the mountains northwest of Mesopotamia.  It was these remnants that more than 300 years later were encountered by the Assyrian king Assurnasirpal who subjugated them.  Later we know of a place called Urme within the region called Shubria, near where these Mushki had settled.  If this place was the origin of the Armenians, then we have an historic link which brought Mushkians into an area which perhaps was the ethnogenesis of the Armenians.

We later encounter Mushki in the reign of Sargon II of Assyria, beginning about 715 BC.  These Mushki were not the same as those encountered by his predecessors, but rather a group at this time forming a formidable kingdom in Anatolia, under their king Mita.  This name coupled with the chronology shows that the king in question was none other than Midas, king of Phrygia.  Hence, we now have a connection between the Armenians and the Phrygians, both perhaps having their origins with the Mushkians.  The Phrygians were either the western component of the Mushkians, or, if Herodotus is to be believed, were originally the Brigians of Macedonia where a Midas ruled near the later first capital of the Macedonians, and subsequently migrated into Anatolia, where they gave their name to the Troad (Hellespontine Phrygia) and to the large mass of land to the west of the Halys (Phrygia), and took the name of the people who predominated in that area. 

The first time we know directly about Armenia and the Armenians, is in the Behistun inscription of Darius, c. 521 BC, where the "land" of Armina is first mentioned with the name of a loyal satrap with an Iranian name. 

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18-Jun-2005 at 05:44
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20-Jun-2005 at 12:00

Prehistoric Armenia starts with, the Hayasa-Azzi tribes, also known as Proto-Armenians, were indigenous to the Armenian Highland in Eastern Anatolia. These tribes formed the Nairi tribal union, which existed until late 13th century BC.

Date:   2800 BC  The Armens 
             1800 
BC The Hayasas 
         1100
BC  The Nairis 

Armenian History begins with the story of Haig.

Haig, the chieftain of the tribe of Armens, one of the most powerful, organized and biggest of the Armenian tribes in Armenian Highland and as well as Northern Mesopotamia or better known as Armenian Mesopotamia. Haig organizes Armens against the invading forces of Baeleus of Babylon attacking from Mesopotamia into the Land of Ararat.

As the Armenian Traditional Date or Calendar of Vahagn, tells us it was August 11 in the year 2492 BC, in a battle that takes place near the shores of Lake Van, Haig fires a triple headed broad arrow from his long bow into the chest of Baeleus of Babylon. According to Movses Khorenatsi (5th C AD Historian) the ample arrow splits the breastplate of Baeleus, who falls to the ground and dies on the spot.

The unorganized horde flees in the face of the death of their leader. Haig calls on his kinsmen to unite into one single nation and kingdom in order to defend and to continue cultivate, improve and enrich the ancestral homeland.

Haig establishes a town - Haigashen which becomes the nucleus of later Armenian Kingdom. Haig places his sons in charge of strategically important areas of Armenia to guard and prevent any further hostilities from foreign empires. Haig, once thought to be a mythical folk legend hero, is now accepted by some historians as the actual Armenic leader of the third millennium BC and the traditional establisher of the First Armenian Kingdom.

Source: http://www.anc.net.au/history.htm

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21-Jun-2005 at 09:48
The above is based on medievel legends and not on sober history.   What we know about Hayasa (or Azzi) based on the names of its kings was that it was probably Hurrian.  The Nairi were clearly Hurrian, in that the Biainili which were a Nairi tribe and which were the creators of the Urartean state spoke a Hurrian language. 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Jul-2005 at 16:04

Wikipedia says on its article on Phrygians that

According to Herodotus, the Armenians moving to the area of lake Van in about the 7th century BC were colonists of the Phrygians.

What do you think of this? I find surprising that nobody has mentioned it.

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Aug-2005 at 18:04

Originally posted by Sharrukin

If the Urarteans are indicative, the languages of the land before the ethnogenesis of the Armenians were Hurrian and Caucasian speaking.

Many Armenian words are in fact Urartian in origin.

Also, theres about 1400 Armenian words that are derived from the Iranian languages. There are a host of influences on the Armenian language, and it is difficult if you try to pinpoint it to one specific group of migrated peoples. The Armenians were not just people who migrated from ancient Greece, they are also a blend of Urartians and other natives. The cultures blended as well as the languages, explaining the many influences, which is why Armenian is in its own subgroup of indo-european languages, as it is not closely related enough to any other language to group it together.

I have even heard of a far-fetched theory that Armenians were the surviving Trojans of the Trojan war who migrated east after Troy's collapse. As i said, theres many theories, none of them have been proven. Some are more valid than others, such as the migration theory (although the migrating population was a minority compared to the already-settled native popluations of Eastern Anatolia). And there will always be theories of Armenians being indigenous. I guess we'll never know for certain, which is why i encourage open discussion on the topic. Id like to hear more of your thoughts.



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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02-Aug-2005 at 01:48

There is no debate that the Urarteans became a part of the Armenian population.  When this occurred is problematic considering that for a time, during the Persian and Hellenistic periods, we hear of both Armenians and Urarteans (Alarodians, in Greek) as co-existing.  The Persians seemed to have created separate provinces if we are to believe Herodotus.  "Armenians" was included in the Thirteenth province and "Alarodians" was part of the Eighteenth,  (Herod. Book III, 93 & 94).  In the march of the 10,000, Armenia seemed to have continued to be governed by two separate Persian governors.  True unification didn't seem to have occured until the reign of Tigranes II (c. 94-56 BC).  It was probably at this time that the Alarodians were ultimately absorbed.

Now, since we can identify Armenians and Urarteans as separate peoples in an earlier time, we can at least isolate which group had primacy.  This obviously goes to the Urartians, whose records show that they did invade and conquer as far north as Colchis and as far west as Cappadocia.   Between Urartu (south of Lake Van), Colchis and Cappadocia were kingdoms and tribes which bore names of Hurro-Caucasian origin.  Therefore the region of the Armenian (or proto-Armenian) language must be sought either southwest or further west.  Armenian does show borrowings from Urartean but it also shows borrowings from Luwian as well.  Therefore there was a time of association with peoples originally from western Anatolia, which again shows the probable origin of the Armenian language.  From the west or southwest, the proto-Armenian language penetrated the region of Hurro-Caucasian languages and eventually absorbed the speakers of these now extinct languages.

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02-Aug-2005 at 02:13

Do the people of Georgia and Armenia have similar histories ?

http://theforgotten.org/intro.html
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02-Aug-2005 at 13:46
No, they are two distinct nations with different origins and histories. Georgians are southern Caucasian speaking people, related with Laz. Armenians are IE people of Eastern Anatolia.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-Aug-2005 at 00:24

Do the people of Georgia and Armenia have similar histories ?

Well.......in a manner of speaking.  As Oguzoglu has pointed out, the Georgians and the Armenians had "different origins", but maps of the ancient Transcaucasic region compared to modern maps will show that large parts of the modern Georgia were included in ancient Armenia.  Georgians point to their origins in the ancient kingdoms of Colchis, Iberia, and Abasgia (Abkhazia).  Iberia at least had dynasts originally of Iranian origin which were succeeded by Armenians and then by Parthians but then by Sassanids, and then again by Armenians.  Abasgia (the successor of Colchis in the western region), likewise received Armenian rulers and there was a time when both Abasgia and Iberia were united under an Armenian dynasty.  The subsequent partition of Iberia/Georgia was by two branches of this Armenian dynasty.  Georgia was reunified in 1725 by one of these branches but the Russians abolished the monarchy in 1801 and annexed it.

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07-Aug-2005 at 01:36

The first time we know directly about Armenia and the Armenians, is in the Behistun inscription of Darius, c. 521 BC, where the "land" of Armina is first mentioned with the name of a loyal satrap with an Iranian name. 

True, but in the Behistun inscription, there were translations of the message Darius was trying to give. We can prove that Urartu and Armenia are the same because in one language, the area was called Urartu, but in another language it was called Armenia (as you said)

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Aug-2005 at 04:11

True, but in the Behistun inscription, there were translations of the message Darius was trying to give. We can prove that Urartu and Armenia are the same because in one language, the area was called Urartu, but in another language it was called Armenia (as you said)

And you are correct, in the Behistun inscription, what is called Armina in Persian was called Urastu in the Babylonian translation.  However, what is meant by the two terms bares on the history of the Persians and Babylonians regarding this northern region.  The Babylonian term is obviously the more ancient term, being a derivation of the Assyrian term Urartu (more anciently, Uruatri, meaning "mountainland" and thus originally described a region, not a people.  It was only later that one of the Nairi tribes to the south of Lake Van named the Biainili gained political possession of the whole of Urartu and hence the name of the region became the name of both kingdom and people. 

The region to the north of Lake Van was a smorgasbord of other kingdoms and tribes.  The Urartian kingdom expanded into this region and after several generations of wars, incorported this region into their empire.  From the standpoint of the Assyrians and Babylonians, this expanded northern region (on all sides of Lake Van) was simply "Urartu", named after the southern kingdom.

The Persian term Armina did not have a direct version in either Urartean, Assyrian, and Babylonian, and therefore was newer.  The Armenians inhabited the region north of Lake Van sometime after the Urarteans were driven back into their original abodes south of Lake Van probably by the Cimmerians, c. 700 BC, after much ethnic turmoil.  When the Medes gained possession of these northern regions by about 585 BC, the inhabitants were probably Armenians, although the land-name does not occur in written record until the Behistun inscription, c. 513 BC. 

It is thus to be understood that both the Persian and Babylonian land-names on the Behistun inscription were the same, but named after two different peoples, one in the south and the other in the north.  Each people at different times was considered the representative of the land encountered by expanding outsiders. 

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Aug-2005 at 13:59

I thought Urartu is derived from the word Ararat, the sacred mountain of Armenia. Urartu was simply the Assyrian name for Biayna (what the natives called it). One can also say that Biayna also designates a region because Biayna is related to the word 'Van'. But it is not so...

Yes, many tribes have entered into the Armenian highland and mixed. The Armenian nation was thus created. Armenia was, after all located in a crossroads of various civilizations.

One of the first proto-Armenian tribes we know of is the Hayasa tribe. They were indigenous to the Armenian Highland in Eastern Anatolia. Armenians now call themselves 'Hay' - surely related to 'Hayasa'.

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