Caucasus hunter-gatherer
The Caucasus region, on the gateway between Southwest Asia, Europe and Central Asia, plays a pivotal role in the peopling of Eurasia, possibly as early as during the Homo erectus expansion to Eurasia, in the Upper Paleolithic peopling of Europe, and again in the re-peopling Mesolithic Europe following the Last Glacial Maximum, and in the expansion associated with the Neolithic Revolution.
Caucasus hunter-gatherer (CHG), also called Satsurblia Cluster is an anatomically modern human genetic lineage, first identified in a 2015 study, based on the population genetics of several modern Western Eurasian (European, Caucasian and Near Eastern) populations.
The Armenian hypothesis of the Proto-Indo-European homeland, proposed by Georgian Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze and Russian linguist Vyacheslav Ivanov in the early 1980s, suggests that Proto-Indo-European was spoken during the 5th–4th millennia BC in “eastern Anatolia, the southern Caucasus, and northern Mesopotamia”.
In 1985, Soviet linguist Igor M. Diakonoff noted the presence in Classical Armenian of what he calls a "Caucasian substratum" identified by earlier scholars, consisting of loans from the Kartvelian and Northeast Caucasian languages. Noting that Hurro-Urartian-speaking peoples inhabited the Armenian homeland in the second millennium BC, Diakonoff identifies in Armenian a Hurro-Urartian substratum of social, cultural, and animal and plant terms such as ałaxin "slave girl" ( ← Hurr. al(l)a(e)ḫḫenne), cov "sea" ( ← Urart. ṣûǝ "(inland) sea"), ułt "camel" ( ← Hurr. uḷtu), and xnjor "apple (tree)" ( ← Hurr. ḫinzuri). Some of the terms he gives admittedly have an Akkadian or Sumerian provenance, but he suggests they were borrowed through Hurrian or Urartian. Given that these borrowings do not undergo sound changes characteristic of the development of Armenian from Proto-Indo-European, he dates their borrowing to a time before the written record but after the Proto-Armenian language stage.
HRACH MARTIROSIAN: Contemporary linguists, such as Hrach Martirosyan, have rejected many of the Hurro-Urartian and Northeast Caucasian origins and instead suggest native Armenian etymologies, leaving the possibility that these words may have been loaned into Hurro-Urartian and Caucasian languages from Armenian, and not vice versa. A notable example is arciv, meaning "eagle," believed to have been the origin of Urartian Arṣibi and Northeast Caucasian arzu. This word is derived from Proto-Indo-European *h₂r̥ǵipyós, with cognates in Sanskrit (ऋजिप्य, ṛjipyá), Avestan (erezef), and Greek (αἰγίπιος, aigípios). Hrach Martirosyan and Armen Petrosyan propose additional borrowed words of Armenian origin loaned into Urartian and vice versa, including grammatical words and parts of speech, such as Urartian eue ("and"), attested in the earliest Urartian texts and likely a loan from Armenian (compare to Armenian եւ yev, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁epi). Other loans from Armenian into Urartian includes personal names, toponyms, and names of deities.
Recent DNA-research has led to renewed suggestions of a Caucasian homeland for a 'pre-proto-Indo-European'.
Gamkrelidze and Ivanov presented their hypothesis in Russian in 1980–1981 in two articles in Vestnik drevnej istorii. During the following years they expanded and developed their work into their voluminous book, published in Russian in 1984; the English translation of the book appeared in 1995. In English a short sketch of the hypothesis first appeared in The Early History of Indo-European Languages, published in Scientific American in 1990. Tamas Gamkrelidze published an update to the hypothesis in 2010.
According to Gamkrelidze and Ivanov, the Indo-European languages derive from a language originally spoken in the wide area of Armenian Highlands, the southern Caucasus, and northern Mesopotamia. The Anatolian languages, including Hittite, split off before 4000 BCE, and migrated into Anatolia at around 2000 BCE. Around 4000 BCE, the proto-Indo-European community split into Greek-Armenian-Indo-Iranians, Celto-Italo-Tocharians, and Balto-Slavo-Germanics. At around 3000–2500 BCE, Greek moved to the west, while the Indo-Aryans, the Celto-Italo-Tocharians and the Balto-Slavo-Germanics moved east, and then northwards along the eastern slope of the Caspian Sea. The Tocharians split from the Italo-Celtics before 2000 BCE and moved further east, while the Italo-Celtics and the Balto-Slavo-Germanics turned west again towards the northern slopes of the Black Sea. From there, they expanded further into Europe between around 2000 and 1000 BCE.[12][10]
The phonological peculiarities of the consonants proposed in the glottalic theory are best preserved in Armenian and the Germanic languages. Proto-Greek would be practically equivalent to Mycenaean Greek from the 17th century BC and closely associate Greek migration to Greece with the Indo-Aryan migration to India at about the same time (the Indo-European expansion at the transition to the Late Bronze Age, including the possibility of Indo-European Kassites).
The hypothesis argues for the latest possible date of Proto-Indo-European (without Anatolian), roughly a millennium later than the mainstream Kurgan hypothesis. In this respect, it represents an opposite to the Anatolian hypothesis in spite of the geographical proximity of the respective suggested Urheimat by diverging from the timeframe suggested there by approximately 3000 years.
Loan words from Iranian languages, along with the other ancient accounts such as that of Xenophon above, initially led linguists to erroneously classify Armenian as an Iranian language. Scholars such as Paul de Lagarde and F. Müller believed that the similarities between the two languages meant that Armenian belonged to the Iranian language family. The distinctness of Armenian was recognized when philologist Heinrich Hübschmann (1875) used the comparative method to distinguish two layers of Iranian words from the older Armenian vocabulary. He showed that Armenian often had 2 morphemes for the one concept, and the non-Iranian components yielded a consistent PIE pattern distinct from Iranian, and also demonstrated that the inflectional morphology was different from that in Iranian languages.
Recent DNA-research (2015-2018) has led to renewed suggestions of a Caucasian homeland for a 'proto-proto-Indo-European'.[2][3][4][5][6] It also has been proposed by some to lend support to the Indo-Hittite hypothesis, according to which both proto-Anatolian and proto-Indo-European split-off from a common mother language "no later than the 4th millennium BCE."[9]
Haak et al. (2015) states that "the Armenian plateau hypothesis gains in plausibility" since the Yamnaya partly descended from a Near Eastern population, which resembles present-day Armenians. Yet, they also state that "the question of what languages were spoken by the 'Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers' and the southern, Armenian-like, ancestral population remains open."[14]
David Reich, in his 2018 publication Who We Are and How We Got Here, noting the presence of some Indo-European languages (such as Hittite) in parts of ancient Anatolia, states that "the most likely location of the population that first spoke an Indo-European language was south of the Caucasus Mountains, perhaps in present-day Iran or Armenia, because ancient DNA from people who lived there matches what we would expect for a source population both for the Yamnaya and for ancient Anatolians." Yet, Reich also notes that "...the evidence here is circumstantial as no ancient DNA from the Hittites themselves has yet been published."[3] Nevertheless, Reich also states that some, if not most, of the Indo-European languages were spread by the Yamnaya people.[15]
According to Kroonen et al. (2018), Damgaard et al. (2018) aDNA studies in Anatolia "show no indication of a large-scale intrusion of a steppe population", but do "fit the recently developed consensus among linguists and historians that the speakers of the Anatolian languages established themselves in Anatolia by gradual infiltration and cultural assimilation."[16] They further note that this lends support to the Indo-Hittite hypothesis, according to which both proto-Anatolian and proto-Indo-European split-off from a common mother language "no later than the 4th millennium BCE."[9]
Wang et al. (2018) note that the Caucasus served as a corridor for gene flow between the steppe and cultures south of the Caucasus during the Eneolithic and the Bronze Age, stating that this "opens up the possibility of a homeland of PIE south of the Caucasus." However, Wang et al. also acknowledge that the latest genetic evidence supports an origin of Proto-Indo-Europeans in the steppe, noting:
Kristian Kristiansen, in an interview with Der Spiegel in may 2018, stated that the Yamnaya culture may have had a predecessor at the Caucasus, where "proto-proto-Indo-European" was spoken.
Graeco-Aryan, or Graeco-Armeno-Aryan, is another hypothetical clade within the Indo-European family that would be the ancestor of Greek, Armenian, and the Indo-Iranian languages.
The Graeco-Armeno-Aryan group supposedly branched off from the parent Indo-European stem by the mid-3rd millennium BC.In the context of the Kurgan hypothesis, Graeco-Aryan is also known as "Late Proto-Indo-European" or "Late Indo-European" to suggest that Graeco-Aryan forms a dialect group, which corresponds to the latest stage of linguistic unity in the Indo-European homeland in the early part of the 3rd millennium BC. By 2500 BC, Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian had separated, moving westward and eastward from the Pontic Steppe, respectively.[1]
If Graeco-Aryan is a valid group, Grassmann's law may have a common origin in Greek and Sanskrit.
Armani, was an ancient kingdom mentioned in the geographical treaties of Sargon of Akkad and his grandson Naram-Sin of Akkad as stretching from Ibla to Bit-Nanib and it continued to be mentioned in later Assyrian inscriptions.
First mentioned as the land of Armani by Sargon, Naram-Sin boasted about his victory and destruction of the city. He gives a detailed account of the siege and the capture of Armani's king in one of his inscriptions.
Armani was attested in the treaties of Sargon in a section that mentions regions located in Assyria and Babylonia or territories adjacent to the east. The later King Adad-Nirari I of Assyria also mentions Armani as being located east of the Tigris and on the border between Assyria and Babylon. Armani was later mentioned amongst the cities that rebelled against Naram-Sin. During the Middle Assyrian and Kassite periods, the land of Armani was mentioned as located east of the Tigris.
Michael C. Astour makes the location of Armani clear when he points out that Naram-Sin states that he sacked Ibla (in c. 2240 BC) which was simply a border town of the land of Armani.
Interpretations below are based on the reconstruction and identification of words which form part of the vocabulary of a Proto-Indo-European language and are reconstructed on the basis of sound laws and shared grammatical structures. The definitions given for the roots should be read as "connotations" close to their original "denotation".
After almost 50 years of research on language and religion, I would define the ancient Armenian belief system as a Natural religion, most frequently this means the "religion of nature", which includes the sun its light and heat, the moon its magnetism, the planets and their rhythms, the stars, the constellations for keeping time the soul, the spirits, and matter. In fact all physical phenomena, like matter, objects of the supernatural, everything was considered as part of nature and not separate from it. It was possibly a philosophy regarding only aspects that are said to be knowable, keeping away from ideas of divine revelation through logic and reason alone like the existence of an unmoved Mover, as the first cause of the universe.
a religion validated on the basis of human reason and experience apart from miraculous or supernatural revelation specifically : a religion that is universally discernible by all men through the use of human reason apart from any special revelation. The basic tenets of natural religion were outlined by Aristotle, whose hylomorphism considered all things as made of matter and form. The form of all living things is the soul, which guides and directs their development. Many natural religions consider a demerge, a creator as the "soul of the universe".
Their respect for the light and warmth off the sun was primeval, emotional their behaviour, strongly instinctive and unreasoning. Their desire and love to the Sun made them speak with the Sun, obviously in Armenian, which was for them, the first language, their 'give and take with the Sun, their Creator.
Talk about Natural religeon/philosophy I bring forth the story that explains to the listener what and who might be responsible for the Milky Way. It was known to the ancient Armenians as the “Trail of the Straw-Thief” after he stole kindling from Bel, the enemy of the Ara and Armenian people. The birth of Vahagn and his association with the Sun is here described in a poem preserved for posterity by Movses Khorenatsi:
In travail were heaven and earth,
In travail, too, the purple sea! (PURPLE AS RED&BLUE)
The travail held in the sea the small red reed.
Through the hollow of the stalk came forth smoke, (BLUE GRAY)
Through the hollow of the stalk came forth flame,
And out of the flame a youth ran!
Fiery hair had he,
Ay, too, he had flaming beard,
And his eyes, they were as suns!
In terms of popular perception this story is just as important in modern nationalist thinking as 'objective' history. The myth asserts that Armenians are direct descendants of Noah…The roots of the Armenian nation were thus established around Mount Ararat with Haik and his family. This story, taught to all primary students in Armenian schools around the world, has a number of powerful symbolic components. First, it makes Armenia the cradle of all civilizations since Noah's Ark landed on the 'Armenian' mountain of Ararat. Second, it connects Armenians to the biblical narrative of human development. Third, it infuses a very important element of righteous rebellion against tyranny and oppression (of Babylon). Fourth, it situates freedom, independence and justice at the centre of the nation's origins. And finally, it makes Mount Ararat the national symbol of all Armenians.
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