Ancient Armenian legends unequivocally suggest that the Armenians descended from giants – the very progenitor of the Armenians, Hayk Nahapet and his lineage, were giants. This was written by the founder of Armenian historiography, Movses Khorenatsi, in the famous book “History of Armenia” (5th century AD).
There are numerous facts confirming the veracity of ancient tales. The skeletal remains of people of gigantic stature have been found in the Caucasus mountains for many centuries, and today the inhabitants of many villages in Armenia and Georgia are convinced that entire cities of giants existed here in the distant past, as well as their numerous burial sites. Independent researchers Ruben Mnatsakanyan, Artur Margaryan, Vazgen Gevorgyan, and Araik Pahlevanyan have traveled virtually all of Armenia over the past quarter of a century and gathered a wealth of information and testimonies from hundreds of people, visiting dozens of regions. Over the past 10 years, their Russian colleagues have joined them.
Aragats
Ancient Armenian manuscripts state that Armenak, the son of the patriarch and giant Hayk, built a city on the slopes of Mount Aragats, which is now only an hour’s drive from the capital. There, at an altitude of 1750 meters, is the mountain village of Lernarot. Its residents say that there are very ancient burials further up the slope. One of them was recently opened by treasure hunters. Whether gold was found there or not is not exactly known, but bones in such cases are usually left on the spot. Maybe they are the remains of giants?
Researchers get to Lernarot by ordinary car, but the road ends further up the slope, and even an SUV can’t get through the mountain stones. Leaving the car in the yard of one of the last houses, the expedition switches to an old Soviet truck “Laz-52” model from 1971. This is the only means of transport in such places, and under the roar of the engine, the driver overcomes obstacles that an ordinary driver would not be able to handle. The rough ride takes only 20 minutes, and then a landmark is visible – a pile of stones. The burial is indeed excavated, stones are scattered around it, some are thrown back into the grave. The villagers lift them up, and fragments of skeletons appear from underneath, there turn out to be two. As expected, both were fragmented. Examining the remains, the expedition participants conclude that one of the people was short, and the other tall, with an impressive triangular lower jaw. His height could reach two meters, significantly exceeding the standards of antiquity. But these fragments cannot be called the remains of a giant.
Another village on the other side of Mount Aragats is called Avan. Moving from it to the last populated point on this route, among many ruins of cyclopean settlements and fortresses, we found a semi-ruined ancient pavement. It stretched 5 km and led to the last village on the road to the top – Khnusik, located at an altitude of about 2000 m. Almost no one lives there today. There are only the remnants of a former village, the residents of which were deported during Stalin’s time.
A couple of kilometers further up the slope of Aragats is the megalithic fortress of Dzunaberd, which historians date back to 3000 BC. It stands on an elevation and is built from large boulders weighing several tons in the lower part and relatively small stones in the upper part. Many of them have been scattered around by frequent earthquakes.
It’s getting dark, and we have to return. In the lower village of Avan, the expedition is in for a surprise. The hosts of one of the houses invite us to have coffee. During the conversation, it suddenly turns out that they know about the remains of giants not by hearsay. And they have seen them themselves, and many times.
Komitas Aleksanyan, a resident of the village of Avan in the Aragatsotn region, says: “Our youth accidentally stumbled upon some pit, out of curiosity they started digging and unearthed the bones of huge people, giants. They found skulls – like this (shows that they can only be held with two hands). I have never seen anything like it before, it was a human skull, only very large. And also leg bones. Their length was almost as tall as me. Once it was in the fall of 2010 and in 2009, in the territory of our village, where the grave of Saint Barbara is located.”
The next day we come back to the village of Avan.
In such cases, the main problem is that after a few years it is already impossible to trace such findings. As is known, there are no museums or antiquity storages in the villages, peasants are busy with their work, and historians, due to the inertia from Soviet times, are skeptical about such information. However, sometimes archaeologists themselves talk about finding giant bones and artifacts, but this topic is not advertised.
Syunik
Movses Khorenatsi wrote that the settlements of the giants, descendants of Hayk Nahapet, were also located in the southeast of Armenia in Syunik near the gorge of the Vorotan River. The places indicated by Khorenatsi have largely survived to this day, mostly those that are far from populated areas. Those that are close to villages and cities served as quarries for stone extraction. However, during Soviet times, science was not at all interested in such discoveries. Many necropolises turned into fields for sowing wheat or barley. And the stones extracted from them, without state protection, were used by the population as building materials.
In the village of Khot, there is even an airport left over from Soviet times. Here in 1968, during the construction of a monument to the heroes of the Great Patriotic War, builders, leveling the top of a mound, discovered a tomb with the remains of giants. In those days, tractors dug the slope of the hill 6 meters deep, and thanks to this, ancient layers became accessible. Razmik Arakelyan was working on the tractor at the time, he saw everything with his own eyes and remembers it well.
Independent researcher Vazgen Gevorgyan says:
“All the inhabitants of the village of Khot talk about the skeletons of giants found there. In particular, Razmik Arakelyan many years ago during earthwork personally saw the graves of two giants. The elder of the village also spoke about this, to whom his father showed the exact place. Everyone who saw it was very surprised at what huge people used to live here. There was apparently their cemetery, and this place needs to be investigated.”
In the neighboring village of Tandzatap, there are also witnesses who spoke about giant bones – the metatarsal reached the waist of the tallest of them. This happened in 1986 when tractors dug the slope of the mountain many meters deep, they made terraces for fruit trees. Thanks to this, very ancient layers became accessible here as well. The tractor bucket knocked down the lower slab, and then the burial itself opened, from which a bone of a real giant was extracted. Mikhail Ambartsumyan, the former elder of the village, was personally in charge of the work at the time.
In these abandoned places, only shepherds are found. But where did this stone pavement come from? Maybe it was built during the Soviet times? But for that, it would have been necessary to gather the population of the entire district. We decide to clarify with the locals when the pavement was built. In such cases, the stories of the elderly are usually recalled. And it turns out that the paved road was here a very long time ago. How long ago – no one knows.
Mikhail Ambartsumyan recalls: “During the construction work, a small hole lined with flat stones on the sides was revealed. There I found a leg bone: from the knee to the foot, approximately about 1.20 cm in length, I even called the driver, showed him, and he is a tall guy. We tried to see what else was in this hole, but it was too deep, and it was already dark, you couldn’t see. So we left it. We looked at our find and wondered, were there really such giants? If only the leg bone was over one meter long, how tall was he?”
If just one leg bone was 1.20 cm long, then the height of the ancient giant was about 4 meters.
Independent researchers Ruben Mnatsakanyan, Artur Margaryan and Araik Pahlevanyan found this place and spent a whole day cutting the bush grown around the tomb. Then they measured its length. The broken chamber is 4 meters 80 cm. However, historians believe that the mere presence of a large stone tomb is not yet proof of the size of the remains. It could well have been the burial place for people of ordinary size. The size of the chamber usually reflects the surrounding people’s attitude towards the deceased, his social and possibly property status in society, but not at all his anthropological dimensions. The arguments of archaeologists are quite justified in themselves. However, it should be noted that in this case we have an example of the opposite kind, when the witness’s account of giant bones is confirmed by the enormous size of the crypt. This fact agrees quite well with ancient historians. Perhaps in the gorge of the Vorotan River in the distant past, there were real mythological titans? And not only there, stone tombs of the same size with the same bones were found all over Armenia. In the area south of Mount Araler, near Yegvard, there are descriptions of finds from the 18th century.
Independent researchers of Armenia summarize their searches over the last quarter of a century. The data collected unequivocally indicates that myths about giants are not fairy tales at all. And among our ancestors were entire nations of giants, about which official history knows almost nothing. But science is built not on yesterday’s dogmas, but on the study of facts. And when it finally deals with the mysteries of the Armenian highlands, the whole picture of the origin and development of man will be corrected again and even seriously changed. All we have to do is wish scientists luck in their painstaking and difficult work…
by Armen Petrosyan
Translated by Vigen Avetisyan
