A resident of the village Arinj built an underground temple under his own house, height of which reaches one of 7-storey buildings. “Amazing! Terrific! Incredible! ” – in different languages foreign tourists exclaim. “How could we not know about this before?” Armenians and their compatriots express their amazement. Every time the same words of astonishment …
Near the village Nor Karmiravan, Martakert province, Republic of Artsakh, 3 thousand years old anthropomorphic steles have been discovered. They are considered one of the most significant finds belonging to the pre-Christian Armenian culture. According to archaeologists, stone sculptures similar to these steles can be found only in Artsakh’s region. The steles are separated into three …
Anthropologists, scientists and independent researchers have been discovering remains of tall people in the mountains of Armenia for many years. Today, residents of many villages of Armenia are convinced that there have been entire cities of giants in the distant past. Numerous tombs found in Gyumri, Lchashen, Khot, Yeghvard, Goshavank, Ohanavan, and other settlements might …
Who is the king who has the most number of operas dedicated to him? Curiously enough, that king is Tigranes the Great, King of the Kingdom of Armenia in 95-55 BC. There are 23 operas about him in total, written by known European composers. This might be good news for lovers of music and opera …
Armenian language and its alphabet are unbelievably diverse. You can often see how Armenian names lose their simplicity after being translated to other languages because some letters of the alphabet need to be replaced with multiple characters for the transliteration to represent the characters of the original as closely as possible. For comparison, English alphabet, …
For several years archaeologists of Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of National Academy of Sciences of Republic of Armenia have conducted excavations near the settlements of the Ararat plain in collaboration with American research group. Their searches have resulted in the discovery of unusual building, dated back to III-II millenniums BC. The construction resembles the …
In the video below the author, candidate of historical sciences Artak Movsisyan tells about the period of the history of Armenia covering the coming to power of Parthian dynasty Arshakuni as well as its fall. Particular attention is given to the period that preceded the Avarayr battle. According to the author, the study of history …
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519), more commonly Leonardo da Vinci or simply Leonardo, was an Italian polymath whose areas of interest included invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography. He has been variously called the father of …
American researcher and historian Robert Drews in his book The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean Sea and the Near East wrote, that the Greek civilization or its “prototype” indeed came out of the cradle of the civilization of the Armenian Highlands. Initially they settled in central and western Asia Minor, namely …
About a year ago the Russian audience was given an opportunity to witness more than 160 unique Armenian showpieces in the State Historical Museum of Russia. The exhibits had been transferred to the museum from the History Museum of Armenia, Etchmiadzin Cathedral Museum, and the Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts (Matenadaran). Introduced exhibits have …
The area of the territory under rule of the King of Armenian Kingdom Tigranes the Great exceeded three million square kilometers. For comparison, the territory of Soviet Armenia with its 30,000 square kilometers was only 1% of that vast territory. Together with Artsakh the area of modern Armenia is estimated to be about 42 thousand …
Armenian-American inventor Oscar H. Banker (born Asatour Sarafian; 1895 – January 1979) developed and patented many devices, including an automatic transmission for automobiles, the needleless inoculation gun, the primary controls of the first Sikorsky helicopter, and power steering. He is considered by some people as the “father of automatic transmission.” Asatour Sarafian was born in …
Fifty years ago it was impossible to analyze DNA. Few decades later there was some progress, but such an analysis was still more close to fantasy than reality. More recently the ghostly possibility of this kind of analysis cost a very large amount of money while today it is quite common. The ease of DNA …
It appears that Armenians might be the only survived nation tradition, mythology and language of which kept the significance and meanings of forgotten Sumer, Mesopotamia and Egypt cultures. Hardly preserved, scarred fragments of the ancient Armenian culture can serve as a bridge to understanding the historical experience and values of the said cultures. In the …
French writer, thinker and composer Jean-Jacques Rousseau preferred to wear Armenian clothes. In the painting from the public library of the University of Geneva Rousseau is captured in an Armenian costume. Jean-Jacques Rousseau is buried in the commune of Ermenonville in northern France. For the first time the castle of Ermenonville was mentioned in 9th century …
About 45 thousand years ago astronauts from the planet Marduk arrived on Earth and built its first city, a spaceport not far away from mountain Ararat, which served as an excellent landmark for landing shuttles called as Sippar (city of birds). “Stairway to Heaven”, Zecharia Sitchin (1980). Theories about such distant events on Earth, especially …
Mythology of Armenian tribes and later the Armenian nation itself represents pantheons belonging to different periods of history of Armenia. Originally Urartian in nature, the pantheon was similar to religions of Near East’s states. There are signs which indicate that the ancient Armenians were initially nature worshipers and that this faith in time was transformed …
The world’s first textbook of arithmetic tasks was compiled by Armenian scientist, mathematician of 5th-6th cc. David the Invincible (Դավիթ Անհաղթ). A copy of this task book is now kept in the Matenadaran (Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts) in Yerevan, Armenia. Biographical information about David is quite scanty. He was born approximately in mid-seventies …