Origins and Formation of the Armenian People, Movsisyan A.

The most common question in the history of Armenian studies has been and continues to be the question of the origin and formation of the Armenian people, which is controversial in some aspects.

Where the Armenian people come from, where their cradle is located, when they formed as a separate ethnic unit, and from what times they are mentioned in the oldest written sources.

The controversy of these questions or their individual points is due not only to the diversity of primary source information, but also to the frequent political or other interests of those dealing with these questions.

Nevertheless, the existing facts and the level of modern research fully allow us to answer the question about the birth of the Armenian people and their formation.

Let’s touch, first of all, the traditions about the origin of the Armenian people, recorded in ancient and medieval times, we will present the most common theories in historiography in a general line, then the current state of the studied question and the oldest surviving facts about Armenia and Armenians.

In ancient and medieval times, a number of traditions about the origin of the Armenians were recorded, the most interesting of which, from the point of view of Armenian studies, (as primary sources) are the Armenian, Greek, ancient Jewish, Georgian, and Arab versions.

a) Armenian tradition

It was created from time immemorial and has reached us from the records of Movses Khorenatsi. Individual fragments of the tradition are also mentioned in the works of other Armenian medieval bibliographers.

In this tradition, two layers can be identified, the first – the oldest layer, was created and existed in pre-Christian times. According to the ancient legend, the Armenians descended from the godlike progenitor Haik, who was one of the Titanic sons of the gods.

Here is how Movses Khorenatsi represents his origin: “The first of the gods were formidable and visible, the cause of the virtues of the world, and the beginning of the multitudes and all the earth. Until them came the generation of the titans, and one of them was Haik Apetostyan”.

In Christian times, the Armenian tradition is modified, adapting to Biblical perceptions, according to which after the global flood all humanity came from the three sons of Noah – Ham, Shem, and Japheth.

According to the new Christian version, Haik is considered a descendant of Japheth, the son of the progenitor Torgom, hence the medieval written sources named Armenia as “Torgom’s house” and “Torgom’s nation”.

The tradition tells that Haik fought with the tyrant of Mesopotamia, Bel, defeated him, and in recognition of this, the Armenians began to mark the original Armenian date (according to the famous Armenian scholar Gevond Alishan, it was August 1, 2492).

According to the Armenian version, the Armenian people are called “Haik”, and the country “Hayastan”, and the names “Armenia” and “Armenians” appeared after his descendant Aram.

Also, the names of Haik and other Armenian progenitors gave their names to numerous names of the Armenian Highlands (From Haik –Haikashen, Aramanyak – Mount Aragats and Aragatsotn region, from Aramais – Armavir, from Erast – Erasxh (Arax), from Shara – Shirak, from Amasia – Masis, from Gegam – Lake Gegarkunik and Gegarkunik region, from Sisak – Syunik, from Ara the Beautiful – Ayrarat and others.).

b) Greek tradition

The Greek legend telling about the origin of the Armenians is associated with the beloved and widespread legend of the Argonauts in Ancient Greece. According to it, the founder of the Armenians, who gave them the name Armenos of Thessaly, who participated with Jason and other Argonauts in the journey to search for the Golden Fleece, settled in Armenia, which was named after him, Armenia.

The tradition says that he initially lived in the Thessalian (a region in Greece) city of Armenion. This tradition is told in more detail by the Greek bibliographer Strabo of the 1st century BC, who says that the source of his information was the stories of the commanders of Alexander the Great.

Judging by the facts, the tradition about the Armenians was created and associated with the Argonauts during the campaigns of Alexander the Great, as there are no earlier sources telling about this.

In all likelihood, this had the same political direction as the legends about the Greek origin of the Persians and Medes. In history, there are many cases when a conqueror invents false foundations in advance to give his goals a “legal” form.

Thus, the main information about the Thessalian (Greek) origin of the Armenians cannot be considered reliable. Disconnected information about the western (Phrygian) origin also remained from Greek authors Herodotus (5th century) and Eudoxus (4th century).

These data relate to the similarity in the clothing of Armenian and Phrygian warriors and the presence of numerous Phrygian words in the Armenian language. This certainly cannot explain the origin of one people from another.

Phrygians and Armenians are related nations (they have the same Indo-European origin), therefore, the presence of cognate words in the Armenian and Phrygian language can be considered a regularity.

c) Georgian tradition.

This tradition was influenced and recorded by Georgian authors (Unnamed Historian, Leonti Mroveli, and others) in the 9th – 11th centuries.

According to the Georgian tradition, numerous peoples descended from the eight sons of Targamos (Torgom), with Armenians descending from the eldest son Ayos, Georgians from Kartlos, and many Caucasian peoples from the other sons.

Judging by the endings of the proper names, this tradition must have had some Georgian primary source that did not reach us. It partially bears the imprint of the political situation of the time when the influence of the Bagratids spread throughout the Caucasus. This is how to explain that the progenitor of the Armenians, Ayos, was the oldest of the brothers.

Arabic Tradition:

This tradition links the origin of the Armenians to the idea of the emergence of nations from the sons of Noah after the Flood. It is most comprehensively presented in the works of the Arabic bibliographers of the 12th -13th centuries, Yaqut and Dimashki.

According to this tradition, from the son of Noah, Japheth (Japhet), came Avmar, then his grandson Lantan (Torgom), whose son was Armini (the ancestor of the Armenians). From the sons of his brother came the Agvans (Caucasian Albanians) and Georgians.

This tradition considers Armenians, Greeks, Slavs, Franks, and Iranian tribes as relatives. Interestingly, this tradition has preserved a memory dating back to the period of familial unity of the Indo-European peoples.

Ancient Jewish Tradition:

This was recorded on the pages of “Jewish Antiquities” by Josephus Flavius (1st century BC – 1st century AD). According to the source, “Uros established Armenia.” There is no single viewpoint in Armenian studies on the primary source of this information and its reliability.

There is an opinion that it speaks of the son of the progenitor Aram, Ara the Beautiful. According to other opinions, Uros could have been the “son of Rusa Erimena” – a king mentioned in the cuneiform scripts of the Kingdom of Van.

In Assyrian written sources, the name “Rusa” is also mentioned under the name “Ursa”, and the name “Erimena” can be interpreted both as an anthroponym and as a clan name.

In addition to the noted, there are other legends about the origin of the Armenians, which, however, to a greater or lesser extent, repeat the aforementioned ones and are of no interest.

The issue of the ethnogenesis of Armenians in historiography.

Starting from the 5th century and up until the 19th century, the Armenian version of their ethnogenesis was unquestioningly accepted, as formulated in the pages of Movses Khorenatsi’s “History of Armenia”, which for many centuries served as a textbook and testimony to the genealogy of the Armenian people.

However, information that emerged in science in the 19th century cast doubt on the historian’s credibility, and the truthfulness of the national version of the origin of the Armenians was questioned.

The 19th century saw the birth of comparative linguistics, which suggests that Armenians have Indo-European origins. Along with other peoples in prehistoric times, they formed a single ethnic unity and occupied one territory, which in science is conventionally called the “Indo-European homeland”.

The question of the origin of these peoples within this theory is related to the location of the Indo-European homeland. At different times in science, various versions of the homeland’s location have prevailed (Southeast Europe, southern Russian plains, North of the Near East, etc.).

In the 19th century, comparative linguistics widely accepted the theory that the Indo-European homeland was located in Southeast Europe. On the other hand, Greek sources regarding the Balkan origin of Armenians advanced a theory about the migration of the Armenians.

A view was formed, according to which the Armenians, having left the Balkan Peninsula in the 8th – 6th centuries, invaded Urartu, conquered it, and after its fall in the 6th century, created their own state (the Kingdom of Yervand).

This theory is not based on a set of facts and cannot be considered truthful for several reasons. It has become and continues to be the subject of political manipulations (in particular by Turkish falsifiers of history).

The next theory about the origin of the Armenian people is the Abestan or Asinik theory, according to which the Armenian language is a mixed, non-Indo-European language. Therefore, Armenians did not participate in the Indo-European migration and originated from local Asian tribes.

This theory would not withstand serious scientific criticism and continues to be denied because there can be no mixed languages: a third language does not appear from the mixing of two.

In the early 1980s, the viewpoint was revised that the Indo-European homeland in the 5th-4th millennia BCE was located in the north of the Near East, more precisely in the territory of the Armenian highlands, in the regions of Asia Minor, in the northern Interfluve, and in the northwest of the Iranian plain.

This point of view is still supported by many facts and is accepted by the majority of specialists. The question of the ethnogenesis of the Armenians received a new explanation. The thesis of the migration of the Armenians was rejected because the Indo-European homeland was precisely in the territory where the Armenian people formed and underwent all the path of its formation.

Now it can be said for certain that in the 5th-4th millennia BCE, the Armenians were part of the Indo-European people and at the end of the 4th millennium and the beginning of the 3rd millennium, they separated from the Indo-European community.

It was from this time that the formation of the Armenian people began, which occurred in two stages. The first stage, which can be characterized as a period of tribal unions and early state formations, took place in the 3rd-2nd millennia BCE. At the second stage, in the 5th-6th centuries BCE, the stage of the formation of the Armenian people ended with the creation of a unified statehood.

Summing up all of the above, it can be asserted that the Armenian language and all who speak it separated from the Indo-European community and became independent in the 4th-3rd millennia BCE. It is from these times that the Armenian people are mentioned in the territory of the Armenian highlands, where they conducted their activities, existed, and created their history.

by Movsisyan A.

Translated by Vigen Avetisyan

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