When people talk about the antiquity of Armenia, they often begin with a grand formula such as “the first civilization on Earth.” It sounds impressive, but the reader immediately asks: where is the proof? The good news is that there is proof, and very serious proof. It does not need to be invented: it lies in the ground, is kept in museums and is described in peer-reviewed journals. Let us go through it step by step.
Near the village of Areni in Vayots Dzor, above the Arpa River, lies the Areni-1 cave complex. It was excavated from 2007 to 2010 by Armenian, American and Irish archaeologists. What they found has made its way into textbooks.
The oldest winery. In the cave they discovered a clay vat for fermentation (about 60 cm deep), a shallow clay press roughly a metre across, storage jars, grape seeds, grape skins and even a drinking cup. Radiocarbon analysis at the University of California, Irvine, and at Oxford dated the complex to 4100–4000 BCE. Chemists found malvidin, the pigment of red grapes, in the vessels, which means the people made dry red wine. The study was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, and the head of the research team, Hans Barnard, called the find the oldest relatively complete winemaking installation, where the press, vats and jars were found in their original places. A detailed account of the discovery is also available from CBS News.
The oldest leather shoe. In 2008, in the same cave, Diana Zardaryan found a leather shoe that had lain in a pit for 5,500 years. It was preserved by the cave’s dry, cool air and a thick layer of sheep dung that sealed the pit. The shoe is 24.5 cm long (European size 37), is made from a single piece of cowhide and was tightened with a leather cord. Radiocarbon dates from Oxford and Irvine give an interval of 3627–3377 BCE. That is roughly two hundred years older than the footwear of Ötzi, the “Iceman” from the Alps. The paper appeared in PLOS ONE, and National Geographic separately noted how modern the object looks. Today the shoe can be seen in the History Museum of Armenia in Yerevan.
What does this tell us about ancient Armenia? To make wine on that scale you need established viticulture, experience, stored supplies, pottery skills and a stable settlement. To dress leather like that you need a developed technology. These are not the traces of random nomads. They are the traces of a society that could do a great deal long before the pyramids and the early dynasties of Egypt.
The next era of the highlands is called Kura-Araxes, after the Kura and Araxes rivers. By modern chronology it is divided into two stages: the first roughly 3600/3500–2900 BCE, the second 2900–2600/2500. It is one of the most widespread archaeological cultures of the Early Bronze Age: its traces have been found in at least ten modern countries, while its centre, its “homeland,” lies in the Armenian Highlands and the South Caucasus.
Shengavit lies right within the limits of Yerevan. It is a large Kura-Araxes settlement with a massive wall, sanctuaries and traces of a developed economy. Radiocarbon dates and the style of the pottery place its second stage at 2900–2500 BCE. You can read about it in the article on Shengavit and in the work of Mitchell Rothman, who has studied Shengavit for many years.
Metsamor, 35 km west of Yerevan on the Ararat plain, shows how long life here went on without interruption. The Polish-Armenian expedition of the University of Warsaw confirmed an unbroken sequence of layers from the Kura-Araxes culture to the Middle Ages. Metsamor also yielded striking objects of the Bronze and Iron Ages: archaeologists speak of an entire Metsamor-Lchashen culture, to which the famous bronze chariot from Lchashen on the shore of Lake Sevan belongs.
Karahunj (Zorats Karer) near Sisian, a huge “Armenian Stonehenge” of standing stones, is often called the oldest observatory in the world. The observatory version and a very deep dating were defended not by Paris Herouni alone but by a number of other researchers: the historian Onik Khnkikyan, the astrophysicist Elma Parsamyan, the Russian astronomer Nikolai Bochkarev; in 1999 the British astronomer Gerald Hawkins supported Herouni in correspondence, and today the idea is developed by, for example, Vachagan Vardanyan and Ayk Malkhasyan. Archaeologists, however, mostly see in it a burial complex of the Bronze and Iron Ages and debate whether the stones served for observations. Ashot Piliposyan’s expedition found burials here from the 18th century BCE to the Iron Age, and the excavation leaders stated that no astronomical instruments had been found at the site. Supporters of the observatory disagree, and the dispute continues. It is interesting that on either version this is one of the most impressive ancient monuments of the region. A survey article on Karahunj gathers the different points of view in one place.
The dispute around the excavations. There is another side to the story. The “Save Karahunj” initiative states that open trenches remain at the monument and that the work is being done in violation of the law. The outlet Arcakh24 wrote that heavy machinery is used in the excavations. Activists also spoke of the disappearance of about 35 menhirs, and the heritage protection service discussed this statement with a public organization. According to Sputnik Armenia, the “Karahunj” centre called the resumed excavations illegal, while the Service for the Protection of Reserves replied that the work is carried out under a decision of the Interdepartmental Archaeological Commission. We could not find the results of any independent review of these accusations in open access, so the question remains open. It could be settled by documents: excavation permits, dated photographs and a comparison of the stones as they stand today with Herouni’s catalogue.
These accusations are set out in detail on the Vne Strok website by Nana Herouni, the author of the appeals of the campaign to protect the monument. In her piece “What Is Happening at Karahunj” she writes that a tractor, an excavator and a crane were used in the excavations, that trenches have been dug along the megaliths and that the opened areas were left uncovered. According to her, the stones were not only moved but some of them disappeared, and the head of the excavations sits on the commission that issued the permit. In the note “The Ancient Karahunj Observatory Has Been Left Dug Up for Two Years” (2020) she claims that the pits make the position of the stones unstable, and she cites letters to ministries. This is the position of one of the parties: the Service for the Protection of Reserves rejects the accusations, and no independent expert assessment has been published.
For the era of Areni and Shengavit we are left with objects alone, but from the 1st millennium BCE texts come into play. The centre of the kingdom of Urartu, which the people of Urartu themselves called Biainili, lay by Lake Van. Its kings left cuneiform inscriptions and built fortresses that are still visible today.
Erebuni was founded by King Argishti I in 782 BCE, and it is from this date that Yerevan counts its age. The Erebuni Fortress stands on the hill of Arin Berd, and the cuneiform foundation inscription is kept in the museum. Teishebaini on Karmir Blur in Yerevan was founded in the 7th century BCE by King Rusa II. In the fortress of Teishebaini archaeologists found enormous storehouses of wine and grain, bronze objects and cuneiform tablets.
In the period of the Kingdom of Van, irrigation canals were built, roads were laid, an army with excellent cavalry was maintained, and for more than a century the kingdom stood against mighty Assyria. For the history of Armenia this is not a foreign page: the names Urartu and Ararat are connected, and the Persian kings later called this same country Armina.
When speaking about the links between the highlands and Mesopotamia, it is best to rely on what is written in the sources themselves. And a good deal is written there.
From the 13th century BCE the Assyrian kings regularly fought in the north. Shalmaneser I around 1274 BCE mentions the land of Uruatri, one of the lands of a broader association called Nairi. Tiglath-Pileser I around 1100 BCE boasted of victories over dozens of “kings of Nairi” and of campaigns to the “Upper Sea,” as the Assyrians called Lake Van. For us these are precious testimonies: for the first time in written sources we see that political entities existed in the highlands that were capable of resisting an empire. Later the Assyrian kings Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon II were already fighting the unified kingdom of Urartu, and in 714 BCE Sargon plundered the main temple at Musasir.
Influence also went in the opposite direction. The Urartians adapted Assyrian cuneiform for their own language, and their kings borrowed titles and administration from their neighbours. The Assyrians, for their part, spoke of the cavalry of Van as having no equal in the south.
Finally, there is the key document that ties everything together. The Behistun Inscription of King Darius I, carved around 521 BCE in three languages, names the same country that the Assyrians called Urartu Armina in Old Persian and Harminuya in Elamite. This is a direct bridge from Urartu to Armenia, fixed in stone.
The toponymy of the Armenian Highlands is genuinely rich. The names preserve ancient words, and through them one can read the landscape. But an honest discussion of it requires admitting that some explanations are solid while others remain hypotheses. Here are a few examples.
Sos and Sosi. The word sosi (սոսի) means “plane tree” in Armenian, a long-lived tree, and in antiquity sanctuaries were often placed beside such trees. The name Sos, like many similar names in the highlands, is explained in this simple way. Here the link between the word and the place is reliable.
Byurakan. The name is usually parsed as “many springs”: byur (բյուր) means “ten thousand, a multitude,” and akn (ակն) is connected with the words for “spring” and “eye.” This is a very convincing explanation, confirmed by the landscape itself: by Mount Aragats there really are many springs.
Akhbyur, aghbyur. The Armenian word for “spring” (աղբյուր) sounds in dialects both as akhbyur and as agbyur. The word itself is in common use, but the origin of its first part is debated by specialists, so there is reason for caution here.
Shushi. The name of the city is usually linked to the nearby village of Shosh, but where the word itself comes from is explained in different ways. There is the plane-tree version mentioned above, and there are others. For an article on the site this is a good example: the toponym is obvious, while the etymology remains a matter of discussion.
So what is reliable is that words such as sosi, byur or dur (“gate”) really are Armenian and really lie at the base of a multitude of names in the highlands themselves. Probable is this explanation for Byurakan. Tentative is the link between Shushi and the plane tree. Distinguishing these three levels is useful: the reader sees that the author knows the subject and trusts the rest of the text.
A separate layer of literature is devoted to the hypothesis that many names in Mesopotamia and Elam have Armenian roots, and that civilization therefore could have come from the Armenian Highlands. Let us set it out honestly.
The supporters’ arguments. They point out that the name of the Elamite capital, Susa, sounds similar to the Armenian Sos, and that the name Elam echoes a mountain and villages called Elami, Alaman and others in the highlands. They match the city of Ur with an Armenian root meaning “fire,” and link fortresses such as Dur-Sharrukin and Dura-Europos with the Armenian dur (“gate”). They derive the name of the Euphrates from the Armenian words for “spring” and “water.” From such resemblances they conclude that the highlands were the homeland of an early civilization from which the traditions of farming and irrigation spread into Mesopotamia.
What scholarship replies. Professional linguists object along several lines.
At the same time, the question has a serious scholarly side that deserves a separate article. There is the Armenian hypothesis of the origin of the Indo-Europeans, put forward by Gamkrelidze and Ivanov: according to it, the Indo-European homeland lay in the Armenian Highlands and neighbouring lands. This hypothesis is discussed in the professional community, and in it Armenia occupies a central place.
Genetics firmly supports the deep roots of the highland population, but says nothing about the origin of Sumer. A study of mitochondrial DNA published in Current Biology compared ancient samples from Armenia and Artsakh with modern Armenians. The model of continuity along the maternal line received a probability of about 89%. The broad picture was provided by the work of Iosif Lazaridis and colleagues, published in Science in 2022, which analysed more than 700 ancient genomes from the region. The main component in the people of Armenia in all eras goes back to Caucasus hunter-gatherers, and it peaks in the Kura-Araxes era. Traces of steppe ancestry linked to Eastern Europe first appear as early as the Areni-1 cave in the Chalcolithic, and grow markedly in the Middle and Late Bronze Age. So the picture is twofold: the population of the highlands is very ancient and local at its base, but neither isolated nor uniform. This data is enough to speak of continuity between the people of Urartu and modern Armenians.
Armenia does not need to be the “cradle of Sumer” to be ancient. Far more convincing is what the finds confirm: wine that is six thousand years old, a shoe older than the Egyptian pyramids, the settlements of Kura-Araxes, Shengavit and Metsamor, Erebuni and Teishebaini, the cuneiform inscriptions of Urartu and the Behistun Inscription that joins Urartu to Armina. This is the real, verifiable antiquity of the highlands. It is something to be proud of.
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