Hayasa's Relation in Hayastan's History

[SevSpitak]

Re: Hayasa's Relation in Hayastan's History

Sure, there's surely some association, but when Arran fell, its people assimilated into the larger muslim world and faded away, those loyal to Christianity surely mixed with the Armenians and Georgians (similar to what happened to Assyrians after the Christian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire). We can say Arran is Azerbaijan as much as we can say Cappadocians are Turks. There is no linguistic, cultural, religious or ethnic continuity, they were absorbed in the dominant civilization and faded from the pages of history.

In fact, "Azerbaijan" (the one fabricated in 1918) came into existence 1200 years after the integration of Arran into the larger Arab/Turkic/Persian world. Arran slowly became nothing more than a regional name with no association to an ethnic identity. In fact, Arran was itself ethnically diverse and this contributed to its fall (as its unity was fragile). The last remnant of Arran are the Udins. Armenia came into existence merely ~50 years after the fall of Urartu (and we say this only because we have no evidence of an earlier date, to my knowledge. Maybe Armenia came into existence immediately after Urartu). We can say Urartu continued in Armenia (no matter the circumstances -- whether through invasions, population replacement, amalgamation, etc, Urartu DID become Armenia), but to say that Arran (aghvank) continued in "Azerbaijan" is farfetched. Saying so is mixing politics with history.

In any case, this is kind of off topic. M. Chahin mentions that we inherited much from Urartu, (I haven't finished the book yet). I'll post here whatever he says once I reach that point.

As of the last time Urartians were mentioned:
"The Urartians were probably absorbed into the Armenian polity. They are last heard of as the Alarodii, a contingent in Xerxes' forces against Greece in 480 BC (Herod. VII. 79). One of the three peoples in Darius' 18th Satrapy, which later became Eastern Armenia, their north-western frontier marched with the north-eastern boundary of Western Armenia -- Darius' 13th satrapy, Armina."
Mack Chahin, Kingdom of Armenia, A History, 1987, revised in 2001

[jgk3]

Re: Hayasa's Relation in Hayastan's History

Of course, if you look at their dna, I'm sure you could say there's some association. No doubt, the stock of people living in these regions have remained there more or less, with some mixing as a result of historical migrations. But what we are dealing with is cultural and political associations here, and so if we want to relate ourselves to Urartu, we'd better have insightful reasons for doing so, other than just for the sake of being around longer in history. If we have an expert here on what we've inherited in particular from Urartian society, please enlighten us. I already have some ideas but it is not my domain of study, yet.

[SevSpitak]

Re: Hayasa's Relation in Hayastan's History

There's no argument there, I completely agree. It reminds me of "Azerbaijanis" associating themselves with Aghvank in order to make themselves native.

[jgk3]

Re: Hayasa's Relation in Hayastan's History

You're right, none of these academics affirm they are saying the truth, but Armenian lay people are. So in consequence, I want to separate what we know to be fact from what is pure speculation gone wild.

I don't know the latest theory concerning the origin of the Armenians, I don't even know what Armenians are beyond the 6th century BC. That is not to say we didn't exist, but we definitely weren't the homogenous identity our name has refered to since Khorenatsi's time. There have definitely been many normalizing effects made on our people at a very early date. Not many nations which survive today can point to the 5th C. and see their particular identity and national consciousness. Compared to European nations, we are definitely an early nation. But there are limits to this earliness, and it seems the Armenian consciousness, which is so used to always existing, so used to referring to an epic hero Hayk (which dates to pre-Armenian times), and yet is so ennerved by its history of being subjugated by foreign powers, is particularily fascinated in any speculative associations to ancient, thriving civilizations which can offer it a sense of honour and pride towards its heritage.

This is not uncommon of ethnic groups, the Chinese of today for example consider themselves to be Han Chinese, referring to the Chinese imperial dynasty from Roman times as their true origin. They refer to the Han China as a golden age of their civilization, a worthy ancestor of their race and legacy, when in reality it was quite bankrupt and had very poor living conditions that did little to promote cultural advancement. It was just a political regime that would come to fail and be replaced by new ones which would do more to actually promote cultural advancement, such as the T'ang and Song dynasties of the 7th-13th C. under which the cultural, political, and social currents did much more to build up the bullwark of Chinese civilization as we know it today.

Thus, if we want to link ourselves to Urartu, or even Hayasa, and our motive is to feel a sense of satisfaction as Armenians by doing so, whatever... It doesn't yield much in terms of explaining what Armenia or being Armenian is. I know that Armenians were the successful cultural/political force in the region, because they managed to extinguish and assimilate rival cultures under the Urartian federation it came to conquer. And in my opinion, this was likely a deliberate strategy of the Medes, a rival of the Urartu. After finally defeating Urartu, the Medes took it over as a vassal state, appointing the Armenians, likely a tribe with relative military influence in the region, as its rulers, and consequently replacing the old Urartian institutions with ones more congruent with Median ones. This period is probably associated with the emergence of Zoroastrianism in Armenia.

Beyond this, I have nothing to say. I would like to work on reconstructing proto-Armenian by comparing Krapar with all the other dialects of Armenian, as this might help me to better compare Armenian to Greek (and perhaps Phrygian) and have a better idea of whether they could be sub-grouped together (which would make them closer genetically) or not. This might be the only thing we have to work with in charting the migration of the particular tribe we owe our Armenian language to.

I want to thank you for provoking this discussion, it has allowed me to impart my present views, which I've only recently held. I apologize if I come off as too cold or pessimistic. In my opinion, there is much to rejoice in having a clearly defined arena of scholarship to work in such as historical linguistics.

[SevSpitak]

Re: Hayasa's Relation in Hayastan's History

I find you have a pessimistic point of view on the subject. Of course we don't have concrete evidence about the origin of the Armenians, but we use whatever we have to explain it. It's not like we popped out of nowhere, we came from something. There is no doubt Armenians are related to Urartu, Hayasa, Iran, Assyria and/or Hittites, etc, whether it be merely geopolitically, culturally, linguistically, genetically, we are somehow directly connected to them. We just don't know the details, the hows, and we have come up with theories.
"One long-held theory, which has lost considerable support in recent years,..."
"Another theory, one which is currently supported by the overwhelming majority of scholars in this field,..."
"The section of the Phrygian community which would most likely have dominated Hayasa,..."

None of these historians affirm that what they are saying is the truth. With languisitics, archeology, etymology, etc. and following the most widely accepted theories, we assume this is what happened. Like how we assume the Big Bang happened. Like you said, we don't even know if the Indo-Europeans appeared where it is accepted. Armenians might have been a minority in Urartu since the beginning. Nevertheless, this doesn't prevent us from speculating, and no one is saying that our speculations are true. I didn't post this thread for the truth. I posted it to know what we theorize thus far.

Since you seem to have a good knowledge on this subject, tell me what's the latest theory about the origin of the Armenians?

[jgk3]

Re: Hayasa's Relation in Hayastan's History

I must use an argumentative tone in order to force a critical discussion. It allows me to make my points with greatest effect.

I guess the French were not always French, and the English were not always English then. Their Frenchness and Englishness was an eventual development of normalizing a heterogeneous cultural and ethnic foundation. This same process can explain how Armenians became Armenians. If you want to call it "extending our history back 4000 years", be my guest.

These migration hypothesis are annoying to me because they are purely speculative. Putting Armenians and Phrygians together as part of some similar movement is just a tactic done to make certain scholars explain the big picture of things without having actually proven it. It reminds me of how in Cpt. James Cook's time, the world relied on Russian maps indicating a Northwest passage in North America that cuts through Alaska, making it an Island, and people wanted to believe that because it meant they would not have had to navigate under Africa if they wanted to reach China, shortening their travel distance by half... It was etched in their minds that these maps were credible, but they had never seen it, they had not proven that it was true. James Cook went, after a hard year of just getting to the Pacific and saw it wasn't true, tore all those damn maps, and went to Hawaii, where he would die.

What are we using when talking about a joint migration of Armeno-Phrygians? Archaeology? No. Linguistics? Apparently, yes. And what are we using to see the connection? Not much, we hardly have Phrygian attested, and equating it as a close cousin of Armenian has been like forcing pieces of a puzzle that do not fit, because Phrygian exhibits hardly any of the eccentricities in Armenian that would help us say it's closer to Armenian than it is to Greek. Just because it has the e- augment for making a past tense (which I described in an earlier post) doesn't mean it's closer to Armenian than it is to any of the other IE families who shared that innovation. Linguistics do not help us trace migrations btw if we don't even have a clear understanding of the group's starting point. It's the classic problem of the IE homeland, we don't know where everyone started from, but we try to reconstruct a likely homeland, and we can only go so far. The same is true for the Armenians, and because we're not attested before the 6th C. BC, people liked to equate us with the Phrygians who migrated into Anatolia after the collapse of the palace cultures. And now, when people got tired of that, they want to equate us with the Hayasa, which again, we know even less about. They do not have a language to even look at, just a name. But we just want to piggy-back on their name anyway because it makes us older... How scholarly.

The only thing left that I'd like to deal with personally, are those names you mentioned that strike one as related to the Armens, which are either place names or proper nouns from Urartian times. I've seen numerous instances of this in Kavoukjian's book, but I find it his hypothesis very ambitious, and from an understanding of a scholar who had not yet understood how Urartian or Hurrian worked, imposing instead what he understood of Assyrian and I guess Chaldean to create a narrative about equating Armenians with Hurrians. One day, I'll review the entire book personally, but for now, I can say that the affinities between Armenians and Hurro-Urartians as portrayed by shared lexicon is understood today to be insignificant, an understanding that was not the case when a lot of the Soviet scholarship on the matter was quite active, especially with Diakonov. The reason? They didn't understand Hurrian or Urartian yet very well, and didn't want to deal with Armenia's wacky phonology, so they put the two together, and threw in the Caucasian languages too into the mix. This is considered preposterous today, and can only mar the name of scholars who still hold to those hypotheses.

[SevSpitak]

Re: Hayasa's Relation in Hayastan's History

"In the year 590 BC, over 22 years after its rival [Assyria], the Vannic kingdom [Urartu] also expired while fighting invaders of its territories from all sides. From the north the Scythian horseman poured down through the eastern Caucasian Derbent Pass, into the fertile valleys of Ararat; and from the south Cyaxares led his Medians across Urartu on his way to the River Halys to wage war on the Lydian king, Alyattes, while the Armenians broke in from the west and must have been opposed or joined by other Armenians already well established in Urart."

"Hayk (Armenians), Haay (Armenian), Haya-stan (Armenia): these names together appear to originate from the name of the ancient kingdom of Hayasa (c. 1400 BC), situated on the eastern frontiers of the Hittite empire. Hayasa is closely associated with the principalities of Azzi and (posibly) Alzi or Alshe, on its southern borders, which seem to have been absorbed into Hayasa's political hengemony. Hence 'Hayasa' infers Hayasa-Azzi and perhaps Alzi, too. Its eastern boundaries might have reached as far as Ararat. Southwards, the joint kingdom straddled the western Euphrates (Kara su).

Togarmah, the main city of Tabal, was on the western side of the Euphrates (Firat su), opposite Urartu and its dependencies. It was in that region of Tabal-Togarmah that the Armenians seem to have first settled. They appear to have been a tribe within the Phrygian community which crossed the Bosphorous into Asia during the tumultuous times of great ethnic movements and political change towards the end of the thirteenth century BC. They must have witnessed the destruction of the Hittite empire, indeed, they probably took part in it, and occupied its lands... Togarmah is possibly the Biblical name for Armenia."

"The section of the Phrygian community which would most likely have dominated Hayasa, was the Armenian tribe, since its territory within Phrygia seems to have been contiguous with Hayasa's south-western borders. That Armeno-Phrygian territory on the western side of the Euphrates overlapping into Hayasa-Azzi much later became known as Lesser Armenia. Thenceforth, perhaps from the eleventh century BC, when the people of the eponymous Armenos (who has led the Armeno-Phrygian tribe from Thessaly (Strabo, XI.xiv.12)l and that of Hayasa had probably merged. They appear to have infiltrated, gradually and continuously the Urartian territories. There are place names (Aramili, Armarili, Urmenu-hini, Arme), which inspire curiosity as being possible Armenian origin. The first two are associated with King Aram(e)[Aramu], the first known king of Urartu (858-844 BC) who appears in Armenian legends [Ara the Beautiful or Aram, descendent of Hayk] and has been discussed by scholars at some length. His true identity as an Armenian king ay be established by a future scholar."

"In 714 BC, when King Rusa I of Urartu was harassed at the same time by a palace revolution, assaults of Cimmerian hordes from the north and an invasion, on a major scale, from the south-east by Assyria, the Armenians could have seized the province of Shupria (or part of it), to the west of Lake Van, near Urmenu-hini [Urmenyuqini, note the similarity:Urmen, Armen] and Arme, not too distant from the homeland of the Armeno-Phrygians and Hayasa-Azzi. Shupria, whose princes dissociated themselves from Urartu and Assyria, sometimes appeared as an independent state, without the protection of the might of Assyria or Urartu, and therefore vulnerable to an unexpected invasion. It was, in facct, independent during the reign of Esarhoddon (705-681). The Armenian coup in 714 BC might well have been led by a chieftain whose might and prestige is testified by his name -- The Giant (Armenian, Hskan), thus establishing the first Armenian state. Moses of Khoren (sometimes described as the Herodotus of the Armenians...) has preserved in his king list (I.22) the name Skayordi or, phonetically spelt, Hskai-vorti, Son of the Giant. Before the advent of Skayordi, long lists of Armenian rulers are to be found in Moses and in the Primary History of Armenia, which might reflect the names of dynastic chieftains in Armenian enclaves within the Urartian empire. It would have been Skayordi, successor to the Armenian chieftainship or principality in Shupria, who sheltered Adramelech and Sharezer (murderers of their father, King Sennacherib of Assyria (705-681 BC) when 'they escaped into the land of Armenia [Ararat]' (2 Kings 19.37)."

"...As described above Shupria must already have had substantial numbers of Armenian, since the first invasion under Hskan and his predecessors, 100 years earlier. Over a considerable period of time, the Armenians, and the greatly weakened Urartian adopting the Aryan Armenian language and the Armenians appropriating the wealth and well as certain aspects of Urartian social and political institutions.
Thus Urartian history is part of Armenian history, in the same sense that the history of the ancient Britons is part of English history, and that of the Gauls is part of French history. Armenians can legitimately claim, through Urartu, an historical continuity of some 4000 years; their history is among those of the most ancient peoples in the world."

Mack Chahin, The Kingdom of Armenia, A History, 1987, revised in 2001

These are three sources, each having almost a decade between each other. Urartu is more than the mere geopolitical ancestor of Armenia.

[SevSpitak]

Re: Hayasa's Relation in Hayastan's History

"Amalgamation of the tribes of [a portion of] the [Armenian] highlands gave rise to the people of Urartu (Ararat) who formed a powerful kingdom during the period of the ninth to seventh centuries B.C. Peoples akin to the Phrygians of central Anatolia migrating eastward brought with them an Indo-European language, and mingled with the Hayasa-Azzi tribes. The resulting amalgamation enabled the people to absorb the weakened Urartu nation and to impose their Indo-European language and customs on the inhabitants.
This was the mechanism, it is believed, of the origin of the Armenian people."

"It is quite likely that Armenians call themselves "hai" from a pre-Armenian tribe called "Hayasa," one of the several regional tribes that amalgamated into the Armenian people. Also, the international name "Armenian" probably arose from another of the amalgamating tribes called the "Armens."*

"It must be said that the earlier people of Urartu (Ararat, as mentioned in the Bible), were the original Armenians."
Arra S.Avakian, Armenia, A Journey Through History, 1998

"One long-held theory, which has lost considerable support in recent years, is that the Armenians entered Asia Minor from the Balkan Peninsula sometime between 1200 BC after the fall of the Hittites, and 860 BC before the formation of the kingdom of Urartu. The fall of Troy resulted in the opening of the land and sea lanes of the Dardenellles to a new wave of people from the Balkans. Among these people were the Phrygians. The proponents of the Balkan theory suggest that the Armenians were a Balkanic tribe (i.e., the Mushki) related, but not identical to the Phrygians. The Armenians settled first in the area of the neo-Hittite states to the west of the Armenian PLateau and eventually penetrated and settled in the Plateau.

Another theory, one which is currently supported by the overwhelming majority of scholars in this field, is that the origin of the Armenians is associated with Hayasa, the region northeast of Hittite territory. Hayasa was the oldest polity and the most significant state on the Armenian Plateau in the second millennium BC (during the fourteenth to thirteenth centuries BV). Among those who subscribe to this theory, some suggest that Hayasa was the original homeland of the Armenians while others believe the Armenians came from the Balkan Peninsula in the twelfth century BC with the Phrygians and merged with the Hayasans."

"Over the course of more than two hundred years, the Urartian kings had expanded the initial borders of their kingdom well beyond their early homelands at Van. In the process, they brought together under their dominance tens of thousands of people, notably Hittites, Luwians, Hurrians and Armenians from across the vast territory of the Armenian Plateau. The kingdom of Urartu was thus an amalgamation of many heterogeneous elements that contributed to the formation of a new cultural fabric which, through eclectic, was nevertheless coherent under the dominance of the ruling power of the Urartian. Notwithstanding their supremacy as the ruling elite, the native Urartian-speaking peoples actually represented a minority of the people comprising the Kingdom of Urartu."

"The Armenians would have mingled with all of the disparate people of Urartu, resulting in a fusion of languages and cultures. The Armenians multiplied in numbers and spread their languages throughout the territory of Urartu. They absorbed the diverse cultural heritage of all the various peoples of the kingdom of Urartu from which they developed their unique Armenian culture, eventually establishing the preeminence in the region. Thus after two centuries of dominion by an Urartian ruling elite, hegemony passed on to an Armenian ruling elite."

"....Indeed, the Armenians emerge as the biological and cultural successors of all of the peoples of the Armenian Plateau amalgamated in the Kingdom of Urartu, notably the Urartians, Hurrians, Luwians and Hittites -- the Peoples of Ararat."
Armen Asher & Teryl Minasian Asher, The Peoples of Ararat, 2009


Note that the Armens (aka Armeno-Phrygians) probably established themselves in Urartu prior to its fall in Urmenyuqini. If Urartu can be Ararat, then Urmenyuqini can be Armeniyakini. Note that the Behistun inscription refers to the lands as "Armina, Haruminya and Urashtu" suggesting that the three are synonymous.

[SevSpitak]

Re: Hayasa's Relation in Hayastan's History

Thanks jgk3

And for the record, I'm wasn't arguing with you (your tone makes me think you are arguing with me). I just wanted to inform myself on what people are saying about Hayasa and our shift from Urartu to Armenia.


You can't say that we didn't come from Urartu. I agree you can't say Urartians were Armenians, but you CAN say Armenians are Urartians. I like to think of it this way:
1. Hurrians/Mittanni/Urartians, Hittites, [Hayasans], Phrygians, Medians, Scythians, Cimmerians, etc. are all the pieces of the puzzle (proto-Armenians)
2. Urartu is the box where all the pieces got mixed together (where the amalgamation process began)
3. Armenia is the pieces of the puzzle put together.

We cannot forget that we don't know what language was spoken in Armenia since its existence as Armenia (6th century BC) until Meshrob Mashtots (5th century AD). There are 9 centuries between the creation of the nation and the creation of the alphabet. Who knows what changes went through our language in the process. Maybe our language isn't due to Phrygian invasion, but the Phrygian influence in the region, followed by the Median, Hellenic and Parthian influences. there is no evidence of a Phrygian invasion, it's a theory, a likely one, but a theory nevertheless.

We don't even know what language was spoken in Urartu by the common folk. We know Urartu was a federative kingdom, so it's possible that it was a nation with a large variety of indigenous languages that were all replaced and forgotten with the commonly believed invasion of the Armeno-Phrygians. Doesn't change that fact that the predecessor of Armenia, genetically and culturally, was Urartu. We know today that Armenians are close to Georgians and "Azerbaijanis." This is evidence that Urartu went through a language and identity replacement. We cannot firmly say that Armenians invaded Urartu, it's still a theory. We can't even firmly say that Armenian and Hay was synonymous back then.

[jgk3]

Re: Hayasa's Relation in Hayastan's History

Are you sure about this? Bagrat and Yervand are both names by themselves (with Yervand still being fairly common) which would leave "uni" without a տ. Same for Arshakuni (Arshak a given name) which does not even have a t/d at the beginning of "uni".

Look at Rshtuni, who are believed to be descended from King Rusas of Urartu, in this case, a "t" would seem to appear out of nowhere if the suffix was indeed "uni", borrowed from Urartian.

I don't know how to deal with the example of Arshakuni though, so I guess I can say, no I'm not sure about it coming from a suffix "tuni". If it does come from "tuni", then it would have to mean that in Armenian, "t" sounds get dropped in that environment. So thanks for bringing it up.

It is without a doubt that Urartu became Hayastan. Whether it had a complete change of ethnic groups or slow change due to amalgamation and intermingling, Urartu is the geopolitical predecessor of Armenia. The proof that Biainili and Armenians lived together is the numerous IE Armenian words found in Urartian inscriptions, and vice versa in the Armenian language. The ancient kingdom of Van in Movses Khorenatsi's Armenian history is Bianili (through Urartian to Armenian language change, B->V, minus the Urartian suffix, "Vian", similar to how Erebuni became Erevan).

It is without a doubt that Armenians assumed control over the territory in question following the collapse of Urartu. If you want to call it a geopolitical predecessor then, I will not argue with you. But if you want to call it a cultural predecessor, I'm telling you now, linguistic comparisons between Armenian and Urartu would not be a wise choice. Perhaps our art forms/architecture have some connection, I don't know.

Now, the question of Armenians being "Urartians"... We know that the region in question was dominated by a royal dynasty which wrote their documents in Urartian, and ruled over a federation of tribes. We also know that this Urartian dialect did not really evolve (in the sense that Hittite did, for example) during the 200 years it was in use, this suggests that it was not a spoken language, but just one language in the region which was used for official documents and inscriptions. The Urartian language doesn't talk about much other than the state sponsored religion, contracts, names of royalty, etc... just political stuff, and thus, reflects very little of the culture of the actual people who lived in its territory. Thus, to say the ancestors of Armenians were the Urartians, tells us only, as you said, that they were our geopolitical predecessors, and nothing more.

Now, I would like to see these numerous Armenian IE loan words in Urartian.

Do you think it's coincidental that Hayasa and Hayastan are so similar? It's possible that Armenia was called Hayasa by the native people until Parthian rule as well. Since Armenians don't have their own written record of what they were prior to Mesrob Mashtots, we cannot dismiss Hayasa's similarity with Hayastan as coincidental. Don't forget that Lesser Armenia was the precise location of where Hayasa was prior to the Cimmerian and Phrygian invasions. This also helps the theory that Hayastan's etymological root is Hayasa.

If you want to compare the name Hayasa to Hay, you will need to tell a whole story about each of the names. Why does the "-asa" drop in Hayasa to become Hay? What is the root stem of Hayasa, is it Hay, and asa is a suffix? We have no clue. We can't tell the story, because we don't know the language. We don't know how it works, and our whole theory for linking us to Hayasa is this name of theirs, and their geographical location... Catharsis, another user here, mentioned earlier that some analysis on the names of Hayasa royalty yielded Indo-European names, this is something I'd like to see now.

One thing, do not compare Hayasa to Hayastan, because in the latter, the "s" is clearly part of the -stan suffix, and the "a" before it is a thematic (connector) vowel for compound words: Hay + stan (land) = Hay + a (connector vowel) + stan. Compare Hayasa to Hay.

Here is the quote from M.Chahin's "Kingdom of Armenia, A History":
"Basic Armenian appears to be closest to Greek. Its vocabulary consists of more Indo-European words with Greek than with any other dialect. The next highest number of lexical parallels is to be found in Sanskrit, with only 300 shared words. It is also suggested that Armenian shares so many grammatical and lexical elements with Hittite that it is much more reasonable to suppose that Armenian developed naturally from Hittite dialects of Asia Minor, west of the Upper Euphrates. In fact, there are so many characteristics of Armenian which remind one of Hittite that it is highly improbable that they can be separated."

I'm well aware that Armenian and Greek have very unique and important things in common which suggest they formed their own sub-branch of Indo-European, though there are a few crucial anomalies which cannot be worked out. Armenian, Greek and Indo-Iranian (Iranian + Indo-Aryan) are considered to be the "last to leave" the IE homeland due to shared innovations which do not occur in the other families. One such feature is the IE prefix "e" used to mark past tense on verbs. A familiar instance of this, which managed to survive long enough to reach our modern dialect, is WA "yega" (I came), from the verb "kal". The e (in Classical Arm.) > ye ( in Modern Arm.). This e- was applied to all verbs in IE to form the past tense, but only after everyone left except the three language families I mentioned, thus, they had a shared innovation unique to them, and thus are considered genetically closer.

The same is not true between Armenian and Hittite. Anatolian (the subgroup which includes Hittite) broke off from IE so early, as I said, that it lacked all sorts of features in IE. By comparing the core features of Indo-European to the serious anomalies of Anatolian and Tocharian, we can note that Indo-European underwent innovations which survive in all the branches who did not break off so early on from the homeland. Anatolian and Tocharian did not share those innovations, and thus we can tell they left early. Thus, we know that when we identify the features of Tocharian and Anatolian which we can relate with the rest of Indo-European, we are able to see a very archaic snapshot of Indo-European which, in the other branches, is shrowded by all the innovations that Anatolian and Tocharian did not partake in.

We've only been able to read and understand Hittite well for 60 or so years btw... This is still quite new for us, and of course, before this time, all sorts of speculations about the behavior of the Hittite language were open in the air, in fact, it was a similar case for Urartian and Hurrian until about 30 years ago. Now we have a fairly good idea about how all these languages work, and we know that they are not close to Armenian. I've worked on Hittite, and I've seen its vocabulary, I've seen some striking similarities, such as Hittite "pahh" (to guard/protect) compared to our baxbanel (to protect), but overall, the cognate inventory of Hittite fairs just as good, if not better, with other IE branches, than with Armenian, as Armenian due to its history of borrowing 80% of its vocabulary from Iranian, only has 500 or so words it inherited genetically from Indo-European.

Furthermore, Hittite is actually just one of the languages from the Anatolian branch. There are other languages which fit into this family, such as Luwian, Carian, Palaic, and Lycian... They all share innovations, such as subject clitic pronouns, and they have an ergative suffix -ants which animatizes non-animate nouns so that they can be the subject of a sentence. They also have two genders, but of a distribution that seems to be a very thought provoking archaism for Indo-European: common gender (masculine + feminine) and neuter (inanimate nouns + feminine)... These features are all eccentrically Anatolian, and are not shared with any other group. To say Armenian, or Phrygian are somehow more closely related to them than say, Celtic, just because of geographic proximity, contradicts all possible linguistic analysis. I know for a fact that Armenian is no closer to Hittite than it is to Celtic (which is thousands of kilometers northwest). Show me M. Chahin's article and I'll shoot it down for you

Based on this statement, I speculated that since Hayasans and Hittites were close, they might have shared a similar language ("...so many characteristics of Armenian which remind one of Hittite..."). They might have been invaded by Phrygians and the language overlap changed the root of the Hayasan language into a Phrygian language with many elements kept from Hittite, and who in turn took over the throne of Urartu and changed its language to Hayasan, which was a Phrygianized Hittite language. It's a possibility, no?

As if things were difficult enough for arguing a relationship between Hittite and Armenian, things become just preposterous when we bring Hayasa into the question, which does not even have the prerequisite material to even begin analysis... We have no inscriptions of their language, not even the Hittites, who kept documents of their diplomatic correspondences with any of their neighbours which used a writing system to communicate, bothered to write down any sentences of their language. As for Phrygians, they hardly wrote anything down, we don't have a very clear understanding of their grammar due to such a poor collection of sentences in their language, mostly on graves of kings which give a brief account of who they are and what they did.

So in conclusion, we know Hittite, we don't know Hayasan, we don't know how Phrygian works, and somehow, we want to relate these to each other, and then to Armenian?

One example of words shared between the Hurrian root and the Armenian language is Xndzor. As we all know, Urartian was a later dialect of Hurrian, and most probably, if Xndzor reached us, it's either through the Mitanni or the Urartians. There were other similar words (like wood and war) but I can't seem to find the site where I read this.. (if I do, I'll post it here).

Xndzor (Xntsor in WA) means apple, and there isn't a single IE language that has a similar word for apple. (damn if only I found the site, I'd post what its Hurrian equivalent was..)

I personally believe that one new discovery about Hayasa will answer many questions about our identity.

I know about xndzor. Diakonov was able to relate some 10 words of Armenian to Hurro-Urartian... He did this at a time when Hurrian and Urartian were still recently figured out. He took advantage of the fact that most people were too freaked out by Armenian's wacky phonology that they did not even bother to try reconstructing whatever vocabulary we had that wasn't a borrowing, back to Indo-European. Instead, all those chicken linguists wanted to lazily claim that Armenian had a "Caucasian" or "Hurro-Urartian" substratum. This was just a cop-out of theirs so that they don't have to bother with the "oh so tricky" Armenian language.

But we've been working on Armenian for over a 100 years now and there are systematic sound changes which neatly account for pretty much 18% of our vocabulary as directly descended from Indo-European. 100% - 80% (Iranian loanwords) - 18% (Indo-European inheritances)= 2%... That 2% is all that isn't really figured out, and seriously, if you want to tell me that we're really chummy with Hurro-Urartian thanks to possible influence within that 2% that's left in our vocabulary, be my guest. It doesn't really matter.

As for archaeological finds regarding Hayasa, I think we would all like to see inscriptions found of any ancient language. But you know, for all the whining the Hittites made about the Kaskian people (also a northerly neighbour) who frequently invaded them and caused them trouble, we find not a shred of their civilization... We only know about them through the Hittites. This does not give us much hope for any breakthroughs regarding Hayasa.