Origin of Indo-European element in Armenian

[Armanen]

Re: Are Armenians white????

[QUOTE=jgk3;306135]I never advocated that he's right. You don't even know if I believe he's a pseudo-historian or not (he might be). I'm just saying that of the accounts we've heard of Armenians by odars during ancient times, Herodotus is one of them. It does not give you the right to dismiss that I'm on a "western academic highhorse".[QUOTE]

You could have mentioned Xenophon or Naram Sin. I do not think western academia is superior to eastern, that is the main point I wanted to drive home. It seemed like you did, but you're correct, I do not KNOW if you do indeed believe it to be.

I agree. Still, that doesn't mean we should dismiss the conclusions made after years of tireless research on the part of individual academics (which shouldn't be generalized as one "corrupt" bunch, as they have just as divergent opinions at times as scholars working from Armenia might have with them) working in the west on Armenian documents that the Turks didn't manage to withhold from discovery and research.

Richard Hovanissian, the idiot who holds the chair in Armenian studies at harvard and others in that specific grouping are/were my main targets. Are there odar scholars who have looked at Armenia with a more or less non political eye, yes, of course, Colin Renfrew is one of them.



[QUOTE]Where are you getting this "didn't change for 400-500" years from, Urartian is attested from between the 9th and 6th centuries BCE, that would be 300-400 years. It is indeed claimed to not evolve at all during the time it was used, which was for mostly archival documents, suggesting it was a dead language, not even used by the royal courts. We do not have any direct evidence about the languages spoken by the people ruled under the Urartian yoke, but we can assume that Indo-Europeans likely existed there, especially since right after the fall of Urartu, the Medes referred to the region as Armenia (probably a politically motivated choice, to deliberately break all links to the name and identity of its former kingdom's name), which we link to the Armenian language, constituting its own branch of Indo-European. From then on, the name "Armenia" is always the name of the region, despite being ruled by royal families of various Indo-Iranian ethnic origins (Median, Achemaenian Persian, Parthian, Sassanian Persian) up until the Arab invasion, after which is still continued to be referred to Armenia and continues to be so today.[QUOTE]

Urartu may have appeared as a coalition by 900 BC, however, the language which they spoke, being an offshoot of Hurrian, was around for longer. Giving it an extra 100-200 years is not really an issue when you realize Hurrian had already been spoken for 1000 years by 800 BC. Based on the archeological findings, near Lake Van, it is very likely that what we would call Armenians were already well among the Urartu confederation by 800 BC, and of course as you pointed out, the region and people were called Armenia/Armenians just a mere 250-300 years later.

Again, those are archaeological findings which add to our knowledge of what kind of culture existed in a region. It doesn't say a word about what their language was like, unless you find inscriptions in: "the most ancient winery", "the most ancient shoe". That is why you cannot link the any of such findings to Indo-European. But people do it anyway, and call it science.

Proto-Indo-Europeans, for all we know, could have initially been relatively backward (technological equivalents to cowboys from the wild west vis-a-vis New England and Europe), and knew nothing about winemaking until they advanced into non-Indo-European speaking regions, settled there and learned from them. Perhaps they got the word for wine "*win/vin-o" from some other group, perhaps of Semitic (since the earliest period of this language family's attestation also uses this same root), or perhaps even from another language family that died out and did not get a chance to reveal itself to us. That's why you can't link the invention of shoes or wine to Indo-Europeans (and thus pinpoint the geographical origin of their ancestor to the location of such inventions), but you can say that proto-Indo-Europeans likely had a knowledge of such things, since they had words for them.

Well you are correct in that the artifacts more to the culture and ethnic group(s), not so much the language spoken unless of course there are writings to be found on the artifacts found. However, I should make clear, that I see the IE or proto-IE as more than just a language grouping but also at one time and single ethnic group. So when I say Homeland of IE is Armenia I mean it in the ethnic sense, the lingustic one will be tougher to prove for obvious reasons. Also, I do not disagree that the proto-IE could have been less advanced than the peoples they interacted with to the north or south. Furthermore, when I mentioned the recent finds it is due to my belief that there will be many more such finds, and some of them will indeed give us strong evidence, if not outright proof, that Armenia is home to the proto-IE, or the very least Armenians are native to the region. Again, this is why I said time will tell, but I'm confident that the myth of Armenians being foreign to their lands, as spread by hovannesian and others like him, will soon be smashed.

[Armanen]

Re: Are Armenians white????

Hello Armanen

I thought that you might be addressing me.

No doubt you belive that the West has been insdiously working to subvert Armenia's cultural identity, since the 5th century BC.



It could well be that the eastward migration and integration of Phrygian/Greek elements into the Hurro-Urartians sphere gave rise Armenian nation. However no one really knows.

Whilst few people closely resemble their ancient ancestors genetically. As peoples lineages alter markedly over time, once you take into account admixture, genetic drift and diffusion. Cultural linguistics and ethnic ties often correlate to a certain extent. Since it's always been hard for people to jump language groups.

Although they integrated both Indo-European and Caucasian elements. The Urartians where principally an ancient Northern fertile crescent peoples. Urartian, Hurrian like Sumerian and Caucasian are ergative-agglutinative languages.

The Caucasus is ethnically a intermediary region between Western Asia and Europe. The maternal ancestry of Armenians as is the case with many other Caucasus and Western Asia populations is on blance closer to Europe. Whilst the Armenian paternal ancestry exhibits far greater phylogeographicly diversity and is closer to the Near East.

Let's say tomorrow scholars find an ancient inscription that says something along the lines of what Herodotus said "The Armenians, who are Kassite colonists, were armed in the Kassite fashion."

Should we then take this pseudo-historian's claims as the gospel again? What I was driving at in my earlier post is that modern academics under the guise of 'western academia', who think it is the most superior form of academia, have used this one line from Herodotus, to create a myth about Armenians coming to Asia Minor from Thrace/Balkan region, while they ignore the commentary of Xenophon on Armenians as well as Naram-Sin, who predates both by well over 1000 years.

As far as the genetic make up, modern Armenians do indeed have a mix of IE and Caucasian blood. I was not doubting that. It should be pointed out that if this is true, then Armenians by virtue of their Caucasian heritage, are still native to the region.

[jgk3]

Re: Are Armenians white????

You could have mentioned Xenophon or Naram Sin. I do not think western academia is superior to eastern, that is the main point I wanted to drive home. It seemed like you did, but you're correct, I do not KNOW if you do indeed believe it to be.

I invite you to reread my earlier response, where I mentioned Herodotus which seemed to have thrown off alarms. What do you think I'm referring to with #1? Precisely the instances where Armenians insist on claiming an early attestation of Armenia to have been made by Xenophon, Naram Sin or anyone else in that remote period:

There are additional spins on the ancient references to Armenia predating our language's attestation: 1. we have to deal with the fact that "Armenia"-like names have been attested in other languages prior to the 6th century, but Western scholarship doesn't tend to make the link between such names and the Armenia we know. 2. that Herodotus said, "Armenians are Phrygian colonists"... Things that Armenians for patriotic reasons tend to have strong opinions about, according to their own agenda of what to advocate as the history of our nation. In my opinion, these two domains have been overly talked about in Armenia and by academics serving the patriotic narratives of Armenia, but they inadequately demonstrate the plausibility of their theories in a manner Western scholarship would find convincing, and they blame the west for their corruption, rather than recognizing that the West doesn't take them any more seriously than Turks who try to prove that Anatolia has always been a Turkic speaking region since ancient times. Why? Because our agenda is nationalistic. That is why such domains, which are actually worthy of closer research, are ignored by UCLA, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, etc... etc...

Richard Hovanissian, the idiot who holds the chair in Armenian studies at harvard and others in that specific grouping are/were my main targets. Are there odar scholars who have looked at Armenia with a more or less non political eye, yes, of course, Colin Renfrew is one of them.

Have you ever read Hovanissian, or did you just dismiss him along the lines of that video "Falsifiers of Armenian History"? I haven't read his work before, I've just seen him being bashed by Armenian patriots who've taken offense to a few lines of his entire work, and branded him a traitor.

Urartu may have appeared as a coalition by 900 BC, however, the language which they spoke, being an offshoot of Hurrian, was around for longer. Giving it an extra 100-200 years is not really an issue when you realize Hurrian had already been spoken for 1000 years by 800 BC. Based on the archeological findings, near Lake Van, it is very likely that what we would call Armenians were already well among the Urartu confederation by 800 BC, and of course as you pointed out, the region and people were called Armenia/Armenians just a mere 250-300 years later.

Tying Urartian to Hurrian in terms of political heritage seems to be jumping the gun in my opinion, given that the two languages evolved separately. From what I've read, Urartian is not an offshoot of Hurrian. And again, common heritage from a linguistic ancestor does not establish common identity. To say so would be an attempt to confound Armenians and Greeks together on the basis of being offshoots of proto-Indo-European (and indeed, people who believe in Aryanism would express such a belief).

Well you are correct in that the artifacts more to the culture and ethnic group(s), not so much the language spoken unless of course there are writings to be found on the artifacts found. However, I should make clear, that I see the IE or proto-IE as more than just a language grouping but also at one time and single ethnic group. So when I say Homeland of IE is Armenia I mean it in the ethnic sense, the lingustic one will be tougher to prove for obvious reasons. Also, I do not disagree that the proto-IE could have been less advanced than the peoples they interacted with to the north or south. Furthermore, when I mentioned the recent finds it is due to my belief that there will be many more such finds, and some of them will indeed give us strong evidence, if not outright proof, that Armenia is home to the proto-IE, or the very least Armenians are native to the region. Again, this is why I said time will tell, but I'm confident that the myth of Armenians being foreign to their lands, as spread by hovannesian and others like him, will soon be smashed.

The ethnic group of the proto-Indo-Europeans is too remote and obscure to link to any one modern ethnic group. And given that all the Indo-European branches come from "dialect areas" of the PIE homeland, it would be counterintuitive to say that proto-Indo-European as a group had any more to do with the Armenian branch, than it would with any other branch.

[Armanen]

Re: Are Armenians white????

I invite you to reread my earlier response, where I mentioned Herodotus which seemed to have thrown off alarms. What do you think I'm referring to with #1? Precisely the instances where Armenians insist on claiming an early attestation of Armenia to have been made by Xenophon, Naram Sin or anyone else in that remote period:

You are giving more credence to western academia, this is my central issue. Why else would you state that only patriotic Armenians take issue with the phyrgian claim? Do you know for a fact that it is only patriots who take issue with it? Have you wondered why western academia ignores what Xenophon, who lived after Herodotus, had to say about Armenia, and more so ignores Naram Sin?

Have you ever read Hovanissian, or did you just dismiss him along the lines of that video "Falsifiers of Armenian History"? I haven't read his work before, I've just seen him being bashed by Armenian patriots who've taken offense to a few lines of his entire work, and branded him a traitor.

No, I have not read his books. A friend of mine was involved in the making of the video which you mention. Furthermore, based on the actions of richard, his son raffi (cia asset) in Armenia, and the newest member garen, raffi's son, and the idiotic things which he has written about Armenia, I think it is pretty safe to assume this family is bought and paid for. And it is not Armenia's interests which they have at heart.

Tying Urartian to Hurrian in terms of political heritage seems to be jumping the gun in my opinion, given that the two languages evolved separately. From what I've read, Urartian is not an offshoot of Hurrian. And again, common heritage from a linguistic ancestor does not establish common identity. To say so would be an attempt to confound Armenians and Greeks together on the basis of being offshoots of proto-Indo-European (and indeed, people who believe in Aryanism would express such a belief).

From what I have read, Urartuian is indeed an offshoot of Hurrian. At this point, who is to say either is wrong? I do not think making some kind of political connection is jumping the gun. I will admit it is an assumption, however not an illogical one. They shared same geographical area, and one followed the other in a chronological order. It would be akin to saying that the Italian city-states of the early Middle Ages had no political connection to Ancient Rome, and using the fact that they spoke an early form of Italian and not the Latin of Rome. In a strict sense you can say this, they were not connected politically, but to deny the inheritence of the Roman heritage would be overstepping a number of bounds. While in the Rome and Italian city-states case you have lingustic proof that Italian does descend from Latin, the trouble in our case is that we do not yet have conclusive proof that Urartuian is Hurrian. I am not basing the language factor as the only tie between the two, the culture as can be seen from artifacts, like pottery, shows connections. It is unlikely that the two had no ethnic or cultural links.

The ethnic group of the proto-Indo-Europeans is too remote and obscure to link to any one modern ethnic group. And given that all the Indo-European branches come from "dialect areas" of the PIE homeland, it would be counterintuitive to say that proto-Indo-European as a group had any more to do with the Armenian branch, than it would with any other branch.

Why is it too remote for you to realize a connection? Do you think the PIE language was spoken by one or more ethnic groups, yet these ethnic groups had no blood ties? Sort of like if you take English now. It is spoken in many parts of the world, yet many of its speakers are not related by blood, i.e. Jamaicans and the English.
However this is due to imperialism, and slavery. During the period when PIE was a singular language, not yet split up, estimated to be 4000BC or earlier, there was no imperialism or real way to force one's language over such differing people. Differing the same extreme as English who are Caucasoid, and Black Jamaicans who are Negroid. Maybe later on non IE ethnic groups were conquered and started speaking an IE language, such as the case with the Dravidians of India or were conquered by the Indo-Aryans, and overtime learned the language of their conquerors.

Also, do you place more emphasis and importance on lingustics than archeology?

[jgk3]

Re: Are Armenians white????

You are giving more credence to western academia, this is my central issue. Why else would you state that only patriotic Armenians take issue with the phyrgian claim? Do you know for a fact that it is only patriots who take issue with it? Have you wondered why western academia ignores what Xenophon, who lived after Herodotus, had to say about Armenia, and more so ignores Naram Sin?

I do not know why Xenophon and Naram Sin aren't brought up by Western academia, that is something I want to find out. What would be necessary to look it, are translations of those same texts of the above mentioned historians that Armenians like to cite for the earliest mention of Armenia as a country, by Western academia which seems to not make such a link. I want to know how western academia translates those same words, what they link them to, and why. I don't think it's as simple as a politically motivated omission, but if that is indeed the case, then we'll have to research why they chose the alternative ethnic associations of those same "Armenia" like names from those sources, and see if their arguments hold ground.

You're right that not only patriotic Armenians take issue with the Herodotus claim, the historical linguists in the west probably don't take that claim very seriously either. I'm just bringing it up that it is among the descriptions given of the origin of Armenians by odars.

No, I have not read his books. A friend of mine was involved in the making of the video which you mention. Furthermore, based on the actions of richard, his son raffi (cia asset) in Armenia, and the newest member garen, raffi's son, and the idiotic things which he has written about Armenia, I think it is pretty safe to assume this family is bought and paid for. And it is not Armenia's interests which they have at heart.

Anything can be made to sound idiotic if you take it out of context from a book, which is precisely why I hope to actually read what this dude has to say.

From what I have read, Urartuian is indeed an offshoot of Hurrian. At this point, who is to say either is wrong? I do not think making some kind of political connection is jumping the gun. I will admit it is an assumption, however not an illogical one. They shared same geographical area, and one followed the other in a chronological order. It would be akin to saying that the Italian city-states of the early Middle Ages had no political connection to Ancient Rome, and using the fact that they spoke an early form of Italian and not the Latin of Rome. In a strict sense you can say this, they were not connected politically, but to deny the inheritence of the Roman heritage would be overstepping a number of bounds. While in the Rome and Italian city-states case you have lingustic proof that Italian does descend from Latin, the trouble in our case is that we do not yet have conclusive proof that Urartuian is Hurrian. I am not basing the language factor as the only tie between the two, the culture as can be seen from artifacts, like pottery, shows connections. It is unlikely that the two had no ethnic or cultural links.

If there are cultural associations, that is fine, I am not debating this. But the linguistic aspect between the two languages is said to point to a common ancestor, not one being an offshoot of the other. I will verify this sometime, once I'm not occupied with studying grabar, so I can demonstrate this personally.

Why is it too remote for you to realize a connection? Do you think the PIE language was spoken by one or more ethnic groups, yet these ethnic groups had no blood ties? Sort of like if you take English now. It is spoken in many parts of the world, yet many of its speakers are not related by blood, i.e. Jamaicans and the English.
However this is due to imperialism, and slavery. During the period when PIE was a singular language, not yet split up, estimated to be 4000BC or earlier, there was no imperialism or real way to force one's language over such differing people. Differing the same extreme as English who are Caucasoid, and Black Jamaicans who are Negroid. Maybe later on non IE ethnic groups were conquered and started speaking an IE language, such as the case with the Dravidians of India or were conquered by the Indo-Aryans, and overtime learned the language of their conquerors.

The statement I made would pertain more to the fact that the ancestors of Indo-Aryans, the Indo-Iranians, came from the PIE homeland and at some point became their own branch by splitting from the mainstream PIE group living in the homeland. The fact that they travelled to India and Persia is auxiliary to this fact, they were already a distinct group before they even arrived to such lands. That is why I'm saying, even among the PIE, you cannot isolate, or distill a single ethnic group more closely associated with one of its daughters. It is by means of all the daughters, compared between one another, that we can even conceptualize and reconstruct the attributes of the ancestor.

All of the daughters share the same linguistic heritage, and often preserve relics (at some stage in their written histories) of that prehistoric culture in their language and religious practices. There is infact a lot of research done in reconstructing the PIE religion, things you might want to look up are the Dragon Slayer myth and rituals involving horses as two prime examples. Try to isolate their origins to Armenia proper if you can... Some of these myths are actually very popular in non-Indo-European Central Asian cultures too. I'll talk more about this soon.

Also, do you place more emphasis and importance on lingustics than archeology?

(Historical) Linguistics reveals not only relationships of decent between one generation's language to another, it also reveals the common origins of languages in the same family and has the power to reconstruct ancestrial forms. The myths, as I mentioned, along with names for different kinds of family members, numbers, customs, patterns found in proper names and several other pertinent attributes of society, preserved in the daughter languages either as residues of the ancestor, or in rare cases, active aspects of society still practiced in some form today, tell us more, in an explicit manner, about Proto-Indo-European society and language, than do a bunch of pots and pans dug up from such and such place with no reliable means to link them to a specific linguistic group.

[Armanen]

Re: Are Armenians white????

I do not know why Xenophon and Naram Sin aren't brought up by Western academia, that is something I want to find out. What would be necessary to look it, are translations of those same texts of the above mentioned historians that Armenians like to cite for the earliest mention of Armenia as a country, by Western academia which seems to not make such a link. I want to know how western academia translates those same words, what they link them to, and why. I don't think it's as simple as a politically motivated omission, but if that is indeed the case, then we'll have to research why they chose the alternative ethnic associations of those same "Armenia" like names from those sources, and see if their arguments hold ground.

You're right that not only patriotic Armenians take issue with the Herodotus claim, the historical linguists in the west probably don't take that claim very seriously either. I'm just bringing it up that it is among the descriptions given of the origin of Armenians by odars.

I'm glad you are going to dig into this and try to come out with some conclusions. Like I said, my main issue was that you were making sound as if the Armenian claims, which I believe are legit, are not legit and that western academia is somehow superior and has all the answers. I know you did not come out and state this word for word, but that is the impression that I was getting from you. However, you doing the work yourself is 100 times better than reading a book by this or that author and assuming that they hold the truth, so kudos on that!

Anything can be made to sound idiotic if you take it out of context from a book, which is precisely why I hope to actually read what this dude has to say.

I'm sure it can. However, this family as I said, is involved in anti-Armenian activities, similar in fashion to ArmeniaNow, and that is what makes it seem likely to me and others that richard would include bs along with legit history. I can post some of the political articles that have been written by raffi or his son recently. I can ask my friend who helped make the video about the historical inaccuracies which are said to be more than just what was included in that short video. But by all means if you have the time to read his books go right ahead, I never meant to imply that one shouldn't read his books. Just that the man, his son, and grandson have an anti-Armenian agenda.

If there are cultural associations, that is fine, I am not debating this. But the linguistic aspect between the two languages is said to point to a common ancestor, not one being an offshoot of the other. I will verify this sometime, once I'm not occupied with studying grabar, so I can demonstrate this personally.

Are you trying to learn grabar in order to speak it or are you just looking at it from a purely lingustic aspect?

The statement I made would pertain more to the fact that the ancestors of Indo-Aryans, the Indo-Iranians, came from the PIE homeland and at some point became their own branch by splitting from the mainstream PIE group living in the homeland. The fact that they travelled to India and Persia is auxiliary to this fact, they were already a distinct group before they even arrived to such lands. That is why I'm saying, even among the PIE, you cannot isolate, or distill a single ethnic group more closely associated with one of its daughters. It is by means of all the daughters, compared between one another, that we can even conceptualize and reconstruct the attributes of the ancestor.

But if we were to find the PIE homeland, would this not help to show a closer connection to one or more ethnic groups? Some of the ethnic groups that spoke an IE language, such as the Iranics, Armenians, and Greeks have been a cohesive ethnic group much longer than others, such as Balts.

All of the daughters share the same linguistic heritage, and often preserve relics (at some stage in their written histories) of that prehistoric culture in their language and religious practices. There is infact a lot of research done in reconstructing the PIE religion, things you might want to look up are the Dragon Slayer myth and rituals involving horses as two prime examples. Try to isolate their origins to Armenia proper if you can... Some of these myths are actually very popular in non-Indo-European Central Asian cultures too. I'll talk more about this soon.

Where is a good place to start reading up on the myths that you mention? Perhaps the Central Asian turkics have these myths thru their interactions with the IE Tocharians, Indo-Aryans, and even the Scythians. Or it could be similar to the fact that many of the major peoples/civilizations of the world share story about a Great Flood.

(Historical) Linguistics reveals not only relationships of decent between one generation's language to another, it also reveals the common origins of languages in the same family and has the power to reconstruct ancestrial forms. The myths, as I mentioned, along with names for different kinds of family members, numbers, customs, patterns found in proper names and several other pertinent attributes of society, preserved in the daughter languages either as residues of the ancestor, or in rare cases, active aspects of society still practiced in some form today, tell us more, in an explicit manner, about Proto-Indo-European society and language, than do a bunch of pots and pans dug up from such and such place with no reliable means to link them to a specific linguistic group.

The pots and pans though do tell us more about the culture of the people. This is where I believe it is more useful than historical lingustics.

[jgk3]

I'm glad you are going to dig into this and try to come out with some conclusions. Like I said, my main issue was that you were making sound as if the Armenian claims, which I believe are legit, are not legit and that western academia is somehow superior and has all the answers. I know you did not come out and state this word for word, but that is the impression that I was getting from you. However, you doing the work yourself is 100 times better than reading a book by this or that author and assuming that they hold the truth, so kudos on that!

Thanks

I'm sure it can. However, this family as I said, is involved in anti-Armenian activities, similar in fashion to ArmeniaNow, and that is what makes it seem likely to me and others that richard would include bs along with legit history. I can post some of the political articles that have been written by raffi or his son recently. I can ask my friend who helped make the video about the historical inaccuracies which are said to be more than just what was included in that short video. But by all means if you have the time to read his books go right ahead, I never meant to imply that one shouldn't read his books. Just that the man, his son, and grandson have an anti-Armenian agenda.

Alright.

Are you trying to learn grabar in order to speak it or are you just looking at it from a purely lingustic aspect?

I want to learn the grabar specifically from the 5th-7th centuries, because afterwards it was a dead language, losing touch with vernacular Armenian as the centuries progressed. In this way, Medieval grabar was like Medieval Latin, it evolved since the authors could not help but produce grammatical mistakes in their attempts to mimic the classical form that was no longer available to them as a natural, spoken language. Being able to speak Grabar thus has little meaning to me, as it is not even a language of correspondence or modern literature anymore. I'm looking at it for 1. to be able to compare it with other Indo-European (and in some cases, non-Indo-European) languages. 2. To hopefully get the hang of determining the date and location/school an Armenian manuscript might've come from (one of my main interests is to determine this for the Sourp Badarak, which according to official accounts by our church dates to the 5th century... I want to verify this for myself, but first I have to familiarize myself with the different stages of evolution in Armenian literature of different genres and styles.). 3. For my own benefit, to be able to read/listen (to)/sing it and actually understand what's being said, i.e. in church. I find it fun to talk about and explain to other people who know all the words in the songs, and stuff the priest and his deacons say, but don't know exactly how to translate due to the funny grammatical patterns and odd word forms. Plus, modern Armenian has often reanalyzed the meanings of certain words and forms from Classical Armenian.

But if we were to find the PIE homeland, would this not help to show a closer connection to one or more ethnic groups? Some of the ethnic groups that spoke an IE language, such as the Iranics, Armenians, and Greeks have been a cohesive ethnic group much longer than others, such as Balts.

Indo-Iranians are quite a diverse group, not all of whom survive today. Avestan (the oldest strata of liturgical language in Zoroastrianism, used in the Gathas) for instance, though spoken by a community once, was extinct centuries before it was written down by the Sassanians. Thus, there is no ethnic group, on the basis of natural speakers of its language, for Avestan to associate itself with in recorded history.

It is an accident of history that the Baltic group experienced the literarization of their languages at such a late date. We take for granted that this literarization by the way was extraordinarily instrumental in consolidating the cohesive ethnic identity we recognize when we think of Armenians. Yes Armenia existed before the 5th century when we started writing in our own language, but do you have any idea how much gravitational pull the Armenian identity had once it spewed out its language from every church? It was able to assimilate non-Armenians in just a generation, just take a kid, no matter their ethnic background, and raise them in an Armenian church. They will be Armenian. It is on this basis that some ethnic identities flourished, and most diminished to oblivion (the number in the latter category likely outweighs the former, 1000-fold). I'm sure that the comparatively late date of the conversion to Christianity among Baltic peoples has more to do with their ability to consolidate their ethnic identity, than does its geographic location vis-a-vis the PIE homeland, no matter where one might posit it to be.

Where is a good place to start reading up on the myths that you mention? Perhaps the Central Asian turkics have these myths thru their interactions with the IE Tocharians, Indo-Aryans, and even the Scythians. Or it could be similar to the fact that many of the major peoples/civilizations of the world share story about a Great Flood.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-I...opean_religion
2. "How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics" by Calvert Watkins:
description of the book: http://www.fravahr.org/spip.php?article271
link to preview on google books, check out p. 433 for example, a neat showcase of Mithra in an Avestan hymn.

The pots and pans though do tell us more about the culture of the people. This is where I believe it is more useful than historical lingustics.

Again, only if you can positively link the people to the language, in this case, the entire language family's ancestor. Can't say I didn't warn ya!

[Armanen]

Re: Origin of Indo-European element in Armenian

Again, only if you can positively link the people to the language, in this case, the entire language family's ancestor. Can't say I didn't warn ya!

I don't think I am understanding you correctly. If we find an artifact in Armenia, and we date it to 3000BC, and it has some symbols on there which are associated with Armenians or Proto-Armenians, where does the language factor come in? Also, one could say that these symbols were used by a people/culture that existed prior to Armenians/Pro-Armenians. Currently this is the case with Metsamor culture.


Thanks for the links, I will read them.

So are you suggesting that the Latvians for example are as old as Armenians or Greeks?

[jgk3]

Re: Origin of Indo-European element in Armenian

I don't think I am understanding you correctly. If we find an artifact in Armenia, and we date it to 3000BC, and it has some symbols on there which are associated with Armenians or Proto-Armenians, where does the language factor come in? Also, one could say that these symbols were used by a people/culture that existed prior to Armenians/Pro-Armenians. Currently this is the case with Metsamor culture.

While I was editing my last post, I noticed you beat me to it and responded. I'll post my intended addition here, to hopefully explain something about language families and how they operate independently of our conventional ideas about the age of a known ethnic group:

"Within every branch of a language family, there are a multitude of cases just like Avestan which died out due to accidents of history. Some of these languages are lucky enough to have the ethnic identity of their speakers recorded in history, but nothing more. Others, like Avestan, are remembered in written history for just their language content, and not for the ethnic identity of its speakers. Still others, in fact the majority, are not remembered at all in written history, they simply don't make it to the books.

Even more thought provoking is that there are entire branches of language families which die out and leave no traces for us to read or speak. We have a limited number of attested branches of Indo-European, imagine how many other branches existed in human history, that we have no access to knowing about, ever, unless we are lucky enough to discover written archives that reveal their language to us. The biggest treasure of an archaeological discovery is precisely this... their language."

So now, if the symbols and motifs found in Metsamor are associated to Armenians (i.e. the culture associated to speakers of Armenian dialects/language), my question is: "Are they only associated to Armenians. Is it not possible that they were associated with speakers of a non-Armenian language, which could have been 1. part of the Indo-European branch known as "Armenian" but whose speakers did not share the same ethnic identity as Armenians, 2. part of another Indo-European branch, or 3. part of a non-Indo-European branch... What if these symbols and all were associated with a multitude of groups, which could potentially have been individually grouped in some or all of the above mentioned categories?

What if Armenians claim the Metsamor culture as their own, only because the Armenian speaking community, has assimilated the attributes of this region which they've occupied for quite some time? Much like how Tibetan Buddhists have assimilated the symbol of the Swastika, and claim it is genuinely Tibetan, despite the consensus being that it originates from Hinduism from India? Are the Tibetans wrong for claiming/believing it's Tibetan? Are Armenians wrong for claiming, believing that Metsamor's symbols are Armenian? No. Each culture has made use of those motifs, and naturally attribute them to belong to their culture. Where they are hardpressed to find convincing arguments however, is when they claim it's "theirs, and theirs only", unless of course they've wiped out/assimilated every other culture which could argue with them, as might be the case with Armenians lacking a serious rival who claims Metsamor and its symbols to instead belong to their culture (though maybe I'm wrong, do Georgians bother to fight over this?)

Thanks for the links, I will read them.

No problem, enjoy!

So are you suggesting that the Latvians for example are as old as Armenians or Greeks?

Their language is as old as Armenian and Greek languages.

[Armanen]

Re: Origin of Indo-European element in Armenian

"Within every branch of a language family, there are a multitude of cases just like Avestan which died out due to accidents of history. Some of these languages are lucky enough to have the ethnic identity of their speakers recorded in history, but nothing more. Others, like Avestan, are remembered in written history for just their language content, and not for the ethnic identity of its speakers. Still others, in fact the majority, are not remembered at all in written history, they simply don't make it to the books.

Even more thought provoking is that there are entire branches of language families which die out and leave no traces for us to read or speak. We have a limited number of attested branches of Indo-European, imagine how many other branches existed in human history, that we have no access to knowing about, ever, unless we are lucky enough to discover written archives that reveal their language to us. The biggest treasure of an archaeological discovery is precisely this... their language."

Yes, it is very thought provoking to think of the peoples who were either assimilated or wiped out and thus didn't leave us a trace. It is the same with animals, many of them we may never know even existed.

So now, if the symbols and motifs found in Metsamor are associated to Armenians (i.e. the culture associated to speakers of Armenian dialects/language), my question is: "Are they only associated to Armenians. Is it not possible that they were associated with speakers of a non-Armenian language, which could have been 1. part of the Indo-European branch known as "Armenian" but whose speakers did not share the same ethnic identity as Armenians, 2. part of another Indo-European branch, or 3. part of a non-Indo-European branch... What if these symbols and all were associated with a multitude of groups, which could potentially have been individually grouped in some or all of the above mentioned categories?

Right, a forerunner civilizations that influenced nearby groups who were not as sophisticated. This is certainly a very valid observation and one that I was going to point out in my previous post when I mentioned Metsamor, but decided that it was pretty self evident that there has to be many historical accounts to attest an item or object to be from a certain ethnic group or civilization.

What if Armenians claim the Metsamor culture as their own, only because the Armenian speaking community, has assimilated the attributes of this region which they've occupied for quite some time? Much like how Tibetan Buddhists have assimilated the symbol of the Swastika, and claim it is genuinely Tibetan, despite the consensus being that it originates from Hinduism from India? Are the Tibetans wrong for claiming/believing it's Tibetan? Are Armenians wrong for claiming, believing that Metsamor's symbols are Armenian? No. Each culture has made use of those motifs, and naturally attribute them to belong to their culture. Where they are hardpressed to find convincing arguments however, is when they claim it's "theirs, and theirs only", unless of course they've wiped out/assimilated every other culture which could argue with them, as might be the case with Armenians lacking a serious rival who claims Metsamor and its symbols to instead belong to their culture (though maybe I'm wrong, do Georgians bother to fight over this?)

I have not come across georgian claims of Metsamor but they can be quite jingoistic so it would not shock me to learn that they try to claim Metsamor as theirs. However, it would be easy to call them out on it should they attempt to do so.

Their language is as old as Armenian and Greek languages.

How do you or we know this?