Aryan Roots Save Armenians from Nazi Extermination

[Armanen]

Re: Aryan Roots Save Armenians from Nazi Extermination

Yes, please e-mail me the file.

The western conspiracy that I see is not that Armenia is not the IE homeland, rather the continued attitude that Armenian historians are all nationalists and therefore their work is more biased than non Armenian sources. A number of western 'historians' that write about Armenia continue to advocate that Armenians arrived in Asia Minor from the Balkans, basing most of this on the comments made by Herodotus. As you said, and as I mentioned too, I do not doubt that the Armenian ethnogenesis includes both IE and Caucasian blood. But I think the mix of the two happened sooner than 600 BC, and as you mentioned it is very likely that the population of Armenia was bi-lingual. I believe this is the case with the Kingdom of Ararat, the religious and diplomatic language was Urartian, but the vernacular was ancient Armenian.

I hope you are successful in finding more evidence that suggests Armenia was the IE homeland, if not, I will at least know that you didn't have an agenda to push.

[jgk3]

Re: Aryan Roots Save Armenians from Nazi Extermination

Lingustics helps to explain some of the unkown but it is not the end all be all. I'm not implying that you think this, just want to point it out since I think you agree with that statement. As you said there is a lot of info that we do not have and most will not have. The Hurrian and Subartu issue are still not well known, and while Kavoukjian does seem to gloss over some things, one has to remember that when the book was written, 20+ years ago, he had less info to work with than we do now.

As far as learning my peoples ancient history from two groups that both have an agenda: Armenian nationalists or western 'scholars' I will go with the former every time.

Both Armenian and Gevorg Nazaryan (creator of AH) are well versed in this topic, especially Gevorg, I wish they were here to discuss this issue with us.

I agree with your statement. My aim is to evaluate all of Kavoukjian's 20 year old glossing over. I'm already learning Hittite, and thus cuneiform script and the numerous Akkadian and Sumerian logograms. In a few years time, I'll give you my verdict on his translations. I think I should be able to get a hand on the texts he used. We Armenians would definitely benefit to have an English source that verifies Kavoukjian, who is basically one of the only sources we've used for a while now for these types of claims. I was intrigued by those propositions, whether they are true or not, and I am grateful for having been exposed to them as they have significantly motivated me to move toward this field in historical linguistics.

As for linguistic evidence helping to explain some of the unknown but not all, this is certainly true when it comes to the telling of historical events, artifacts and geographic locations. Archaeology and Linguists are the right and left arms both complementarily required before we can feel certainty in our propositions. However, when it comes to terminology and domains of inquiry that belong strictly to linguistics, only linguistics can tell the answer, and the question of Hurrian's genetic relationship to the Indo-European language family falls into this category. And the verdict is, Hurro-Urartian constitute their own language family.

There is quite an important but small set of Armenian words that have a non-Indo-European origin, having attested cognates in either 1. Sumerian and/or Akkadian, 2. Hurrian and/or Urartian, or 3. from both 1 and 2. I have an article from Diakonov that deals with this and Kavoukjian must've seen it. If you'd like, I can try to send the files of it to you.

This set of words however does suggest that the Indo-Europeans of the Armenian Highlands were definitely in contact with the Hurrians, who were in turn definitely in contact with Southern Mesopotamia quite early on. It adds weight to the claim that the Armenian Highlands were involved in this extensive trade network in the Levant (of which the Tigris and Euphrates played a great role, a point which Kavoukjian doesn't fail to repeat several times throughout his book). It also supports the idea that there was a situation of bilingualism between the Indo-European languages and the Hurro-Urartian languages in the Armenian Highlands. But I think we start to go too far if we take Kavoukjian's stance that the lands of the Aramaens also experienced this situation of bilingualism (of Semitic) with Indo-European dialects. Bilingualism with Hurrians most probably occurred, and this explains why Armenian and Aramaic share a set of words from this ancient strata of history (be careful not to treat all Aramaic words that look like Armenian ones as common borrowings from this very ancient era of the Hurrians, as we also loaned a great many Aramaic words under the much later Parthian rule, and especially after our Christianization).

At the end of the day, what we need to have a cleared understanding of in order to best explain this period isn't the Indo-European homeland, but the Hurrians and Urartians... We need to dig more of their sites and hope that we can find more texts from them so that we can expand our list of attested words in them and have more to work with, and more hopefully, find texts of more varied themes... (the best would be poetics and literature, but that's asking a lot). Unfortunately, the political situation today in the Near East doesn't seem to favour us Armenians in our desire to dig to better understand our pre-history.

I also recommend for Armenians in the meantime to understand that the Indo-European homeland being in Armenia shouldn't have to be such a "MUST", especially if it's going to cloud our appreciation of the J.P. Mallory's hypothesis and the reasons for why he holds them. This isn't part of some "enemy western agenda". Proto-Indo-European culture has a strong element of horses used ritualistically for example, and the Pontic and Central Asian Steppe seem to have a lot to offer in explaining this element of the culture, as the earliest site of horse domestication, horse sacrifices and burials... What is interesting is how the Indo-European horse rituals show up in Latin, Greek, Hittite and Sanskrit religion and law (which we know about thanks to philology/linguistics), which backs up the idea that this was a strongly Indo-European phenomenon. We know that horse domestication arrived in Anatolia at least a millenium later in Anatolia, by 3000BC, which many people hold to have been too late for the Urheimat responsible for the wide expanse of the Indo-European branches (keeping this homogenous horse ritual) across Eurasia, and also the realization of the Indo-European language family as we know it (refering to the level of difference between the branches), but I'm not well read on the reasoning behind why there should be such a cut-off point that renders 3000BC too late.

Another important Indo-European phenomenon btw is the myth of the Dragon Slayer, which turns up universally in Indo-European folktales and mythology. Yet another phenomenon is the set of Indo-European phrases, such as "Eternal Fame", one of several very popular themes that shows up in many of the attested daughter languages, all keeping true to this construction without fail.

So was the tradition of how people's names were constructed using a compound of two words:

They are found in the Celtic region (Dumnorix: "king of the world"; Kennedy: "ugly head"), in Indo-Aryan languages (Asvaghosa: "tamer of horses"); in Greek (Socrates: "good ruler", Hipparchos: "horse master"; Cleopatra: "from famous lineage") in Slavic languages (Vladimir: "great ruler"); in the Germanic languages (Alfred: "elf-counsel"; Godiva: "gift of God"), and in the Anatolian languages (Piyama-Radu: "gift of the devotee?").

Patronymics are also an Indo-European phenomenon. As are the metrics of Indo-European poetry... As all this glossing over its unique traits suggests, Indo-European culture has its own nucleus which is quite separate from that of other civilizations.

If we are interested in placing the homeland within the boundaries of our historical territory, we'd better know more about the actual cultural implications this would have... and evaluate how much of it has survived in the various cultures of the Armenian Highlands compared to other Indo-European cultures, and be able to intelligently explain the conclusions we arrive at. So many questions to address, so much responsibility for the ardent advocate of an Indo-European homeland in the Armenian Highlands. Do we really want this kind of weight on our shoulders?

It is absolutely necessary to deal with Indo-European in this way if we want to advance our claim in the international arena. And we can't just milk one scholar by the name of Colin Renfrew who advocates an Anatolian (more Central Anatolian/Hittite area) PIE homeland either.

[Armanen]

Re: Aryan Roots Save Armenians from Nazi Extermination

Lingustics helps to explain some of the unkown but it is not the end all be all. I'm not implying that you think this, just want to point it out since I think you agree with that statement. As you said there is a lot of info that we do not have and most will not have. The Hurrian and Subartu issue are still not well known, and while Kavoukjian does seem to gloss over some things, one has to remember that when the book was written, 20+ years ago, he had less info to work with than we do now.

As far as learning my peoples ancient history from two groups that both have an agenda: Armenian nationalists or western 'scholars' I will go with the former every time.

Both Armenian and Gevorg Nazaryan (creator of AH) are well versed in this topic, especially Gevorg, I wish they were here to discuss this issue with us.

[jgk3]

Re: Aryan Roots Save Armenians from Nazi Extermination

If you have not read Martiros Kavoukjians book "Armenia, Subartu and Sumer" I urge you to. Also check out the site that I recommended above.

Kavoukjian affirms that Hurrians were Indo-European. This is false.

I appreciate his work for increasing readership on the story of the land of Arrata and Uruk, and his discussion about Elba and its possible socio-ethnic reality.

Nonetheless, I find he isn't just cutting serious corners in trying to extend Armenian (Indo-European) pre-history as far back as possible using his explanation of Subartu (which he claims to be Indo-European), he is just wrong. Besides, we don't need to be "Indo-European" or even Aryan to extend our consciousness of our pre-history. Honestly, I would rather have a clear understanding of our history during the 3rd millenium BC and not be Aryan, than to reject the legitimacy of the comparative method in linguistics.

If you want to deal with the oldest attested Indo-European language, Luwian (pronounced Luvian) is your best choice. Its a language that was used as the religious language of the Hittites, and it is of the Anatolian group.

One of my aims in linguistics is to eventually learn everything I possibly can about Luwian and Hittite, because the former is key to understanding an indigenously Indo-European religion of earliest possible attestation, and the latter for its sheer wealth of historical archives and diplomatic correspondences with neighbours and rivals, including the Hayasa ( which we like to flatly claim as proto-Armenians even though there isn't a shred of evidence available to do so securely) and the Mitanni which we don't know that much about (Mallory likes to claim that it was ruled by Indo-Aryans because of the names of their gods and the vocabulary they use in one of their texts on chariots and horses, but I want to familiarize myself more with Vedic Sanskrit and Luwian before buying into that claim, as the name for the god Agni (fire) apparently turns up in Luwian, as well as Sanskrit, and was one of the names of the Mitanni royal caste's gods. Perhaps the other gods too have a Luwian cognate...).

In short, I think a lot of research is to be done, and I like to use the Armenianhighlands.com story as a motivation to verify the standard claims, but not necessarily adopt the overly neat assumptions made by our nationalists who can't even read cuneiform texts (the only source of knowing anything at all about the historical and ethnographic situation of that period).

Subartu and the Hurrians have a very vague history, and Kavoukjian is a good book to read for arousing interest in this part of the Middle East during that period, but PLEASE keep in mind that it is also a region that is very,very obscure for us. We are mostly just standing on archaeological fragments, which can be interpreted to say any story we want it to if it isn't backed by any linguistic evidence. These are the warnings I've learned about from my department, and I am wholly convinced that they are seriously worth consideration by all.

So in my pending career, I'm either going to find support for Kavoukjian's claims or shoot them down. For you all, I hope to distill the tenable from the untenable, and make explicit all the claims that are outrageous, for example, the idea that the Greek god (Poseid)on's name comes from the backwards spelling of the Hurro-Urartian Storm-God Tessub/Teispas. If I remember correctly, Kavoukjian believed this take to be true. However, on an etymological analysis of Poseidon, the first thing you discover is that the first element of the word is "pos", from Greek "posis" meaning lord/"master of the house" (husband) in Greek, which is derived from Indo-European "potis", a very pervasive root in its daughter languages which is soundly reconstructed as master or lord and has strong connotations of power. Examples containing it include words like "despot" and "potential". A phonological rule changed the intervocalic t in Potis to the fricative s, creating posis. This rule has operated universally in Greek. Tessub and Teispas on the other hand have an s in that position that is not the result of any phonological rule, but it is original. Besides, there is no evidence for this kind of backwards apellation of Anatolian/Armenian Gods in order to generate Greek equivalents. The only thing we do know as that Poseidon's trident is a motif that was popular amongst the Anatolians, and we know that the Luwians most likely colonized the Greek peninsula before the arrival of the Greeks. Such important ideas however, were probably never even known by Kavoukjian, and thus, any Armenian nationalist trying to discuss Hurrians.

[Armanen]

Re: Aryan Roots Save Armenians from Nazi Extermination

Well originally it was a religious caste term, meaning he/she who radiates light from within (Sanskrit and Pakrit sources), Aryan in linguistics and culture actually does not refer to all Indo-Europeans, just Indo-Iranians, Armenians by way of the Hittites and Persia are to an extent Aryan, but have Hurrian/Urartian ancestry and culture too.

The Nazi vision of the blond haired blue eyed Aryan is fictious, the Germans are of most non Indo European stock who learned an Indo European language due to Indo European migrations and intermixing, same reason there are extremely dark Indo Europeans in India.

It has of course nothing to do with race, a Hungarian is white, so is a Finn, yet both are Ural-Altaic, Turks today are Caucasoid yet originally were Mongoloid, hence the Nazi idea of things is ridiculous, the "purest" (and I use this term lightly as there is no such thing as a pure race) are the people of Iran, Afghanistan and Balochistan more likely than not as their phenotype is closest to remains of the oldest Aryans. Armenians can count on this list as Armenians are defined by the term Armenoid which seems to be the dominant phenotype of the northern Near East (I am not an anthropologist with DNA and anthropometry, so I could be incorrect on this one)

Aryan's defination has changed in the western world because of ww2, prior to that it did mean Indo-European. Now adays it is politically incorrect to speak of races, much less call someone Aryan.

No one is contesting that Armenians only have Aryan blood, of course there is Caucasian too (Caucasian in the sense of the tribes from there not the racial term). The Armenian ethnogenesis is a mix of the two. The Germans are a part of the Germanic group which has come to be the second largest Indo-European group, of course the natives of Europe were invaded and assimilated with the invading Indo-Europeans, therefore they too have a mix and their language, culture and religion came to resemble the Proto-Indo-European one. The same happened in India as well. The point remains that the Armenian Highlands were the home of the Proto-Indo-Europeans and of all the IE groups the one that would lead to the Armenians stayed there and did not migrate. One of the theories as to why the migrations happened in the first place is because of overpopulation.

Indo-European is a lingustic group as well as racial, it is a sub race of the Caucasoid race. I'm not sure what you are getting at with the Finnish and Hungarian example, yes both are Caucasoid, and the turks are a mix of Mongoloids and Caucasoids, so what? Most turks now have more IE blood than Mongol/turkic.

And I agree, there is no such thing as a pure race, just some ethnic groups have breed and assimilated with various ethnic groups more than others.

If you have not read Martiros Kavoukjians book "Armenia, Subartu and Sumer" I urge you to. Also check out the site that I recommended above.

[Pedro Xaramillo]

Re: Aryan Roots Save Armenians from Nazi Extermination

Bro, you are seriously mistaken. I don't know where you got that info but it is comments like that which causes people to think Aryan and Aryanism is something made up by the nazi's.

First off, Armenia is THE homeland of the Aryans aka Indo-Europeans. Armenians have been a kingdom and people for longer than Persia, and there is not 3 kinds of Aryans. There are several branches and a number of them are closely inter-related.

Check out www.Armenianhighlands.com and learn some stuff

Well originally it was a religious caste term, meaning he/she who radiates light from within (Sanskrit and Pakrit sources), Aryan in linguistics and culture actually does not refer to all Indo-Europeans, just Indo-Iranians, Armenians by way of the Hittites and Persia are to an extent Aryan, but have Hurrian/Urartian ancestry and culture too.

The Nazi vision of the blond haired blue eyed Aryan is fictious, the Germans are of most non Indo European stock who learned an Indo European language due to Indo European migrations and intermixing, same reason there are extremely dark Indo Europeans in India.

It has of course nothing to do with race, a Hungarian is white, so is a Finn, yet both are Ural-Altaic, Turks today are Caucasoid yet originally were Mongoloid, hence the Nazi idea of things is ridiculous, the "purest" (and I use this term lightly as there is no such thing as a pure race) are the people of Iran, Afghanistan and Balochistan more likely than not as their phenotype is closest to remains of the oldest Aryans. Armenians can count on this list as Armenians are defined by the term Armenoid which seems to be the dominant phenotype of the northern Near East (I am not an anthropologist with DNA and anthropometry, so I could be incorrect on this one)

[Parskahay]

Re: Aryan Roots Save Armenians from Nazi Extermination

yes i know all of them they mean all of aryans in word
the ones i told you are only aryans who migrated from iran or still live here and the names are iranian
im not so good at history but i heard persians have a 2500 counted years of kingdom(there is more that couldnt counted)and we were with them.most of us were zartosht(old persian religion) and very friendly relations we had but our changing into christianity and their change to islam stop it and we get so far from each other persians are raciest as well this is a fact they hate turks but they like us for only this reason i may suck at other parts of history but im sure about this

[Armanen]

Re: Aryan Roots Save Armenians from Nazi Extermination

there are 3 type of aryan in the wold
mehr:its us armenians we get it from living with persians long ago
pars:the persian people and some indians too
germuds:germany
these names are the oldest
the pure one is pars.germuds get mixed with alot of european nations and we armenians are living with persians since many years b.C and till now we get aryan blood from them
and no matter how hard you try to not be raciest aryan race is a little among all others with its culture and history im a parskahay i know their history fully i dont know do you know "hafez" or "ferdousi" they are the culture itself and their unique year count system and etc...
we must be proud to have aryan blood but not as proud as we are ARMENIAN

Bro, you are seriously mistaken. I don't know where you got that info but it is comments like that which causes people to think Aryan and Aryanism is something made up by the nazi's.

First off, Armenia is THE homeland of the Aryans aka Indo-Europeans. Armenians have been a kingdom and people for longer than Persia, and there is not 3 kinds of Aryans. There are several branches and a number of them are closely inter-related.

Check out www.Armenianhighlands.com and learn some stuff

[Parskahay]

Re: Aryan Roots Save Armenians from Nazi Extermination

there are 3 type of aryan in the wold
mehr:its us armenians we get it from living with persians long ago
pars:the persian people and some indians too
germuds:germany
these names are the oldest
the pure one is pars.germuds get mixed with alot of european nations and we armenians are living with persians since many years b.C and till now we get aryan blood from them
and no matter how hard you try to not be raciest aryan race is a little among all others with its culture and history im a parskahay i know their history fully i dont know do you know "hafez" or "ferdousi" they are the culture itself and their unique year count system and etc...
we must be proud to have aryan blood but not as proud as we are ARMENIAN

[hagopn]

Re: Aryan Roots Save Armenians from Nazi Extermination

Dude, you are just dishing outdated western BS. Armenia, as a nation, was establish at least a couple of thousand years before the date you provided. The name of our nation - "Armenia" or "Hayq" - were not always known as such. Just like there never was a country called "Greece," "Germany" or "Italy" until the 19th century. But were there Greeks, Germans or Italians alive prior to the 19th century? And Sumarians were essentially proto-Armenians. Evidence points to their origins in the Armenian Highlands or the Caucasus. Nevertheless, look into the historiography of the Armenian Highlands and the advanced civilizations it hosted, civilization that predated Egypt and Sumeria by thousands of years - Metsamor, Karahunge, Shenkavit, Agarak, MokhraBlur, Ughtasar, Catal Huyuk, Gobekli Tepe, and many others.

By the way, did you know that Sumerians worshiped a twin peaked mountain to their north called Massu? Or that Sumeria had close economic/cultural relations with a land to their north called Arrata? Or that our language and the Sumerian language share around two hundred words?

According to some Armenian and European scholars within the field in question, the following statements are either accepted as corroborated facts yet to be disproved by other discoveries elsewhere, or very likely speculation and/or theories that yet need to be corroborated through additional research. Thus, based on the evaluation of various scholarly and scientific disciplines, the vicinity of the Armenian Highlands is said to be:

The earliest location where agriculture is said to have been developed and certain staple grains and fruits domesticated.

The earliest location where animal domestication and animal husbandry is said to have been practiced.

The earliest location where wheeled transportation is said to have been implemented.

The earliest location where cyclopic walls and stone constructed dwelling have been unearthed.

The earliest location where town planning is said to have been implemented

The earliest location where metal smelting is said to have taken place.

The earliest location where mankind is said to have developed a keen understanding of movements of the stars and the planets.

The earliest location where gods and goddesses of certain Indo European nation's such as the Celtic, Slavic, Germanic and Greco-Roman have their primordial predecessors.

The location where Babylonian/Sumerian and Hebrew sacred texts indicate that civilization/mankind was first "created" by a supreme God.

The location where Babylonian/Sumerian and Hebrew sacred texts indicate the earth was repopulated after a great flood that devastated the world.

The location where, according to Hebrew sacred scripture, God is said to have changed the languages of mankind, thus, scattering them to the far corners of the world. (Note: In my opinion, this is most probably an ancient metaphor describing the Indo-European language diffusion that occurred within the region at approximately around the same time period as the biblical tale.)

Anyway, here are some information on archaeological sites in Asia Minor that predate Egypt and Sumeria.

Metsamor: http://www.tacentral.com/history/metsamor.htm

Karahunge: http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=Zorakarer

Göbekli Tepe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

Çatalhöyük http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87atalh%C3%B6y%C3%BCk

This website has a lot of resources: http://www.tacentral.com/history.asp#

If interested, check out this blog as well: http://arevordi.blogspot.com/

Also, let me humbly add another important point that you will like and us:

The older tribes which eventually developed into larger national groupings, such as the comparatively younger (to Armenian) Celts, the Germanic groupings and so on, were confederate in their political mindset. They understsood a "higher king among kings" as an expediency for defense upon **"Cato's Call" situations, but retained any possibly amount of local autonomy in governing their territory and resources.

This is something that is still applied in modern republican states such as the US itself, but this decentralized authority concept is losing its grip and yielding to centralized authority, which automatically yields dictatorships.

Armenians, as an older political existence, knew this and avoided central autocracies except as temporary defense required. Same went with Rome and the semi-legendary Cato the Farmer who was appointed dictator only in time of war, and then resumed his duties as a farmer immediately after volutarily resigning his Dictator's post.

Totay such an identification with the Nation at this level is unheard of, except among Armenians. The very Garegin Nzhdeh brought is one prime example of losing the personal identity and assuming the Nation Leader in War Time. Recall that upon governing the Zangezur region in time of desperate war, which he led to victory against all odds, he, much like Cato, immediately resigned his dictator's position and pushed for elections of government.

That there were many "states" within the Armenian Nation, therefore, is not evidence of "lack of nationhood." Just the opposite, it is strong evidence of a primordially developed nationality, which is typically confederate in political character, affording much more local and individual (smaller group) freedom than a centralized Empire or strongly federated "republic" (which is not democracy but an oligarchy in actual practice).