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The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Linguists typically classify Armenian as an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. Some Indo-Europeanists, notably Clackson (1994), have proposed that Armenian may have been grouped together with the Hellenic branch (Greek). This is called the Graeco-Armenian Hypothesis, in combination with a Graeco-Aryan hypothesis (Renfrew, Clackson and Fortson 1994).

The earliest testimony of the Armenian language dates to the 5th century AD (the Bible translation of Mesrob Mashtots). The earlier history of the language is unclear and the subject of much speculation.

 

Armenian Apostolic Church

 

Saint Bartholomew

 

Saint Jude

 

Khachkar

 

 

Links to Articles

* Culture of Armenia

* Armenian Architecture

* Armenian Literature

* Music of Armenia

* Armenian Dance

* Armenian Cuisine

 

The Apricot was first cultivated in India in about 3000 BC. In Armenia it was known from ancient times; having been brought along the Silk Road; it has been cultivated there so long it is often thought to be native there.

The native range is somewhat uncertain due to its extensive prehistoric cultivation, but most likely is northern and western China and Central Asia and possibly also Korea and Japan.

 

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Coat of arms of Armenia
(In the center is a depiction of Mount Ararat with Noah's Ark sitting atop it)

 

Armenia

Armenia has been populated since prehistoric times, and has been proposed as the site of the Biblical Garden of Eden.

The Garden of Eden is described in the Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, lived after they were created by God. This garden forms part of the creation story and theodicy of the Abrahamic religions.

The phrase "Garden of Eden" is often used to describe any peaceful place, or a state of perfect happiness or bliss.

 

Hittite Kingdom
18th century BC - 1180 BC

 

An Urartian cauldron

Kingdom of Urartu
1350 BC–590 BC

 

Kingdom of Armenia
190 BC – AD 428

 

Tigranes the Great

Tigranes the Great (ruled 95 BC–55 BC) was a king of Armenia under whom the country became, for a short time, the strongest state east of the Roman Republic.

A recent ABC News article on May 19, 2004 noted that according to the Armenian and Italian researchers the "symbol on his crown that features a star with a curved tail may represent the passage of Halley's Comet in 87 BC."

 

Saint Mesrop Mashtots

Saint Mesrop Mashtots (361 or 362, Hatsik, in Taron - February 17, 440, Echmiadzin) was an Armenian monk, theologian and linguist. He is best known for having invented the Armenian alphabet

 

Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia
1080–1375

The Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia was a state formed in the Middle Ages by Armenian refugees fleeing the Seljuk invasion of Armenia. It was located on the Gulf of Alexandretta of the Mediterranean Sea in what is today southern Turkey.

ARMENIAN

Excerpts from Wikipedia.org

 

The Armenians (Armenian: Հայեր, Hayer) are a nation and ethnic group originating in the Caucasus and in the Armenian Highlands. A large concentration of them has remained there, especially in Armenia, but many of them are also scattered elsewhere throughout the world (see Armenian diaspora). The Armenians have had a significant presence in countries such as Georgia, Iran, Russia, and Ukraine due to their proximity to Armenia. After the Armenian Genocide, a large influx of survivors fled to France, the United States, Argentina, the Levant and other countries that welcomed the Armenians. There are an estimated 8 million Armenians around the world.

Christianized in the early 4th century, Arsacid Armenia became the first Christian nation, although Christianity had begun to spread in Armenia soon after Christ's death, due to the efforts of two of his apostles, St. Thaddeus and St. Bartholomew, thus most Armenians adhere to the Armenian Apostolic Church, a Non-Chalcedonian church. They speak two different, but mutually intelligible dialects of their language: Eastern Armenian, spoken mainly in Armenia, Iran and the former Soviet republics, and Western Armenian, spoken primarily in the Armenian diaspora.

Etymology: Historically, the name Armenian has come to internationally designate this group of people. It was first used by neighboring countries of ancient Armenia. It is traditionally derived from Armenak or Aram (the great-grandson of Haik's great-grandson, and another leader who is, according to Armenian tradition, the ancestor of all Armenians). However, Armenians call themselves Hay (Հայ, pronounced Hye; plural: Հայեր, Hayer). The word has traditionally been linked to the name of the legendary founder of the Armenian nation, Haik, which is also a popular Armenian name.

Origins: Armenia lies in the highlands surrounding the Biblical mountains of Ararat, upon which, according to Judeo-Christian history, Noah's Ark came to rest after the flood. (Gen. 8:4). In the Bronze Age, several states flourished in the area of Greater Armenia, including the Hittite Empire (at the height of its power), Mitanni (South-Western historical Armenia), and Hayasa-Azzi (1600-1200 BC). Soon after the Hayasa-Azzi were the Nairi (1400-1000 BC) and the Kingdom of Urartu (1000-600 BC), who successively established their sovereignty over the Armenian Highlands. Each of the aforementioned nations and tribes participated in the ethnogenesis of the Armenian people. Yerevan, the modern capital of Armenia, was founded in 782 BC by king Argishti I.

In 1984, it was suggested by Thomas Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav V. Ivanov that the Proto-Indo-European homeland is located in the Armenian Highland.

Presence in Armenia: Armenians have had a presence in the Armenian Highland for over four thousand years, since the time when Haik, the legendary patriarch and founder of the first Armenian nation, led them to victory over Bel of Babylon. Today, with a population of 3.5 million, they not only constitute an overwhelming majority in Armenia, but also in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenians in the diaspora informally refer to them as Hayastantsis (Հայաստանցի), meaning those that are from Armenia (that is, they or their ancestors were not forced to flee in 1915). They, as well as the Armenians of Iran and Russia speak the Eastern dialect of the Armenian language. The country itself is secular as a result of Soviet domination, but most of its citizens are Apostolic Armenian Christian.

* Videos: Armenia, Incredible Armenia, Armenia,

 

Western Armenia

Western Armenia also referred to as Byzantine Armenia, later Turkish Armenia, or Ottoman Armenia is a term coined following the division of Greater Armenia between Byzantine Empire (Western Armenia) and Persia (Eastern Armenia) in 387 AD.

Western (Ottoman) Armenia was composed of six vilayets (vilâyat-ı sitte), the vilayets of Erzurum, Van, Bitlis, Diyarbekir, Kharput, and Sivas. During the collapse of Ottoman Empire Western Armenia remained under Turkish rule, and in 1894–96 and 1915 the Ottoman Empire perpetrated systematic massacres and forced deportations of Armenians resulting in the Armenian Genocide. The Administration for Western Armenia (Free Vaspurakan) was a provisional Armenian government in areas of Western Armenia under Russian occupation from 1915–1918.

After the Armenian genocide the distinct Western Armeniandialect of the Armenian language (recognized as one of the major dialects of Armenian) is spoken primarily in Istanbul, Lebanon, Egypt, other parts of Armenian diaspora, and formerly in eastern Turkey.

The fate of Western Armenia — commonly referred to as "The Armenian Question" — is considered as a key issue in the modern history of the Armenian people. The first and second congresses of Western Armenians took place in Yerevan in 1917 and 1919. Since 2000, an organizing committee of congress of heirs of Western Armenians who survived the Armenian Genocide is active in diasporan communities.

* Video: Western Armenia

 

Eastern Anatolia Region

Eastern Anatolia Region encompasses the eastern provinces of Turkey,. The region and the name of "Doğu Anadolu Bölgesi" were first defined at the First Geography Congress in 1941. It has the highest average altitude, largest area and lowest population density of all regions of Turkey.

The total population of the region is 6,100,000 (2000 census). The rural population is larger than the urban population. The migration level (to the other regions, especially to Marmara Region) is high and population density (35 person/km²) is lower than the average for Turkey (85 person/km²).

Eastern Anatolia Region is located in the easternmost part of Anatolia, Turkey. It is bounded by; Central Anatolia Region to the west, Black Sea Region to the north, Southeast Anatolia Region and Iraq to the south and; Iran, Nakhichevan and Armenia to the east.

The area of the region is 171.061 km² which is 21% of the total area of Turkey.

Provinces

• Ağrı Province
• Ardahan Province
• Bingöl Province
• Bitlis Province
• Elazığ Province
• Erzincan Province
• Erzurum Province
• Hakkari Province
• Iğdır Province
• Kars Province
• Malatya Province
• Muş Province
• Tunceli Province
• Van Province
• Sivas Divriği

 

Videos: Turkey Eastern Anatolia, A Train Trip from Istanbul to Eastern Anatolia

 

 

 

Mount Ararat

 

Mount Ararat is the tallest peak in present day Turkey with an elevation of 5,137 metres (16,854 ft). Mount Ararat has always historically belonged to the Armenians, dating its ownership back to Noah's Ark, and later the Kingdom of Ararat, who are the ancestors of the Armenian people. This snow-capped, dormant volcanic cone is located in the Iğdır Province, near the northeast corner of Turkey, 16 km (10 mi) west of the Iranian and 32 km (20 mi) south of the Armenian border. The Ararat plain runs along its northwest to western side. The mountain is a national symbol of Armenia. It can be seen from part of the contemporary Republic of Armenia.

History: Over the centuries, the area has been contested territory between several states but has always historically belonged to the Armenian people. The first unified state to rule the region surrounding the mountain was the ancient Kingdom of Ararat (Urartu), the ancestors of the Armenians. After the decline of Urartu following invasions by Scythians and the Medes in 585 BC, a semi-independent Armenian state emerged under the rule of the Orontid Dynasty, the first known Armenian dynasty. After the defeat of the Achaemenids by Alexander the Great in 330 BC, the Orontids gained autonomy, albeit under Macedonian influence.

According to a legend, a Roman emperor ordered a number of Roman soldiers who converted to Christianity (now called ten thousand martyrs of Mount Ararat) to be crucified on Mount Ararat.

Antiochus the Great briefly subjugated Armenia in 201 BC, ending Orontid rule in the region. After the defeat of Antiochus in the Battle of Magnesia, a new independent Armenian Kingdom emerged in 198 BC that lasted for over six centuries, until 428, when it was briefly being annexed to the Roman Empire by Trajan from 114 to 118. Following the partition of Armenia between the Roman Empire and Sassanid Persia in 428, the region was a constant battleground between the two, and afterwards between the Arab Caliphate and the Byzantine Empire.

Ararat became part of the territory of the Armenian Kingdom of Ani under the Bagratuni Dynasty early in the ninth century A.D., which was then annexed by Byzantium in 1045. It then lost the territory to the Seljuk Turks following the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. The Georgian Kingdom took the region from the Seljuks from the late 12th century to the early 13th century, until various Mongol rulers of the Ilkhanate, including Tamerlane, took control of the area in the 13th and 14th centuries. The region was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1517 and often fought over and taken by the Safavids. In 1855 the northern side of the mountain became part of the Russian Empire, the southern side remained within the Ottoman Empire.

Dr. Friedrich Parrot, with the help of Khachatur Abovian, was the first explorer in modern times to reach the summit of Mount Ararat, subsequent to the onset of Russian rule in 1829. He was followed in 1856 by a group of five explorers led by Major Robert Stuart.

In 1918, in the aftermath of World War I, the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the October Revolution, the area became part of the Democratic Republic of Armenia, but the republic was short-lived. With the invasion of the Red Army, the area became part of the Soviet Union. Following the Treaty of Kars in 1923, the area was divided up between Turkey and the USSR, and the new border, which became internationally recognised, placed Ararat on the Turkish side of the border. At that time, Armenia was joined together with Georgia and Azerbaijan as part of the Transcaucasian SFSR. When the TSFSR was dissolved in 1936 and each of the three countries became separate Soviet Republics (Armenian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, and Georgian SSR), Armenia depicted Ararat on its coat of arms. Turkey protested against this symbolic gesture on the grounds that Ararat was part of its territory, but the Kremlin refused to take action (a well known tale exists about the Soviet representative asking if Turkey can claim as part of its territory the object featured on its coat of arms - the crescent Moon and a star).

* Video: AĞRI DAĞI - MOUNT ARARAT - MASIS

Mount Ararat was depicted on the reverse of the Turkish 100 lira banknotes of 1972-1986

Symbolism for Armenians: Ararat dominates the skyline of Armenia's capital, Yerevan. Since ancient times, Ararat has been revered by the Armenians as their spiritual home and as the home of the gods of the Armenian pantheon. Today, it is the national symbol of Armenia, being featured in the center of the Coat of Arms of Armenia. In 1937, a coat of arms was adopted. This coat prominently featured Mount Ararat along with the Soviet hammer and sickle and red star behind it. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a slightly modified version of the Democratic Republic of Armenia's coat of arms was adopted and has remained in place ever since. The 2002 film Ararat (video) by Armenian filmmaker Atom Egoyan features Mt. Ararat prominently in its symbolism.

Searches for Noah's Ark: From at least the time of Eusebius (c. 275 – 339 AD) to the present day, the search for the physical remains of Noah's Ark has held a fascination for Christians, Jews and Muslims. Despite many rumours, claims of sightings and expeditions no scientific evidence of the ark has ever been found.

Noah's Ark is the huge vessel described in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament book of Genesis and the Qur'an, through which the Hebrew God saved Noah, together with the other seven members of his family, plus representatives of all the species of animals, from a cataclysmic flood with which he wished to exterminate all other life on Earth. It is described as 300 cubits long, or approximately 450 feet (137 m) - considerably longer than any wooden vessel ever built in historical times. According to Genesis 8:4, the Ark came to rest "in the mountains of Ararat,"

Ark searchers have had little to guide them to the Ark beyond Genesis' mention of the "mountains of Ararat". By the middle of the 19th century, archaeologists had identified a 1st-millennium BC kingdom and region of Urartu, contemporaneous with the Assyrian empire and the early kingdoms of Judah and Israel, located in the mountains of present-day Armenia and eastern Turkey.

Marco Polo (1254-1324) wrote in his book, The Travels of Marco Polo:

In the heart of Greater Armenia is a very high mountain shaped like a cube (or cup), on which Noah's ark is said to have rested, whence it is called the Mountain of Noah's Ark. It [the mountain] is so broad and long that it takes more than two days to go around it. On the summit the snow lies so deep all the year round that no one can ever climb it; this snow never entirely melts, but new snow is for ever falling on the old, so that the level rises.

In 2007, a joint Turkish-Hong Kong expedition claimed to find an unusual cave with fossilized wooden walls on Mount Ararat, well above the vegetation line. This 2007 expedition marked the first time in history that an alleged material sample of Noah's Ark was retrieved for lab analysis; the sample was determined by the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Hong Kong to be petrified wood, although the origin of the material remains uncertain

 

 

Armenian Highland

 

The Armenian Highland is a plateau of Transcaucasia, connecting the Lesser Caucasus with the Taurus Mountains.

Its total area is about 400,000 km². At an average elevation of 1500 to 2000 metres, its highest point is Mount Ararat, 5,165 metres (16,945 ft). It is a mixture of lava plateaus, volcanic cones, and fault-fold ranges featuring mountain steppes and semi-deserts. There are a number of lakes in tectonic depressions (Lake Sevan, Lake Van, Lake Urmia).

Most of the Armenian Highland is in Turkey's Eastern Anatolia Region (Doğu Anadolu Bölgesi), and also includes northwestern Iran, all of Armenia, southern Georgia and western Azerbaijan. Its eastern parts are also known as the Transcaucasian highland ("Zakavkazkoye nagorye").

The Armenian Plateau has been called the "epicenter of the Iron Age", since it appears to be the location of the first appearance of Iron Age metallurgy in the late 2nd millennium BC.

The apricot, a native to China, spread to Europe through the Armenia Highlands. It came to be known throughout the ancient world as the Armenian fruit, and its botanical name Prunus armeniaca, derives from the Latin vernacular for apricot, Armeniacum.

In the 1980s, the ministry of education in Turkey ordered that names that could be conceived as reminiscent of pre-Turkic peoples of Anatolia like "Armenian highland" (Armenians) and "Pontic range" (Pontic Greeks) be effaced in atlases in Turkish schools. The official term of the plateau in Turkish usage is "Eastern Anatolian Highland".

 

 

Bronze Age Collapse

The Bronze Age collapse is the name given by those historians who see the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age, as violent, sudden and culturally disruptive, expressed by the collapse of palace economies of the Aegean and Anatolia, which were replaced after a hiatus by the isolated village cultures of the Dark Ages period of history of the Ancient Near East. The Bronze Age collapse may be seen in the context of a technological history that saw the slow, comparatively continuous spread of iron-working technology in the region, beginning with precocious iron-working in what is now Romania in the 13th and 12th centuries BC. The cultural collapse of the Mycenaean kingdoms, the Hittite Empire in Anatolia and Syria, and the Egyptian Empire in Syria and Canaan, bringing the interruption of long-distance trade contacts and sudden eclipse of literacy, occurred between 1206 and 1150 BC. In the first phase of this period, almost every city between Troy and Gaza was violently destroyed, and often left unoccupied thereafter: examples include Hattusa, Mycenae, Ugarit.

Anatolia: Every site important during the preceding Late Bronze Age shows a destruction layer, and it appears that here civilization did not recover to the same level as that of the Hittites for another thousand years. Hattusas, the Hittite capital, was burned and abandoned, and never reoccupied. Karaoglan was burned and the corpses left unburied. Troy was destroyed at least twice, before being abandoned until Roman times.

Levant: Egyptian evidence shows that from the reign of Horemheb, wandering Shasu were more problematic. Ramesses II campaigned against them, pursuing them as far as Moab, where he established a fortress, after the near collapse at the Battle of Kadesh. These Shasu were problematic, particularly when during the reign of Merneptah, they threatened the "Way of Horus" north from Gaza. Evidence shows that Deir Alla (Succoth) was destroyed after the reign of Queen Twosret. The destroyed site of Lachish was briefly reoccupied by squatters and an Egyptian garrison, during the reign of Ramesses III. All centres along the sea route, now being called Via Maris, from Gaza north were destroyed, and evidence shows Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Akko, and Jaffa were burned and not reoccupied for up to thirty years. Inland Hazor, Bethel, Beit Shemesh, Eglon, Debir, and other sites were destroyed. Refugees escaping the collapse of coastal centres may have fused with incoming nomadic and Anatolian elements to begin the growth of terraced hillside hamlets in the highlands region, that was associated with the later development of the state of Israel.

Mesopotamia: The cities of Norsuntepe, Emar and Carchemish were destroyed, and the Assyrians narrowly escaped an invasion by Mushki tribes during the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I. With the spread of Ahhlamu or Aramaeans, control of the Babylonian and Assyrian regions extended barely beyond the city limits. Babylon was sacked by the Elamites under Shutruk-Nahhunte, and lost control of the Diyala valley.

Conclusion: Robert Drews describes the collapse as "the worst disaster in ancient history, even more calamitous than the collapse of the Western Roman Empire". A number of people have spoken of the cultural memories of the disaster as stories of a "lost golden age". Hesiod for example spoke of Ages of Gold, Silver and Bronze, separated from the modern harsh cruel world of the Age of Iron by the Age of Heroes.

Nature and Causes of Destruction

As part of the Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age Dark Ages, it was a period associated with the collapse of central authorities, a general depopulation, particularly of highly urban areas, the loss of literacy in Anatolia and the Aegean, and its restriction elsewhere, the disappearance of established patterns of long-distance international trade, increasingly vicious intra-elite struggles for power, and reduced options for the elite if not for the general mass of population.

There are various theories put forward to explain the situation of collapse, many of them compatible with each other.

Migrations and Raids: Ekrem Akurgal, Gustav Lehmann and Fritz Schachermeyer, following the views of Gaston Maspero have argued on the basis of the wide spread findings of Naue II-type swords coming from South Eastern Europe, and Egyptian records of "northerners from all the lands"

The Ugarit correspondence draws attention to such groups as the mysterious Sea Peoples. Equally, translation of the preserved Linear B documents in the Aegean, just before the collapse, demonstrates a rise in piracy and slave raiding, particularly coming from Anatolia. Egyptian fortresses along the Libyan coast, constructed and maintained after the reign of Ramesses II were constructed to reduce raiding.

Ironworking: Leonard R. Palmer suggested that iron, whilst inferior to bronze weapons, was in more plentiful supply and so allowed larger armies of iron users to overwhelm the smaller armies of bronze-using maryannu chariotry. This argument has been weakened of late with the finding that the shift to iron occurred after the collapse, not before. It now seems that the disruption of long distance trade, an aspect of "systems collapse", cut easy supplies of tin, making bronze impossible to make. Older implements were recycled and then iron substitutes were used.

On the other hand, technology cannot be so quickly dismissed as a factor. The invention of the technology of metallurgy is not generally regarded as a Paradigm Shift, in a class with the technologies of agriculture, city-building, industry and electronics. Yet metalworking had a profound impact on the course of mankind's development. Warfare on the scale with which we are familiar today was not possible when sharpened sticks and flint points and blades were the only weapons available. The first bronze swords and armor were surely regarded as "weapons of mass destruction" by the last inhabitants of stone age cities because of the carnage they made possible.

Still, the very nature of bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, forces at least a grudging equilbrium on man's violent nature. Deposits of copper ore and tin ore almost never occur in the same region. In order to make bronze, two cities a fair distance apart must maintain peaceful relations and trade raw materials with each other.

Iron metallurgy destroyed this equilibrium. Only one ore is required to make iron artifacts, and deposits of it are abundant. The only trick to smelting iron is the creation of hitherto unimaginably high temperatures, because the melting point of iron is hundreds of degrees higher than that of copper and tin. But once that information became well known, there was nothing to stop even the most uncivilized of the remaining Neolithic tribes from arming their warriors, proclaiming themselves "kingdoms," and attacking the cities. Even worse, the cities were no longer dependent on each other for complementary ores, and had no more reason to maintain peaceful relations.

The Iron Age may not have been the cause of the collapse of civilization in its first place of origin, but it is difficult to dismiss iron as a possible reason for its slow recovery.

Drought: Harvey Weis, professor of Near Eastern archeology at Yale, using the Palmer Drought Index for 35 Greek, Turkish, and Middle Eastern weather stations, showed that a drought of the kinds that persisted from January 1972 would have affected all of the sites associated with the Late Bronze Age collapse. Drought could have easily precipitated or hastened socio-economic problems and led to wars. More recently Brian Fagan, has shown how the diversion of mid-winter storms from the Atlantic were diverted to travel north of the Pyrenees and the Alps, bringing wetter conditions to Central Europe, but drought to the Eastern Mediterranean, was associated with the Late Bronze Age collapse.

Changes in Warfare: Robert Drews argues that the appearance of massed infantry, using newly developed weapons and armor, such as cast rather than forged spearheads and long swords, a revolutionizing cut-and-thrust weapon, and javelins, the appearance of bronze foundries itself suggesting "that mass production of bronze artifacts was suddenly important in the Aegean". Homer uses "spears" as a virtual synonym for "warrior" suggesting the continued importance of the spear in combat. Such new weaponry, furnished to a proto-hoplite model who were able to withstand attacks of massed chariotry, destabilized states that were based upon the use of chariots by the ruling class and precipitated an abrupt social collapse when raiders and/or infantry mercenaries were able to conquer, loot, and burn the cities.

 

 

Iron Age

The Iron Age was the stage in the development of any people in which tools and weapons whose main ingredient was iron were prominent. The adoption of this material often coincided with other changes in society, including differing agricultural practices, religious beliefs and artistic styles. In history, the Iron Age is the last principal period in the three-age system for classifying prehistoric societies, preceded by the Bronze Age. Its date and context vary depending on the country or geographical region.

Dates: Classically, the Iron Age is taken to begin in the 12th century BC in the ancient Near East, ancient Iran, ancient India (with the post-Rigvedic Vedic civilization), and ancient Greece (with the Greek Dark Ages). In other regions of Europe, it started much later. The Iron Age began in the 8th century BC in Central Europe and the 6th century BC in Northern Europe. Iron use, in smelting and forging for tools, appears in West Africa by 1200 BC, making it one of the first places for the birth of the Iron Age. (It is believed that meteoric iron, or iron-nickel alloy, was used by various ancient peoples thousands of years before the Iron Age. This iron, being in its native metallic state, required no smelting of ores.)

The Iron Age is divided into two subsections, Iron I and Iron II. Iron I (1200–1000 BC) illustrates both continuity and discontinuity with the previous Late Bronze Age. There is no definitive cultural break between the thirteenth and twelfth century throughout the entire region, although certain new features in the hill country, Transjordan and coastal region may suggest the appearance of the Aramaean and Sea People groups. There is evidence, however, that shows strong continuity with Bronze Age culture, although as one moves later into Iron I the culture begins to diverge more significantly from that of the late second millennium.

The Iron Age is usually said to end in the Mediterranean with the onset of historical tradition during Hellenism and the Roman Empire, in India with the onset of Buddhism and Jainism, in China with the onset of Confucianism, and in Northern Europe with the early Middle Ages.

Transition from Bronze to Iron: Bronze was previously used to make tools because its melting point is lower than that of iron. The Iron Age began with the development of higher temperature smelting techniques. During the Iron Age, the best tools and weapons were made from steel, an alloy consisting of iron with a carbon content between 0.02% and 1.7% by weight. Steel weapons and tools were nearly the same weight as those of bronze, but stronger. However, steel was difficult to produce with the methods available. Therefore, many Iron Age tools were fashioned of wrought iron. Wrought iron is weaker than bronze, but because it was less expensive, and more easily sharpened, people used it anyway. Iron is by itself an adequately strong metal without additional alloys. Bronze, on the other hand, requires copper and tin, which are less common than iron. Additionally, iron can be sharpened by grinding whereas bronze must be reforged.

Around 1800 BC, for reasons yet unknown to archaeologists, tin became scarce in the Levant, causing a decline in bronze production. Copper, also, came to be in short supply. As a result, pirate groups around the Mediterranean, from around 1800–1700 BC onward, began to attack fortified cities in search of bronze, to remelt into weaponry.

Bronze was much more abundant in the period before the 12th to 10th century and Snodgrass suggests that a shortage of tin, as a result of the trade disruptions in the Mediterranean at this time, forced peoples to seek an alternative to bronze. That many bronze items were recycled and made from implements into weapons during this time, is evidence of this.

Ancient Near East: The Iron Age in the Ancient Near East is believed to have begun with the discovery of iron smelting and smithing techniques in Anatolia or the Caucasus in the late 2nd millennium BC (circa 1300 BC).

The use of iron weapons instead of bronze weapons spread rapidly throughout the Near East by the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. Anatolians had begun forging weapons out of iron, which was a superior metal to bronze, by 1500 BC at the latest.

The use of iron weapons by the Hittites was believed to have been a major factor in the rapid rise of the Hittite Empire. Because the area in which iron technology first developed was near the Aegean, the technology expanded into both Asia and Europe simultaneously, aided by Hittite expansion. The Sea Peoples and the related Philistines are often associated with the introduction of iron technology into Asia, as are the Dorians with respect to Greece.

As stated in the Bible, the Philistines maintained a monopoly on iron working, keeping their Israelite neighbors in military inferiority and economic dependance. A major objective of the Hebrews' prolonged wars with the Philistines, recounted in the Book of Samuel, was to obtain the iron-working technology - an aim achieved by the later time of King David.

Iron Age China: The Iron Age in Ancient China began in ca. 600 BC, and is taken to last until the beginning of Early Imperial China and the rise of the Qin Dynasty in the 3rd century BC. This corresponds to the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods of Chinese history.

In 1972, near the city of Gaocheng (藁城) in Shijiazhuang (now Hebei province), an iron-bladed bronze tomahawk (铁刃青铜钺) dating back to the 14th century BC was excavated. After a scientific examination, the iron was shown to be made from meteoric iron. The Iron Age in East Asia began in earnest, however, when cast-iron objects appeared in Yangzi Valley toward the end of the 6th century BC. The few objects were found at Changsha and Nanjing. According to the mortuary evidence suggests that the initial use of iron in Guangdong belongs to the mid to late Warring States period (from about 350 BC).

The techniques used in Lingnan is a combination of bivalve moulds of distinct southern tradition and the incorporation of piece mould technology from the Zhongyuan The products of the combination of these two periods are bells, vessels, weapons and ornaments and the sophisticated cast.

An Iron Age culture of the Tibetan Plateau has tentatively been associated with the Zhang Zhung culture described in early Tibetan writings.

Japan: The Yayoi period is an era in the history of Japan from about 500 BC to 300 AD. Distinguishing characteristics of the Yayoi period include the appearance of new pottery styles and the start of an intensive rice agriculture in paddy fields. The Yayoi followed the Jōmon period (14,000 BC to 500 BC) and Yayoi culture flourished in a geographic area from southern Kyūshū to northern Honshū.

The succeeding Kofun period lasts from around 250 to 538. The word kofun is Japanese for the type of burial mounds dating from this era. The Kofun and the subsequent Asuka periods are sometimes referred to collectively as the Yamato period.

Korea: Iron objects were introduced to the Korean peninsula through trade with chiefdoms and state-level societies in the Yellow Sea area in the fourth century BC, just at the end of the Warring States Period but before the Western Han Dynasty began. Yoon proposes that iron was first introduced to chiefdoms located along North Korean river valleys that flow into the Yellow Sea such as the Cheongcheon and Taedong Rivers. Iron production quickly followed in the 2nd century BC, and iron implements came to be used by farmers by the 1st century AD in southern Korea. The earliest known cast-iron axes in southern Korea are found in the Geum River basin. The time that iron production begins is the same time that complex chiefdoms of Proto-historic Korea emerged. The complex chiefdoms were the precursors of early states such as Silla, Baekje, Goguryeo, and Gaya Iron ingots were an important mortuary item and indicated the wealth or prestige of the deceased in this period

Eastern Europe: The early 1st millennium BC marks the Iron Age in Eastern Europe. In the Pontic steppe and the Caucasus region, the Iron Age begins with the Koban and the Chernogorovka and Novocherkassk cultures from ca. 900 BC. By 800 BC, it was spreading to Hallstatt C via the alleged "Thraco-Cimmerian" migrations.

Along with Chernogorovka and Novocherkassk cultures, on the territory of ancient Russia and Ukraine the Iron Age is to a significant extent associated with Scythians, who developed iron culture since the 7th century BC. The majority of remains of their iron producing and blacksmith's industries from 5th to 3rd century BC was found near Nikopol in Kamenskoe Gorodishche, which is believed to be the specialized metallurgic region of the ancient Scythia.

From the Hallstatt culture, the Iron Age spreads west with the Celtic expansion from the 6th century BC. In Poland, the Iron Age reaches the late Lusatian culture in about the 6th century, followed in some areas by the Pomeranian culture.

The ethnic ascriptions of many Iron Age cultures has been bitterly contested, as the roots of Germanic, Baltic and Slavic peoples were sought in this area.

Italy: In Italy, the Iron Age was probably introduced by the Villanovan culture but this culture is otherwise considered a Bronze Age culture, while the following Etruscan civilization is regarded as part of Iron Age proper. The Etruscan Iron Age was then ended with the rise and conquest of the Roman Republic, which conquered the last Etruscan city of Velzna in 265 BC.

Northern Europe: The Iron Age is divided into the Pre-Roman Iron Age and the Roman Iron Age. This is followed by the migration period. Northern Germany and Denmark was dominated by the Jastorf culture, whereas the culture of the southern half of the Scandinavia was dominated by the very similar Gregan Iron Age.

Early Scandinavian iron production typically involved the harvesting of bog iron. Scandinavian peninsula, Finland and Estonia show sophisticated iron production very early, but further dating is currently impossible. The range varies from 3000–2000 BP. This knowledge is associated with the non-Germanic part of Scandinavia. Metalworking and Asbestos-Ceramic pottery are somewhat synonymous in Scandinavia due to the latter's capacity to resist and retain heat. The iron ore used is believed to have been iron sand (such as red soil), because its high phosphorus content can be identified in slag. They are sometimes found together with asbestos ware axes belonging to the Ananjino Culture. The Asbestos-Ceramic ware remains a mystery, because there are other adiabatic vessels with unknown usage.

 

 

Armenian Ethnogenesis

It is generally assumed that Proto-Armenian speakers entered Anatolia from around 1200 BC, ultimately deriving from a Paleo-Balkans context, and over the following centuries spread east to the Armenian Highland.

A competing theory suggested by Thomas Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav V. Ivanov in 1984 places the Proto-Indo-European homeland in the Armenian Highland, Armenian hypothesis, which would entail the presence of (pre-) Proto-Armenians in the area during the entire lifetime of the Urartian state.

The Armenian hypothesis of the Proto-Indo-European Urheimat, based on the Glottalic theory suggests that the Proto-Indo-European language was spoken during the 4th millennium BC in the Armenian Highland. It is an Indo-Hittite model and does not include the Anatolian languages in its scenario. The phonological peculiarities proposed in the Glottalic theory would be best preserved in the Armenian language and the Germanic languages, the former assuming the role of the dialect which remained in situ, implied to be particularly archaic in spite of its late attestation. Proto-Greek would be practically equivalent to Mycenean Greek and date to the 17th century BC, closely associating Greek migration to Greece with the Indo-Aryan migration to India at about the same time (viz., Indo-European expansion at the transition to the Late Bronze Age, including the possibility of Indo-European Kassites).

The Armenian hypothesis argues for the latest possible date of Proto-Indo-European (sans Anatolian), a full millennium later than the mainstream Kurgan hypothesis. In this, it figures as an opposite to the Anatolian hypothesis, in spite of the geographical proximity of the respective Urheimaten suggested, diverging from the timeframe suggested there by full three millennia.

After the disappearance of Urartu as a political entity, the Armenians dominated the highlands, absorbing portions of the previous Urartian culture in the process. The Armenians became, thus, the direct succesors of the kingdom of Urartu and inherited their domain.

Proto-Armenian language: The earliest testimony of the Armenian language dates to the 5th century AD (the Bible translation of Mesrob Mashtots). The earlier history of the language is unclear and the subject of much speculation. It is clear that Armenian is an Indo-European language, but its development is opaque. In any case, Armenian has many layers of loanwords and shows traces of long language contact with Hurro-Urartian, Greek and Indo-Iranian.

Much like Urartu's ethnic composition, its later period and transformation to the Orontid Kingdom of Armenia are debated among scholars.

According to Urartian cuneiforms, Sarduri III was followed by three kings—Erimena (635 - 620 BC), his son Rusa III (620 - 609 BC), and the latter's son Rusa IV (609 - 590 or 585 BC). Late during the 600's BC (during or after Sardur III's reign), Urartu was invaded by Scythians and their allies—the Medes. In 612 BC, the Median king Cyaxares conquered Assyria. Many Urartian ruins of the period show evidence of destruction by fire. This would indicate two scenarios—either Media subsequently conquered Urartu, bringing about its subsequent demise; or Urartu/Armenia maintained its independence and power, going through a mere dynastic change, as a local Armenian dynasty (later to be called the Orontids) overthrew the ruling family with the help of the Median army. Ancient sources support the latter version: Xenophon, for example, states that Armenia, ruled by an Orontid king, was not conquered until the reign of Median king Astyages (585 - 550 BC) – long after Median invasion of the late 7th century BC. Similarly, Strabo (1st c. BC - 1st c AD) wrote that "[i]n ancient times Greater Armenia ruled the whole of Asia, after it broke up the empire of the Syrians, but later, in the time of Astyages, it was deprived of that great authority ..."

Furthermore, according to the Old Testament, as late as 593 BC, prophet Jeremiah called on the kingdom of Ararat and its Median allies to conquer Babylon (Jeremiah 51:27), suggesting that at the time Ararat/Urartu/Armenia was still powerful enough to conquer the Babylonian Empire. Finally, early Armenian chronicles corroborate the Greek and Hebrew sources. In particular, Movses Khorenatsi writes that Armenian prince Paruyr Skayordi helped the Median king Cyaxares conquer Assyria, for which Cyaxares recognized him as the king of Armenia, while Media conquered Armenia only much later—under Astyages. It is possible that the last Urartian king, Rusa IV, had connections to the future incoming Armenian Orontids dynasty.

Urartu was destroyed in either 590 BC or 585 BC. The end of Urartu was violent; many of its fortresses were burned down. By the late sixth century, the Urartians had certainly been replaced by the Armenians.

 

Kingdom of Armenia

The Orontid Dynasty was the first known Armenian dynasty. The Orontids established their supremacy over Armenia around the time of the Scythian and Median invasion in the 6th century BC. Their descendants continued their rule in the Kingdom of Sophene for a short while and in Commagene until 72 AD.

The Kingdom of Armenia (or Greater Armenia) was an independent kingdom from 190 BC to AD 387 and a client state of the Roman and Persian empires until 428, stretching from the Caspian to the Mediterranean seas.

The predecessor of the kingdom was the Satrapy of Armenia ("Armina" in Old Persian, "Harminuya" in Elamite, and "Urartu" in the Bablylonian parts of Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great), which was a protectorate of the Achaemenid Empire, and later an independent kingdom under the Orontid Dynasty (with Macedonian influence).

After the destruction of the Seleucid Empire, a Hellenistic Armenian state was founded in 190 BC by Artaxias I. At its zenith, from 95 to 66 BC, Armenia extended its rule over parts of the Caucasus and the area that is now eastern Turkey, Syria and Lebanon. For a time, Armenia was one of the most powerful states in the Roman East. It came under the Ancient Roman sphere of influence in 66 BC, after the battle of Tigranocerta and the final defeat of Armenia's ally, Mithridates VI of Pontus. Mark Antony invaded and defeated the kingdom in 34 BC, but Romans lost hegemony during the Final war of the Roman Republic in 32-30 BC. In 20 BC, Augustus negotiated a truce with the Parthians, making Armenia a buffer zone between the two major powers.

Subsequently, Armenia was often a focus of contention between Rome and Persia, with both major powers supporting opposing sovereigns and usurpers. The Parthians forced Armenia into submission in 37 AD, but in 47 the Romans retook control of the kingdom.

Under Nero, the Romans fought a campaign (55-63) against the Parthian Empire, which had invaded the Kingdom of Armenia, allied with the Romans. After gaining Armenia in 60, then losing it in 62, the Romans sent the legion XV Apollinaris from Pannonia to Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, legatus of Syria. In 63, strengthened further by the legions III Gallica, V Macedonica, X Fretensis and XXII, General Corbulo entered into the territories of Vologases I of Parthia, who then returned the Armenian kingdom to Tiridates.

Another campaign was led by Emperor Lucius Verus in 162-165, after Vologases IV of Parthia had invaded Armenia and installed his chief general on its throne. To counter the Parthian threat, Verus set out for the east. His army won significant victories and retook the capital. Sohaemus, a Roman citizen of Armenian heritage, was installed as the new client king. But during an epidemic within the Roman forces, Parthians retook most of their lost territory in 166. Sohaemus retreated to Syria, аnd Arsacid’s dynasty was restored power over Armenia.

After the fall of the Arsacid Dynasty in Persia, the succeeding Sassanian Dynasty aspired to reestablish Persian control. The Sassanid Persians occupied Armenia in 252. However, in 287, Tiridetes III the Great was established King of Armenia by the Roman armies. He soon accepted Christianity. The traditional date is in 301, earlier than many historians date Constantine the Great's conversion, and a dozen years prior to the Edict of Milan.

In 387, the Kingdom of Armenia was split between the East Roman Empire and the Persians. Western Armenia quickly became a province of the Roman Empire under the name of Armenia Minor; Eastern Armenia remained a kingdom within Persia until 428, when the local nobility overthrew the king, and the Sassanids installed a governor in his place.

By the second century BC, the population of Greater Armenia spoke Armenian, implying that today’s Armenians are the direct descendants of those speakers.

 

 

Kurgan

Scythian royal Alexandropol (Gümri in Armenia) kurgan C14 dated 394-366 BC, before excavation in 1852-6

Kurgan (Russian: курган) is the Russian word (of Turkic origin) for a tumulus, a type of burial mound or barrow, heaped over a burial chamber, often of wood. The distribution of such tumuli in Eastern Europe corresponds closely to the area of the Pit Grave or Kurgan culture in South-Eastern Europe.

Kurgans were built in the Eneolithic, Bronze, Iron, Antiquity and Middle Age, with old traditions still smoldering in Southern Siberia and Central Asia. Kurgan Cultures are divided, archeologically, into different sub-cultures, such as Timber Grave, Pit Grave, Scythian, Sarmatian, Hunnish and Kuman-Kipchak.

Archaeology: Kurgan barrows were characteristic of Bronze Age peoples, from the Altay Mountains to the Caucasus, Romania, and Bulgaria. Burial mounds are complex structures with internal chambers. Within the burial chamber at the heart of the kurgan, elite individuals were buried with grave goods and sacrificial offerings, sometimes including horses and chariots. Kurgans were used in the Russian Steppes but spread into eastern, central, and northern Europe in the third millennium BC.

The monuments of these cultures coincide with Scythian-Saka-Siberian monuments. Scythian-Saka-Siberian monuments have common features, and sometimes common genetic roots. Also associated with these spectacular burial mounds are the Pazyryk, an ancient people who lived in the Altai Mountains lying in Siberian Russia on the Ukok Plateau, near the borders with China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The archaeological site on the Ukok Plateau associated with the Pazyryk culture is included in the Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Scythian-Saka-Siberian classification includes monuments from the 8th c. BC to the 3rd c. BC. This period is called Early or Ancient Nomads epoch. "Hunnic" monuments date from the 3rd c. BC to the 6th century AD, and other Turkic ones from the 6th century AD to the 13th century AD, leading up to the Mongolian epoch. In all periods, the development of the kurgan structure tradition in the various ethnocultural zones can be distinguished by common components or typical features in the construction of the monuments. Depending on a combination of elements, each historical and cultural nomadic zone has its architectural peculiarities.

The Bronze Pre-Scythian-Saka-Sibirian culture developed in close similarity with the cultures of Yenisei, Altai, Kazakhstan, southern and southeast Amur regions.

The Scythian-Saka-Sibirian kurgans in the Early Iron Age are notable for their grandiose mounds throughout the Eurasian continent. The base diameters of the kurgans reach 500 m in Siberia (Great Salbyk kurgan of the settled Tagar culture), in the neighboring China they reach 5000 m (kurgan of the first emperor of China in the 3rd c. BC near Sian; 西安). The height of the kurgans reached astronomical marks: Great Salbyk kurgan is 22 - 27 m, i.e. the height of a 7-story building; the kurgan of the Chinese emperor is over 100 m. The presence of such structures in Siberia testifies to a high standard of living and a developed construction culture of the nomads.

The most obvious archeological remains associated with the Scythians are the great burial mounds (kurgans), some over 20 m high, which dot the Ukrainian and Russian steppe belts and extend in great chains for many kilometers along ridges and watershed. It is from them that most has been learnt about Scythian life and art.

Kurgan Hypothesis: The Kurgan hypothesis postulates that the Proto-Indo-Europeans were the bearers of the "Kurgan" (Yamna) culture of the Black Sea and the Caucasus and west of the Urals. The hypothesis was introduced by Marija Gimbutas in 1956, combining kurgan archaeology with linguistics to locate the origins of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) speaking peoples. She tentatively named the culture "Kurgan" after their distinctive burial mounds and traced its diffusion into Europe. This hypothesis has had a significant impact on Indo-European research. Those scholars who follow Gimbutas identify a "Kurgan culture" as reflecting an early Indo-European ethnicity which existed in the steppes and southeastern Europe from the fifth to third millennia BC. Marija Gimbutas Kurgan hypothesis is opposed by Paleolithic Continuity Theory, which associates Pit Grave and Sredny Stog Kurgan cultures with Turkic peoples, and the Anatolian hypothesis which denies an Indo-European origin advocated by M. Gimbutas Baltic version of the Chalcolithic Invasion Kurgan hypothesis, and is also opposed by the Black Sea deluge theory. In Kurgan Cultures, most of the burials were in kurgans, either clan kurgans or individual ones. Most prominent leaders were buried in individual kurgans, now called "Royal kurgans", which attract the greatest attention and publicity.

 

 

Ancient DNA from Linzi (Yixi), Shandong Peninsula

Map of Shandong Peninsula

Qi State: Qi (齊國) was a powerful state during the Spring and Autumn Period and Period of the Warring States. Its capital was Linzi, which is part of the present city of Zibo in Shandong Province.

Qi was founded around 1046 B.C. as one of the many states of the Zhou Dynasty. The first ruler appointed for Qi is Jiang Shang, the most powerful official during that time. The Jiang family (姜) ruled Qi for several centuries before it was replaced by the Tian family (田) in 384 BC. In 221 BC, Qi was the last state of pre-Imperial China to be conquered by the State of Qin, the final obstacle which allowed the Qin Dynasty to consolidate the first centralized and imperial empire over China.

Lord Huan of Qi (齊桓公, died 643 BC) was the best-known ruler of the state of Qi in the Spring and Autumn Period. His personal name was Jiāng Xiǎobái (姜小白) . Lord Huan of Qi appointed Guan Zhong (管仲, given name Yíwú, 夷吾), the famous thinker and economist, as his prime minister, and adopted Guan's thoughts and policies to administer his country, reform the economic system and develop relations with other states, After scores of years, Qi became the strongest state for its economic and military strength, and was named as the "state with one thousand chariots" and the "head of the five strongest states". The culture and education undertakings were rather developed in Qi. Both poetry and music were of high level. Linzi District remained its capital for as long as 638 years, and was the biggest city in the orient.

The Silk Road, prosperous through the Han (漢朝; 206 BC–220 AD) and Tang Dynasties (唐朝; 618 AD–907 AD) is the famous passageway in China's history for economic and cultural exchange between East and West. As a result of textual research, Shandong area, with Zibo as its center, was the major place of silk supply at that time, and was one of the origins of the "Silk Road".

Shandong is the second most populous province of China, after Henan, with a population of almost 92 million. Over 99% of Shandong's population is Han Chinese. Minority groups include the Hui and the Manchus. Shandong is also known as having highest average height of any Chinese province.

 

* Molecular Genetic Analysis of Remains of a 2,000-year-old Human Population in China-and Its Relevance for the Origin of the Modern Japanese Population by H. Oota, et al. (1999)

Abstract: We extracted DNA from the human remains excavated from the Yixi site (approximately 2,000 years before the present) in the Shandong peninsula of China and, through PCR amplification, determined nucleotide sequences of their mitochondrial D-loop regions. Nucleotide diversity of the ancient Yixi people was similar to those of modern populations. Modern humans in Asia and the circum-Pacific region are divided into six radiation groups, on the basis of the phylogenetic network constructed by means of 414 mtDNA types from 1, 298 individuals. We compared the ancient Yixi people with the modern Asian and the circum-Pacific populations, using two indices: frequency distribution of the radiation groups and genetic distances among populations. Both revealed that the closest genetic relatedness is between the ancient Yixi people and the modern Taiwan Han Chinese. The Yixi people show closer genetic affinity with Mongolians, mainland Japanese, and Koreans than with Ainu and Ryukyu Japanese and less genetic resemblance with Jomon people and Yayoi people, their predecessors and contemporaries, respectively, in ancient Japan."

 

The Yixi site is located in Linzi (Zibo), Shandong Province, China. This site has been dated to the period of the Han dynasty (206 B.C.–220 A.D.) in China, on the basis of the archaeological finds excavated. The ruins of the ancient city were excavated in 1926 by Japanese archaeologists and in 1964 by Chinese archaeologists. The ruins of the city are surrounded by over 100 tumulus, some as far as 10 km away. Many of the tombs around Linzi had been looted in antiquity. Over 600 horses were sacrificed in two rows, found in a tomb pit, near what is considered the tomb of Duke Jing of Qi. The sacrificial horse pit is now the site of a museum, the Museum of the State of Qi.

 

* Genetic Structure of a 2,500-Year-Old Human Population in China and Its Spatiotemporal Changes by Li Wang, et al. (2000)

Abstract: To examine temporal changes in population genetic structure, we compared the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences of three populations that lived in the same location, Linzi, China, in different periods: 2,500 years ago (the Spring–Autumn era), 2,000 years ago (the Han era), and the present day. Two indices were used to compare the genetic differences: the frequency distributions of the radiating haplotype groups and the genetic distances among the populations. The results indicate that the genetic backgrounds of the three populations are distinct from each other. Inconsistent with the geographical distribution, the 2,500-year-old Linzi population showed greater genetic similarity to present-day European populations than to present-day east Asian populations. The 2,000-year-old Linzi population had features that were intermediate between the present-day European/2,500-year-old Linzi populations and the present-day east Asian populations.

Result: The smallest genetic distance for the present-day Linzi population was that from the Mongols, followed by those from mainland Japanese and Koreans. Surprisingly, the three smallest genetic distances for the 2,000-year-old Linzi population were from the present-day central Asian populations: the Kirghiz (Sary-Tash), followed by the Kazakh and the Uighurs. Even more surprisingly, the three smallest genetic distances for the 2,500-year-old Linzi population were from the Turkish, Icelander, and Finnish, rather than from the East Asian populations.

 

* Reconstructing the Evolutionary History of China: A Caveat About Inferences Drawn from Ancient DNA by Yong-Gang Yao, et al. (2003)

ABSTRACT: The decipherment of the meager information provided by short fragments of ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is notoriously difficult but is regarded as a most promising way toward reconstructing the past from the genetic perspective. By haplogroup-specific hypervariable segment (HVS) motif search and matching or near-matching with available modern data sets, most of the ancient mtDNAs can be tentatively assigned to haplogroups, which are often subcontinent specific. Further typing for mtDNA haplogroup-diagnostic coding region polymorphisms, however, is indispensable for establishing the geographic/genetic affinities of ancient samples with less ambiguity. In the present study, we sequenced a fragment (982 bp) of the mtDNA control region in 76 Han individuals from Taian, Shandong, China, and we combined these data with previously reported samples from Zibo and Qingdao, Shandong. The reanalysis of two previously published ancient mtDNA population data sets from Linzi (same province) then indicates that the ancient populations had features in common with the modern populations from south China rather than any specific affinity to the European mtDNA pool. Our results highlight that ancient mtDNA data obtained under different sampling schemes and subject to potential contamination can easily create the impression of drastic spatiotemporal changes in the genetic structure of a regional population during the past few thousand years if inappropriate methods of data analysis are employed.

 

* Reanalysis of Eurasian Population History: Ancient DNA Evidence of Population Affinities by C.C. Bennett, F.A. Kaestle (2006)

Abstract: Mitochondrial hypervariable region I genetic data from ancient populations at two sites in Asia-Linzi in Shandong (northern China) and Egyin Gol in Mongolia-were reanalyzed to detect population affinities. Data from 51 modern populations were used to generate distance measures (F^sub ST^'s) to the two ancient populations. The tests first analyzed relationships at the regional level and then compiled the top regional matches for an overall comparison to the two probe populations. The reanalysis showed that the Egyin Gol and Linzi populations have clear distinctions in genetic affinity. The Egyin Gol population as a whole appears to bear close affinities with modern populations of northern East Asia. The Linzi population seems to have some genetic affinities with the West, as suggested by the original analysis, although the original attribution of "European-like" seems to be misleading. We suggest that the Linzi individuals are potentially related to early Iranians, who are thought to have been widespread in parts of Central Eurasia and the steppe regions in the first millennium B.C., although some significant admixture between a number of populations of varying origin cannot be ruled out. We also examine the effect of sequence length on this type of genetic data analysis and discuss the results of previous studies on the Linzi sample.

Discussion: ... the Linzi individuals, they seem to be most highly related to Near Easterners (Turks, Iranians, and Iraqis), Armenians, and Eastern Europeans (Slavs, Hungarians), although others, such as Catalans and Iraqis, are mixed in. The Icelanders are twelfth on this list. The high placement of the Vietnamese may be an anomaly, error, or some element of ancient genetic history that is not clear ....

*Video: Schythians or Huns?

 

Ancient Iranian peoples who settled Greater Iran in the 2nd millennium BC first appear in Assyrian records in the 9th century BC. They remain dominant throughout Classical Antiquity in Scythia and Persia.

The Iranian languages form a sub-branch of the Indo-Iranian sub-family, which is a branch of the family of Indo-European languages. Having descended from the Proto-Indo-Iranians, the Proto-Iranians separated from the Indo-Aryans around in the early 2nd millennium BC. The Proto-Iranians are traced to the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, a Bronze Age culture of Central Asia. The area between northern Afghanistan and the Aral Sea is hypothesized to have been the region where the Proto-Iranians first emerged, following the separation of Indo-Iranian tribes.

By the 1st millennium BC, Medes, Persians, Bactrians and Parthians populated the Iranian plateau, while others such as the Scythians, Sarmatians, Cimmerians and Alans populated the steppes north of the Black Sea. The Saka and Scythian tribes remained mainly in the south and spread as far west as the Balkans and as far east as Xinjiang.

The division of Proto-Iranian into an "Eastern" and a "Western" group is attested in the form of Avestan and Old Persian, the two oldest known Iranian languages.

 

 

Scythians

Approximate extent of Scythia and the Scythian languages (orange) in the 1st century BC

Scythians: . Oswald Szemerényi devotes a thorough discussion to the etymology of the word Scyth in his work "Four old Iranian ethnic names: Scythian - Skudra - Sogdian - Saka". The related words derive from *skuza, an ancient Indo-European word for archer (cf. English shoot), hence Iranian Ishkuzi = archers.

The Scythians first appeared in the historical record in the 8th century BC. But Herodotus reported this version:

“

There is also another different story, now to be related, in which I am more inclined to put faith than in any other. It is that the wandering Scythians once dwelt in Asia, and there warred with the Massagetae, but with ill success; they therefore quitted their homes, crossed the Araxes, and entered the land of Cimmeria.

 

The name was also used among early scholars studying the Proto Indo-Europeans, and within the framework of the Kurgan hypothesis the Scythians are considered a reasonable analogue for their Proto Indo-European ancestors.

The Proto-Indo-Europeans (PIE) were the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language, and likely lived around 4000 BC, during the Copper Age and the Bronze Age, or possibly earlier, during the Neolithic or Paleolithic eras. Knowledge of them comes chiefly from the reconstruction of their language, which was the ancestor of the Indo-European languages,

Cavalli-Sforza (2000) states that "It is clear that, genetically speaking, peoples of the Kurgan steppe descended at least in part from people of the Middle Eastern Neolithic who immigrated there from Turkey." Piazza & Cavalli-Sforza (2006) state that:

if the expansions began at 9,500 years ago from Anatolia and at 6,000 years ago from the Yamnaya culture region, then a 3,500-year period elapsed during their migration to the Volga-Don region from Anatolia, probably through the Balkans. There a completely new, mostly pastoral culture developed under the stimulus of an environment unfavourable to standard agriculture, but offering new attractive possibilities. Our hypothesis is, therefore, that Indo-European languages derived from a secondary expansion from the Yamnaya culture region after the Neolithic farmers, possibly coming from Anatolia and settled there, developing pastoral nomadism.

The current interpretation of genetic data suggests a strong genetic continuity in Europe; specifically, studies of mtDNA by Bryan Sykes show that about 80% of the genetic stock of Europeans originated in the Paleolithic, suggesting that languages tend to spread geographically by cultural contact rather than by replacement.

Scythia was the area in Eurasia inhabited by the Scythians, from the 8th century BC to the 2nd century AD. The area known to classical authors as Scythia included:

The Sakas (Indo-Scythians) expanded to Sistan (which was also known as Sakestan) and the Indus valley from the 1st century BC, but these regions are not usually included in the term "Scythia."

The Sakas were a population of Iranian nomadic tribesmen residing in and migrating over the plains of Eurasia from Eastern Europe to Xinjiang Province, China, from the Old Persian Period to the Middle Persian Period when they were displaced by or integrated with Turkic language speakers during the Turkic migration. In the Achaemenid Empire much of their range was made a satrapy, Saka, named after them. They also resided in other provinces of ancient Iran.

The ancient Greeks called the Sakas the Scythians but recognized that in the language of the Persian Empire they were called more nearly Sakai. To them the name Sakai in addition to meaning all the Scyths meant explicitly also the ones of Central Asia and the Far East. These latter lived in what is now Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, parts of India, parts of Iran, the Altay Mountains, Siberia in Russia, and Xinjiang Province of China in the centuries before 300 AD, the start of the Middle Persian period. Hence the Romans recognized both Sacae and Scythae.

Herodotus (IV.64) describes them as Scythians, although they figure under a different name:

“

The Sacae, or Scyths, were clad in trousers, and had on their heads tall stiff caps rising to a point. They bore the bow of their country and the dagger; besides which they carried the battle-axe, or sagaris. They were in truth Amyrgian (Western) Scythians, but the Persians called them Sacae, since that is the name which they gave to all Scythians

The Scythians were recognized in ancient languages at either end of their range. They were known to the Chinese as the Sai (塞). On the west they were among the first Iranians to enter the Middle East. The Assyrians of the time of Esarhaddon record campaigning against a people they called in the Akkadian the Ashkuza or Ishhuza. Hugo Winckler was the first to associate them with the Scyths and the identification remains without serious question. They were closely associated with the Gimirrai, who were the Cimmerians known to the ancient Greeks. These Scythians were mainly interested in settling in the kingdom of Urartu, which later became Armenia.

By the time of the Middle Iranian period, the Scyths had either dissimilated into peoples of other names, such as the Sarmatians, Alans and Roxolani, or had been displaced by or assimilated to the Huns. The Saka speakers were gradually conquered and acculturated by the Turkic expansion to Central Asia beginning in the 4th century.

The most notable Saka burial to date, whose occupant is referred to as the "Golden Man", was found in Kazakhstan. The silver dish found with the "Golden Man" is of a type common to other Germanic finds and is inscribed with a form of runic writing related to that found in Germanic and Scandinavian runic writing. Archeological evidence and histographies shows a worldview of Sakas, similar to that of ancient German and Scandinavian traditions and closely related to that of present-day Kazakhs and Mongols.

The Sakas were also one of several tribes that conquered India from the northwest, where they established the rule of the Indo-Scythians. The Saka Era is used by the Indian national calendar, a few other Hindu calendars, and the Cambodian Buddhist calendar—its year zero begins near the vernal equinox of 78 (See Kushan Empire). There has been no strong genetic link discovered between the Kazakhs and peoples of India; however, the marker R1a1 accounts for more than 50% of Altay, Kyrgyz, Slavic and NW Indian/Pakistani males.

The Scythian languages form a North Eastern branch of the Iranian language family and comprise the distinctive languages spoken by the Scythian (Sarmatian and Saka) tribes of nomadic pastoralists in Scythia (Central Asia, Pontic-Caspian steppe) between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD. Up to the 4th century AD we have only a few words from any of these languages, substantial evidence of Sogdian and Saka dating from a later period.

The Scythian languages may have formed a dialect continuum:

The Scythians migrated from Central Asia toward Eastern Europe, occupying today's Southern Russia and Ukraine and the Carpathian Basin and parts of Moldova and Dobruja. They disappeared from history after the Hunnish invasion of Europe in the 5th century AD, and Turkic (Avar, Batsange, etc.) and Slavic peoples probably assimilated most people speaking Scythian. However, in the Caucasus, a dialect belonging to the Scythian-Sarmatian linguistic continuum remains in use today, namely Ossetic.

Historians normally divide the Scytho-Sarmatian group chronologically rather than geographically:

• Scythian (ca. 800 - 300 BC), mainly evidenced in Classical Greek authors
• Sarmatian (ca. 300 BC - AD 400), mainly evidenced in Hellenistic and Roman inscriptions
• Alanic (ca. AD 400 - 1000), mainly evidenced in Byzantine Greek authors

Some scholars detect a division of Scytho-Sarmatian into two dialects: a western, more conservative dialect, and an eastern, more innovative one. The innovative dialect may correspond to Sarmatian, whereas the conservative dialect may continue the dialect spoken by the old Scythians before the invasion of the Sarmatians.

Divergent views, fueled by ethnic nationalism, have proposed that the Scythian languages may have become a substratum to the Turkic, Ugric or Proto-Slavic languages. A more moderate proposal by Boris Rybakov suggests a Proto-Slavic substrate.

In Late Antiquity the notion of a Scythian ethnicity grew more vague, and outsiders might dub any people inhabiting the Pontic-Caspian steppe as "Scythians", regardless of their language. Thus, Priscus, a Byzantine emissary to Attila, repeatedly referred to the latter's followers as "Scythians". In Attila's regime Edekon was the king of Scythians.

Ruled by small numbers of closely-allied élites, Scythians had a reputation for their archers, and many gained employment as mercenaries. Scythian élites had kurgan tombs.

Sarmatian cataphracts during Dacian Wars as depicted on Trajan Column

A cataphract was a form of heavy cavalry first utilised by nomadic eastern Iranian tribes and Persian dynasties in warfare, and then later by the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Historically the cataphract was very heavily armored horseman, with both the rider and steed draped from head-to-toe in scale armor, while typically wielding a kontos or lance as their weapon. They are in part or wholly believed to have given rise to the Age of Feudalism in Europe and the later European equivalents of Knights and Paladins, via contact with the Byzantine Empire.

The Sarmatians, Sarmatae or Sauromatae (Old Iranian Sarumatah 'archer') were a people of Iranic origin. Mentioned by classical authors, they migrated from Central Asia to the Ural Mountains around fifth century B.C. and eventually settled in most of southern European Russia, Ukraine, and the eastern Balkans.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the boundary between the so-called Centum-Satem isogloss in the Indo-European languages apparently split at the European border of the Sarmatians.

Around the year 100 BC, Sarmatian land ranged from the Barents Sea or Baltic Sea ("Oceanus Sarmaticus") to a tributary of the Vistula River, to the Carpathian Mountains, to the mouth of the Danube, then eastward along the northern coast of the Black Sea, across the Caucasus to the Caspian Sea and north along the Volga up to the polar circle.

The Sarmatians flourished from the time of Herodotus and allied partly with the Huns when they arrived in the fourth century AD.

In 1947, the leading Soviet historian Boris Grakov defined a culture apparent in late Kurgan graves, sometimes reusing part of much older Kurgans. It is a nomadic steppe culture ranging from the Black Sea to beyond the Volga, and is especially evident at two of the major sites at Kardaielova and Chernaya in the trans-Uralic steppe.

The date of the culture (from the seventh century BC to the fourth century AD) and the location are in synchronicity with the written information we have about the Sarmatians.

The numerous Iranian personal names in the Greek inscriptions from the Black Sea Coast indicate that the Sarmatians there spoke a north-eastern Iranian dialect related to Sogdian and Ossetic. Like the Scythians, Sarmatians were of Caucasian appearance; before the arrival of the Huns it is thought that few of the western steppe peoples had Asiatic or Turco-Mongol features.

Ancient DNA of 13 Sarmatian remains from Pokrovka and Meirmagul kurgans was extracted for comparative analysis. Most of the genetic traits determined were of western Eurasian origin, while only a few were of central/east Asian origin.

World-wide spreading of Haplotypes which are identical with Pr11 and Pr6 from DNA Report: Pokrovka Warrior Women Compared to Meiramgul

* Videos: Sarmatian Treasure, The (Scytho) Sarmatians

Genetic research in modern populations reveals that the same paternal Y-chromosome haplogroup (R1a1) represents a genetic lineage currently found in central, western and south Asia, and in Slavic populations of Europe. The distribution of this haplogroup has been posited to represent the spread of peoples from the Ukrainian steppelands which served as an ice-age refuge during the LGM, in the eneolithic succeeded by the Pit Grave ("Kurgan") culture. This latter culture is associated with the spread of Indo-European languages in the "Kurgan hypothesis". The R1a allele thus far predates the Scythians, and its distribution consequently cannot be used simplistically to trace Scythian migrations in particular.

The distribution of Y-chromosome haplogroup (G2) from Pakistan and northwest India and out to Spain rather closely mirrors the spread of the Scythians, Sarmatians, and their offshoot, the Alans. Haplogroup G2 reaches its highest worldwide concentration in the Caucasian Russian Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, and the present-day Ossetians, who speak a Scythian Northeast Iranic language are the last remnant of the ancient Alans. Although this may be indirect evidence of Scythian "genetic legacy", it is likewise of Neolithic origin and cannot be used as a one-to-one identification of Scythian ancestry.

Mitochondrial DNA extracted from skeletal remains obtained from excavated Scythian kurgans have produced a myriad of results and conclusions. Analysis of the HV1 sequence obtained from a male Scytho-Siberian's remains at the Kizil site in the Altai Republic revealed the individual possessed the N1a maternal lineage. The study also noted that haplogroup mtDNA N1a was found at a relatively high frequency in the southern fringes of the Eurasian steppe, Iran (8.3%), and within the Indian Havik group (8.3%), an upper Brahman caste. From this, a possible link to ancient populations presumed to have come from Europe that lived in the neighboring Central Asian parts of India and Iran was suggested.

Additionally, mitochondrial DNA has been extracted from two Scytho-Siberian skeletons found in the Altai Republic (Russia) dating back 2,500 years. Both remains were determined to be of males from a population who had characteristics "of mixed Euro- Mongoloid origin." One of the individuals was found to carry the F2a maternal lineage, and the other the D lineage, both of which are characteristic of East Eurasian populations.

Maternal genetic analysis of Saka period male and female skeletal remains from a double inhumation kurgan located at the Beral site in Kazakhstan determined that the two were most likely not closely related and were possibly husband and wife. The HV1 mitochondrial sequence of the male was similar to the Anderson sequence which is most frequent in European populations. Contrary, the HV1 sequence of the female suggested a greater likelihood of Asian origins. The study's findings were in line with the hypothesis that mixings between Scythians and other populations occurred. This was buttressed by the discovery of several objects with a Chinese inspiration in the grave. No conclusive associations with haplogroups were made though it was suggested that the female may have derived from either mtDNA X or D.

Map of the Sayan-Altay Area

Archaeological remains of the Scythians include kurgan tombs (ranging from simple exemplars to elaborate "Royal kurgans" containing the "Scythian triad" of weapons, horse-harness, and Scythian-style wild-animal art, gold, silk, and animal sacrifices, in places also with suspected human sacrifices. Mummification techniques and permafrost have aided in the relative preservation of some remains. Scythian archaeology also examines the remains of North Pontic Scythian cities and fortifications.

Carbon-14 dating of kurgans has allowed archaeologists to trace their emergence in the Sayan-Altay area from about 3,000 BC, and their westward spread starting about 900 BC.

Some of the first Bronze Age Scythian burials documented by modern archaeologists include the kurgans at Pazyryk in the Ulagan district of the Altay Republic, south of Novosibirsk in the Altay Mountains of southern Siberia. Archaeologists have extrapolated the Pazyryk culture from these finds: five large burial mounds and several smaller ones between 1925 and 1949, one opened in 1947 by Russian archaeologist Sergei Rudenko. Pazyryk culture flourished between the 7th and 3rd centuries BC in the area associated with the Sacae (Saka).

* Videos: The Tomb of the Scythian Prince 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Scythian Society: Scythians lived in confederated tribes, a political form of voluntary association which regulated pastures and organized a common defence against encroaching neighbors for the pastoral tribes of mostly equestrian herdsmen. While the productivity of domesticated animal-breeding greatly exceeded that of the settled agricultural societies, the pastoral economy also needed supplemental agricultural produce, and stable nomadic confederations developed either symbiotic or forced alliances with sedentary peoples — in exchange for animal produce and military protection.

Ruled by small numbers of closely-allied élites, Scythians had a reputation for their archers, and many gained employment as mercenaries. Scythian élites had kurgan tombs: high barrows heaped over chamber-tombs of larch-wood — a deciduous conifer that may have had special significance as a tree of life-renewal, for it stands bare in winter.

Scythian women dressed in much the same fashion as men, and at times fought alongside them in battle. A Pazyryk burial found in the 1990s contained the skeletons of a man and a woman, each with weapons, arrowheads, and an axe. In the 1998 NOVA documentary "Ice Mummies", an archaeologist explains that, "The woman was dressed exactly like a man. This shows that certain women, probably young and unmarried, could be warriors, literally Amazons. It didn't offend the principles of nomadic society."

As far as we know, the Scythians had no writing system. Until recent archaeological developments, most of our information about them came from the Greeks. The Ziwiye hoard, a treasure of gold and silver metalwork and ivory found near the town of Sakiz south of Lake Urmia and dated to between 680 and 625 BC, includes objects with Scythian "animal style" features. One silver dish from this find bears some inscriptions, as yet undeciphered and so possibly representing a form of Scythian writing.

Homer called the Scythians "the mare-milkers". Herodotus described them in detail: their costume consisted of padded and quilted leather trousers tucked into boots, and open tunics. They rode with no stirrups or saddles, just saddle-cloths. Herodotus reports that Scythians used cannabis, both to weave their clothing and to cleanse themselves in its smoke (Hist. 4.73-75); archaeology has confirmed the use of cannabis in funeral rituals. The Scythian philosopher Anacharsis visited Athens in the 6th century BC and became a legendary sage.

Scythians also had a reputation for the use of barbed and poisoned arrows of several types, for a nomadic life centered around horses — "fed from horse-blood" according to Herodotus — and for skill in guerrilla warfare.

Scythian Religion: The religion and mythology of the Scythians is not directly attested except for sparse accounts in Greek ethnography. It is assumed to have been related to earlier Proto-Indo-Iranian religion, and to have influenced later Slavic and Turkic and Ossetian traditions.

The Scythians had some reverence for the stag, which is one of the most common motifs in their artwork, especially at funeral sites. The swift animal was believed to speed the spirits of the dead on their way, which perhaps explains the curious antlered headdresses found on horses buried at Pazyryk

The primary archaeological context of horse sacrifice are burials, notably chariot burials, but graves with horse remains reach from the Eneolithic well into historical times. Herodotus describes the execution of horses at the burial of a Scythian king, and Iron Age kurgan graves known to contain horses number in the hundreds.

Horse Sacrifice: Many Indo-European branches show evidence for horse sacrifice, and comparative mythology suggests that they derive from a PIE ritual. In most instances, the horses are sacrificed in a funerary context, and interred with the deceased. There is evidence from three branches of Indo-European of a major horse sacrifice ritual based on a mythical union of Indo-European kingship and the horse. The clearest picture is afforded by the Indian Aśvamedha is the clearest evidence preserved, but vestiges from Latin and Celtic traditions allow the reconstruction of a few common attributes.

There are also frequent deposition of horses in burials in Iron Age India. The custom is by no means restricted to Indo-European populations, but is continued by Turkic tribes as the cultural successors of the Scythians.

Indo-Scythians: In the 2nd century BC, a group of Scythian tribes, known as the Indo-Scythians, migrated into Bactria, Sogdiana and Arachosia. The migrations in 175-125 BC of the Kushan (Yuezhi) tribes, who originally lived in eastern Tarim Basin before the Huns (Xiongnu) tribes dislodged them, displaced the Indo-Scythians from Central Asia. Led by their king Maues, they ultimately settled in modern-day Punjab and Kashmir from around 85 BC, where they replaced the kingdom of the Indo-Greeks by the time of Azes II (reigned circa 35 - 12 BC). Kushans invaded again in the 1st century, but the Indo-Scythian rule persisted in some areas of Central India until the 5th century.

Migration Period: Although the classical Scythians may have largely disappeared by the 1st century BC, Eastern Romans continued to speak conventionally of "Scythians" to designate Germanic tribes and confederations or mounted Eurasian nomadic barbarians in general: in 448 AD two mounted "Scythians" led the emissary Priscus to Attila's encampment in Pannonia. The Byzantines in this case carefully distinguished the Scythians from the Goths and Huns who also followed Attila.

The Sarmatians (including the Alans and finally the Ossetians) counted as Scythians in the broadest sense of the word — as speakers of Northeast Iranian languages — but nevertheless remain distinct from the Scythians proper.

Byzantine sources also refer to the Rus raiders who attacked Constantinople around 860 AD in contemporary accounts as "Tauroscythians", because of their geographical origin, and despite their lack of any ethnic relation to Scythians. Patriarch Photius may have first applied the term to them during the Siege of Constantinople (860).

Descent-Claims: Some modern ethnic groups have claimed descent from the Scythians as a means to extend back in time their national history, and to provide a prestigious connection with classical antiquity.

The Scythians feature in some post-Medieval national origin-legends of the Celts. British historian Sharon Turner in his History of the Anglo-Saxons, concluded, “The migrating Scythians crossed the Araxes, passed out of Asia, and suddenly appeared in Europe in the sixth century B.C.” Citing many ancient sources, Turner identified the Scythians ("Sakai") as the ancestors of the Anglo Saxons. However, that conclusion remains controversial.

Traditions of the Turkic Kazakhs and Yakuts (whose endoethnonym is "Sakha"); and the Pashtuns of Afghanistan connect these peoples to Scythians. Some legends of the Picts; the Gaels; the Hungarians; Serbs and Croats (among others) also include mention of Scythian origins. In the second paragraph of the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath the élite of Scotland claim Scythia as a former homeland of the Scots. Some romantic nationalist writers claim that Scythians figured in the formation of the empire of the Medes and likewise of Caucasian Albania, the precursor in antiquity of the modern-day Azerbaijan Republic.

Various Frankish and Carolingian sources traced royal Merovingian ancestry to the Germanic tribe of the Sicambri. Gregory of Tours documents in his History of the Franks that when Clovis was baptised, he was referred to as a Sicamber with the words "Mitis depone colla, Sicamber, adora quod incendisti, incendi quod adorasti."'. The Chronicle of Fredegar in turn reveals that the Franks believed the Sicambri to be a tribe of Scythian or Cimmerian descent, who had changed their name to Franks in honour of their chieftain Franco in 11 BC.

Ashkenaz is Gomer's first son, brother of Riphath, and Togarmah (Gen. 10:3, 1 Chronicles 1:6) and is believed by some to be the ancestor of the Germanic, Scandinavian and Slavic peoples. One reason people believe this is that Ashkenaz's father is Gomer who is associated with the Frank and Germanic tribes due to his name.

Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim ("the Jews of Ashkenaz"), are descended from the medieval Jewish communities of the Rhineland, "Ashkenaz" being the Medieval Hebrew name for Germany. Ashkenaz is also regarded as the father of the Scythians, although there is no evidence to support it he is regarded as the father of the Scythians, Sarmatians, and the Aryans.

Early Modern Usage: Owing to their reputation as established by Greek historians, the Scythians long served as the epitome of savagery and barbarism in the early modern period. Shakespeare, for instance, alluded to the legend that Scythians ate their children in his play King Lear.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, foreigners regarded the Russians as descendants of Scythians. It became conventional to refer to Russians as Scythians in 18th century poetry, and Alexander Blok drew on this tradition sarcastically in his last major poem, The Scythians (1920).

In the nineteenth century, romantic revisionists in the West transformed the "barbarian" Scyths of literature into the wild and free, hardy and democratic ancestors of all blond Indo-Europeans.

 

 

Armenian Genetic Relations

The geographical distribution of the R1b haplotype is such that it is shared by Armenians and two other populations from the Caucasus. Moreover, it is lacking in most other populations from the Caucasus, as well as in the other populations from further east. On the other hand, it is more frequently found in Europe, where as we know, haplogroup R1b tends to have higher frequencies as well.

The Armenian modal haplotype is also the modal R1b3 haplotype observed by Cinnioglu in Anatolia. According to him, apparently it entered Anatolia from Europe in Paleolithic times, and diffused again from Anatolia in the Late Upper Paleolithic.

 

Haplogroup R1b (Y-DNA)

 

Haplogroup R1b is the most frequent Y-chromosome haplogroup in Western Europe, where its frequency is highest.

More specifically, its frequency is highest in Atlantic Europe and, due to European emigration, in North America, South America, and Australia. In southern England, the frequency of R1b is about 70%, and in parts of north and western England, Spain, Portugal, France, Wales, Scotland and Ireland the frequency of R1b is greater than 90%. It is also found among Italians, particularly in northern Italy.

R1b is also present at lower frequencies throughout Eastern Europe, Anatolia and parts of North Africa and appears in an isolated pocket of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Haplogroup R1b is defined by the presence of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) M343, which was discovered in 2004. From 2002 to 2005, R1b was defined by the presence of SNP P25. Prior to 2002, today's Haplogroup R1b had a number of names in differing nomenclature systems, such as Hg1 and Eu18.

Origins

In 2008 T. Karefet et al., based on the latest discoveries on polymorphisms, rearranged the human paternal phylogenetic tree by adding one new haplogroup and altering some of the estimated ages of previously known haplogroups, including the parent haplogroup to R1b, R1, now considered to have originated 18,500 BP.

R1b* (that is R1b with no subsequent mutations) is extremely rare. Examples have been found in Europe and Western Asia, for example two in a sample from Turkey. However it is possible that some or all examples represent a reversion of marker P25 from R1b1*. Most examples of R1b fall into its much more recent subclades.

It is widely believed that R1b originated in western Europe where it reaches its highest frequencies. However research now shows that R1b's variance increases as one moves east, leading to the view that R1b originated further east. Some geneticists now believe that R1b arose in Central Asia or Southwest Asia.

Distribution

R1b reaches its highest frequency in Atlantic Europe. Results from studies with small sample sizes should be treated with caution until more thorough testing is completed.

Europe: In southern England, the frequency of R1b is about 70%, and in parts of north and western England, Portugal, Spain, France, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland the frequency of R1b is greater than 90%.

It is found in Basques: 88.1%, Catalans: 79.2%, other Spanish: 70%, Belgians: 63.0%, Portuguese 60%, Italians (continental Italy): 40%, Germans: 39%, Norwegians: 25.9%, Sicilians: 24.5%, Maltese: 21.9%, Swedes: 20%, Sardinians: 19%.

In North-eastern Europe, it is found in Czechs & Slovaks: 35.6%, Poles: 11.6%-16.4%, Latvians: 15%, Hungarians: 13.3%, Estonians: 9%, Lithuanians: 5%, Belarusians: 4.2%, Russians: 2.8%-21.3%, Ukrainians: 2.0%-18.9%, Sami: 3.9%.

In the Balkans, it is found in Greeks: 13.5%-22.8%, Albanians: 17.6%, Romanians: 13%, Slovenes: 21%, Bulgarians: 17.0%, Croats (mainland): 15.7%, Serbs: 10.6%, Herzegovinians: 3.6%, 9.0% in Cypriots , Bosnians: 1.4%.

Caucasus: In the Caucasus it is found in 32.4% of Armenians.

North Africa:

• In northeast Africa, the frequency of R1b reaches 40% in the Hausa Sudanese, 10% in all of the Sudan & 4.1% in Egyptians.

• In northwest Africa, the frequency of R1b is 10.8% in Algerian Arabs from Oran, 7% in Tunisian Arabs, 5.8% in Algerian Berbers and about 2.5% in Morocco.

Asia:

• In Southwest Asia, the frequency of R1b reaches 16.3% in Turkey, 11.3% in Iraq, 11.2% in Kurds, 9.9% Syrians, 8.4% Palestinians, 7.9% in Jordan, 5.7% in Lebanon and 4.3% in the UAE.

Haplotypes

Atlantic Modal Haplotype: An average haplotype for R1b1b2, sometimes called the Atlantic Modal Haplotype, or haplotype 15, reaches the highest frequencies in the Iberian Peninsula and in Great Britain and Ireland. In the Iberian Peninsula it reaches 33% in Portugal while the highest value is to be found among Spanish Basques.

Haplotype 35: There also exists a haplotype of R1b characterized by DYS393=12 which is known in the literature as Haplotype 35 (ht35), or the Armenian Modal Haplotype as opposed to the Atlantic Modal Haplotype which is known as haplotype 15. The members of this haplotype are thought to be descended from early R1b's who found shelter in Anatolia during the Last Glacial Maxim instead of in Iberia. They can be found in extremely high numbers in Anatolia and Armenia with smaller numbers throughout the Middle East, in Central Asia, in Jewish populations, in South Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus. They are also present in Britain and areas of Western Europe in places that were found to have a high concentration of Haplogroup J, another Near Eastern Haplotype, suggesting they arrived together, perhaps through Roman soldiers. For further information and different subgroups of ht35, see

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~gallgaedhil/haplo_r1b_ht35.htm .

 

 

* Armenian Y Chromosome Haplotypes Reveal Strong Regional Structure Within a Single Ethno-National Group by Michael E. Weale, et al.

Abstract: Armenia has been little-studied genetically, even though it is situated in an important area with respect to theories of ancient Middle Eastern population expansion and the spread of Indo-European languages. We screened 734 Armenian males for 11 biallelic and 6 microsatellite Y chromosome markers, segregated them according to paternal grandparental region of birth within or close to Armenia, and compared them with data from other population samples. We found significant regional stratification, on a level greater than that found in some comparisons between different ethno-national identities. A diasporan Armenian sub-sample (collected in London) was not sufficient to describe this stratified haplotype distribution adequately, warning against the use of such samples as surrogates for the non-diasporan population in future studies. The haplotype distribution and pattern of genetic distances suggest a high degree of genetic isolation in the mountainous southern and eastern regions, while in the northern, central and western regions there has been greater admixture with populations from neighbouring Middle Eastern countries. Georgia, to the north of Armenia, also appears genetically more distinct, suggesting that in the past Trans-Caucasia may have acted as a genetic barrier. A Bayesian full-likelihood analysis of the Armenian sample yields a mean estimate for the start of population growth of 4.8 thousand years ago (95% credible interval: 2.0-11.1), consistent with the onset of Neolithic farming. The more isolated southern and eastern regions have high frequencies of a microsatellite defined cluster within haplogroup 1 that is centred on a modal haplotype one step removed from the Atlantic Modal Haplotype, the centre of a cluster found at high frequencies in England, Friesland and Atlantic populations, and which may represent a remnant paternal signal of a Paleolithic migration event.

 

The Caucasus or Caucas (also referred to as Caucasia) is a geopolitical region located between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It is home to the Caucasus Mountains, including Europe's highest mountain (Mount Elbrus).

North Caucasus comprises:

• Russia (Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Adyghea, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachai-Cherkessia, North Ossetia, Krasnodar Krai, Stavropol Krai)

South Caucasus comprises:

• Georgia (including disputed Abkhazia, South Ossetia)
• Armenia
• Azerbaijan (including disputed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic)

 

* Testing Hypotheses of Language Replacement in the Caucasus: Evidence from the Y-chromosome by Nasidze I, et al.

A previous analysis of mtDNA variation in the Caucasus found that Indo-European-speaking Armenians and Turkic-speaking Azerbaijanians were more closely related genetically to other Caucasus populations (who speak Caucasian languages) than to other Indo-European or Turkic groups, respectively. Armenian and Azerbaijanian therefore represent language replacements, possibly via elite dominance involving primarily male migrants, in which case genetic relationships of Armenians and Azerbaijanians based on the Y-chromosome should more closely reflect their linguistic relationships. We therefore analyzed 11 bi-allelic Y-chromosome markers in 389 males from eight populations, representing all major linguistic groups in the Caucasus. As with the mtDNA study, based on the Y-chromosome Armenians and Azerbaijanians are more closely-related genetically to their geographic neighbors in the Caucasus than to their linguistic neighbors elsewhere. However, whereas the mtDNA results show that Caucasian groups are more closely related genetically to European than to Near Eastern groups, by contrast the Y-chromosome shows a closer genetic relationship with the Near East than with Europe.

 

 

* A Y-chromosomal Comparison of the Madjars (Kazakhstan) and the Magyars (Hungary) by Bíró AZ, et al.

Unrooted Phylogenetic Tree of 38 Populations

 

 

* MtDNA and Y-chromosome Variation in Kurdish Groups by Ivan Nasidze, et al.

MDS Plots Based on Pairwise Fst Values, Showing Relationships Among the Kurdish Groups (stars) and Caucasian (circles), European (squares), Central (diamonds) and West Asian (triangles) Groups Based on Y chromosome SNP data

The names of the populations are given using the following abbreviations: Kurmanji-G – Kurmanji speakers from Georgia, Zazaki-T – Zazaki speakers, Kurmanji-T – Kurmanji speakers, Kurds-I – Kurds from Iran, Kurds-T – Kurds from Eastern Turkey, Kurds-Tm – Kurds from Tuirkmenistan, Os-D – Ossetians from Digora, Os-A – Ossetians from Ardon, S-Os – South Ossetians, Lez – Lezginians, Ge – Georgians, Az – Azerbaijanians, Ar – Armenians, Abk – Abkhazians, Kar – Karachaians,
Bal – Balkarians, Kab – Kabardinians, Ir-I – Iranians from Isfahan, Ir-T – Iranians from Tehran, Lu- Lur, Maz – Mazandarani, Gil – Gilaki, Leb – Lebanese, Syr – Syrians, Tur – Turks, Iq – Iraqi, Rus - Russians, Ukr – Ukrainians, Pol – Polish, Hung – Hungarians, Gre – Greeks, Sar – Sardinians, Fr – French, Ger – Germans, It – Italians, Br – British, And – Andalusians, Dut – Dutch, Cat – Catalans, Kyr – Kyrgiz, Ishk – Ishkinasi, Kaz – Kazakh, Taj - Tajik.

 

* Mitochondrial DNA and Y-Chromosome Variation in the Caucasus by I. Nasidze, et al.

We have analyzed mtDNA HVI sequences and Y chromosome haplogroups based on 11 binary markers in 371 individuals, from 11 populations in the Caucasus and the neighbouring countries of Turkey and Iran. Y chromosome haplogroup diversity in the Caucasus was almost as high as in Central Asia and the Near East, and significantly higher than in Europe. More than 27% of the variance in Y-haplogroups can be attributed to differences between populations, whereas mtDNA showed much lower heterogeneity between populations (less then 5%), suggesting a strong influence of patrilocal social structure. Several groups from the highland region of the Caucasus exhibited low diversity and high differentiation for either or both genetic systems, reflecting enhanced genetic drift in these small, isolated populations. Overall, the Caucasus groups showed greater similarity with West Asian than with European groups for both genetic systems, although this similarity was much more pronounced for the Y chromosome than for mtDNA, suggesting that male-mediated migrations from West Asia have influenced the genetic structure of Caucasus populations.

 

 

Haplogroup G2c (Y-DNA)

Haplogroup G2c (formerly G5) is a Y-chromosome haplogroup and is defined by the presence of the M377 mutation. It is a branch of Haplogroup G, which in turn is defined by the presence of the M201 mutation.

G2c is a major Y chromosome haplogroup, and yet unique: It has a very high frequency in Ashkenazi Jews, and shows strong evidence of a very recent settlement in Europe. The TMRCA (time until most recent common ancestor) appears to be around 1100 AD for this close group of Ashkenazi Jews. It has not proven to have been found in any other region except in a single Turk from Kars Province in Turkey on the border with Armenia, a Pashtun from the area of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan in the Hindu Kush range, and a single Burusho from the Hunza Valley in the Karakorum Range in Kashmir. Just recently, G2c was predicted to be the haplogroup in three Kurdish Jews in a study from a sample of 99 Kurdish Jews as well as five Armenians in a study with hundreds of Armenian samples. These groups, the Ashkenazi Jews from Poland-Lithuania and Germany, a Turk from the northeastern region of Turkey that was the historic heartland of Medieval Armenia, and on the other hand the Pashtuns, and Burusho, are very widely separated geographically, and have not been known to have had hardly any contact with each other in their respective histories.

The History of the Jews in Armenia dates back more than 2,000 years. Tournebize holds that Assyrians deported Jews directly to Armenia, and not to the Khabur valley. Aslan mentions that Jews of Samaria were deported to Armenia.

A large Jewish population was settled in Armenia from the 1st century BC. One of the cities, Vartkesavan became an important commercial center. Tigranes the Great retreated from Palestine and encouraged 10,000 Jews to join him on his return to his kingdom. Thus, Armenia's Jewish community was established. Like the rest of Armenia's population, they suffered the consequences of regional powers trying to divide and conquer the country.

The Jews in Pagan Armenia were Jews in Armenia before St. Gregor Lusavoric's coming. Armenian historians, as Moses Khorenatsi, hold that Tigranes II deported Jews from Palestine to Armenia. Tigranes invaded Syria, and probably northern Palestine as well. The Persians also deported thousands of Jewish families from Armenia, and resettled them at Isfahan.

Deported Jews from Palestine to Armenia
Jewish families deported into Armenia
Artashat	9,000
Vaghasabat	?
Yervandashat	30,000
Sarehavan	8,000
Sarisat	14,000
Van in Dosp	18,000
Nachdsavan	16,000

In 1999 the remains of a medieval cemetery from a previously unknown and unsuspected medieval Jewish community was discovered in the village of Eghegis in Armenia's Vayotz Dzor region. When excavated, 64 complete tombstones and fragments of a number of others were uncovered. 20 of them had inscriptions, all in Hebrew except for 2 which were in Aramaic. The oldest dated stone was from 1266 and the latest date was 1336/7.

G2c presents more mysteries regarding its origin and distribution than virtually any other major Y haplogroup. Haplogroups that are rare in certain regions are more common in another, and have rather clear origins in other places where they are more commonly found. G2c has none of these. It is most common by far in a region where it arrived very recently, but exceedingly rare in other region including its likely area of origin. The distribution of G2c is incredibly sparse and dispersed, with almost no G2c haplotypes found in very large intervening regions. This pattern is unique among Y haplogroups.

Map of the location of Hunza within Pakistan

Hunza was an important stop on the Silk Road from the Near East to China. The fertile Hunza Valley was the last resting point before the Khunjerab Pass (el. 4693 m./15397 ft.) which was the highest point on the southern route of the Silk Road from Iran, the Indian Ocean ports of the Makran Coast in Pakistan, to the Kashgar oasis in the Gobi Desert of western China. Among the Burusho South Asian Y haplogroups predominate, but there are some representatives of Central Asian (C3) and East Asian (O3) haplogroups as well. Sengupta et al. (2006) found the Burushos to be completely lacking in haplogroup G2a which is well-represented among the nearby Kalash and Pashtun populations.

 

 

The Silk Road

 

The Silk Road or Silk Route is an interconnected series of ancient trade routes connecting Chang'an (today's Xi'an) in China, with Asia Minor and the Mediterranean

The Silk Road gave rise to the clusters of military states of nomadic origins in North China, invited the Nestorian, Manichaean, Buddhist, and later Islamic religions into Central Asia and China, created the influential Khazar Federation and at the end of its glory, brought about the largest continental empire ever: the Mongol Empire, with its political centers strung along the Silk Road (Beijing in North China, Karakorum in central Mongolia, Sarmakhand in Transoxiana, Tabriz in Northern Iran, Astrakhan in lower Volga, Solkhat in Crimea, Kazan in Central Russia, Erzurum in eastern Anatolia), realizing the political unification of zones previously loosely and intermittently connected by material and cultural goods.

Erzurum (Armenian: Կարին (Karin) is a city in eastern Anatolia, Turkey. The name "Erzurum" derives from "Arz-u Rûm" (literally The Land of the Romans in Arabic).

Most of the province was incorporated to the Roman Empire in 4th century who founded a city called Erzen. The Byzantine Empire also built a city in the region, called Theodosiopolis, which was on the border. Standing on the crossroads of main trade routes in Asia Minor, the area was a center of importance for Persians and Arabs who frequently clashed with the Byzantine Empire. The city was also part of the Armenian kingdom of Tayk in the 10th century. Threatened by, devastated and looted by the Seljuk Turks in 1049, the older city of Erzen was conquered, but Theodosiopolis survived the invasion. The ruling dynasty of the time was that of the Saltukids.

Theodosiopolis repelled many attacks and military campaigns by the Seljuks and Georgians until 1201 when the city and the province was conquered by the Seljuk sultan Süleiman II of Rüm in 1201. Erzen-Erzurum fell to the Mongol siege in 1242, and the city was looted and devastated. After the fall of the Seljuk Sultanate of Anatolia (Rüm) in early 14th century, it became an administrative province of the Ilkhanates, and after their fall, became part of the Çoban beylik, Black Sheep Turkmen, Mongols lead by Timur Lenk and White Sheep Turkmen. Finally, in 1514 the region was conquered by the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.

During the Ottoman reign, the city served as the main base of Ottoman military power in the region. Early in 1600s, the province was threatened by Iran and a revolt by the province governor Abaza Mehmed Pasha. This revolt was combined with Jelali Revolts (the uprising of the provincial musketeers called the Celali), backed by Iran and lasted until 1628.

* Video: Erzurum

The heyday of the Silk Road corresponds to that of the Byzantine Empire in its west end, Sassanid Empire Period to Il Khanate Period in the Nile-Oxus section and Three Kingdoms to Yuan Dynasty in the Sinitic zone in its east end. Trade between East and West also developed on the sea, between Alexandria in Egypt and Guangzhou in China, fostering the expansion of Roman trading posts in India. Historians also talk of a "Porcelain Route" or "Silk Route" across the Indian Ocean. The Silk Road represents an early phenomenon of political and cultural integration due to inter-regional trade. In its heyday, the Silk Road sustained an international culture that strung together groups as diverse as the Magyars, Armenians, and Chinese.

As it extends westwards from the commercial centers of North China, the continental Silk Road divides into north and south routes to avoid the Tibetan Plateau.

The Northern Route travels northwest through the Chinese province of Gansu, and splits into three further routes, two of them passing north and south of the Taklamakan Desert (through modern day Kyrgyzstan and Xinjiang) to rejoin at Kashgar; and the other going north of the Tien Shan mountains through Turfan, Talgar and Almaty (in what is now southeast Kazakhstan).

All routes join up at Kokand in the Fergana Valley, and the roads continue west across the Karakum Desert towards Merv, joining the northern route briefly.

One of these routes turns northwest along the Amu Darya (river) including Bukhara and Samarkand the center of Silk Road trade to the Aral Sea, through ancient civilizations under the present site of Astrakhan, and on to the Crimean peninsula. From there it crosses the Black Sea, Marmara Sea and the Balkans to Venice; another crosses the Caspian Sea and across the Caucasus to the Black Sea in Georgia, thence to Constantinople.

The Southern Route is mainly a single route running through northern India, then the Turkestan–Khorasan region into Mesopotamia and Anatolia; having southward spurs enabling the journey to be completed by sea from various points. It runs south through the Sichuan Basin in China and crosses the high mountains into northeast India, probably via the Ancient tea route. It then travels west along the Brahmaputra and Ganges river plains, possibly joining the Grand Trunk Road west of Varanasi. It runs through northern Pakistan and over the Hindu Kush mountains to rejoin the northern route briefly near Merv

It then follows a nearly straight line west through mountainous northern Iran and the northern tip of the Syrian Desert to the Levant. From there, Mediterranean trading ships plied regular routes to Italy, and land routes went either north through Anatolia or south to North Africa.

Another branch road travels from Herat through Susa to Charax Spasinu at the head of the Persian Gulf and across to Petra and Alexandria, from whence ships carried the cargoes to Rome and other Mediterranean ports.

 

 

The Armenian Question

The term "Armenian Question" as used in European history, became common place among diplomatic circles and in the popular press after the Congress of Berlin; that in like Eastern Question, refers to powers of Europe's involvement to the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire beginning with the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. However in specific terms, the Armenian question refers to the protection and the freedoms of Armenians from their neighboring communities. The "Armenian question" explains the forty years of Armenian-Ottoman history in the context of English, German, Russian politics between 1877-1914.

The "Armenian Question", like the "Eastern Question", remained a factor (issue) in international politics, first with Great Britain and Germany; then Russia taking on the role of Ottoman Armenians protector

The Origin: During the 18th century Ottoman Empire sustained extensive territorial losses (see: decline of the Ottoman Empire) and the Balkan nationalities, aided by European arms and diplomacy began their struggles for their liberation, (see: national awakening in the Balkans). Most Armenians lived in provinces bordering Russia, and not any other European states. Russia—became increasingly involved in Ottoman affairs using the "capitulations of the Ottoman Empire" established after the Russian intervention in 1877-1878. Russia gained control over a large part of Armenia, and became the champion of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire (a protectorate clause). Russia was also instrumental in obtaining the independence of Romania (see:National awakening of Romania) and Serbia. Beginning with the Congress of Berlin, Armenian question become a pivotal factor, in which sometimes Russia had to step back as a result of the English and German pressure, or vice versa.

Effects of Congress of Berlin: The Armenian National Assembly and Patriarch Nerses II of Constantinople sent Catholicos Mgrdich Khrimian to Berlin to present the case for the Armenians. In his famous patriotic speech “The Paper Ladle,” Mgrdich Khrimian advised Armenians to take the national awakening of Bulgaria as a model as the hopes of the Armenian people for self-determination were ignored by the European community of nations.

 

 

Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction (genocide) of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterised by the use of massacres, and the use of deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of Armenian deaths generally held to have been between one and one-and-a-half million. Other ethnic groups were similarly attacked by the Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Greeks, and some scholars consider those events to be part of the same policy of extermination.

It is widely acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides, as many Western sources point to the systematic, organized manner the killings were carried out to eliminate the Armenians.

The date of the onset of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were indiscriminate of age or gender, with rape and other sexual abuse commonplace. The Armenian Genocide is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust.

The Republic of Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, does not accept the word genocide as an accurate description of the events. In recent years, it has faced repeated calls to accept the events as genocide. To date, twenty-one countries have officially recognized the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide scholars and historians accept this view. The majority of Armenian diaspora communities were founded as a result of the Armenian genocide.

* Armenia-Turkey Thaw Tinged with Pain by Tom Esslemont

 

 

Armenians in Turkey

Armenians in Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye Ermenileri; Armenian: Թուրքահայեր, also Թրքահայեր, both meaning Turkish Armenians and Պոլսահայեր, the latter meaning Istanbul-Armenian) have an estimated population of 40,000 (1995) to 70,000. Most are concentrated around Istanbul. The Armenians support their own newspapers and schools.

History: Armenians living nowadays in Turkey are a remnant of a once much larger community that existed for hundreds of years and long before the establishment of the Ottoman Empire. Estimates for the number of Armenian citizens of the Ottoman Empire in the decade before World War I range between 2 to 2.5 million. During the Ottoman Empire, the Armenians of Turkey were active in business and trade, just like the Greeks and Jews of Turkey.

Starting in the late nineteenth century, political instability, dire economic conditions, and continuing ethnic tensions prompted the emigration of as many as 100,000 Armenians to Europe, the Americas and the Middle East. This massive exodus created the modern Armenian diaspora worldwide based on mainly Ottoman Armenian populations emigrating in large numbers, in addition to some emigration from the Caucasus which was more towards Russia.

In 1894–1897 at least 100,000 Armenians were killed during the Hamidian massacres in 1894, 1895, 1896. Further massacres ensued in 1909, also known as the Adana Massacre, that caused the death of an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Armenians. The Armenian Genocide followed in 1915–1916 until 1918, during which the Ottoman government of the time ordered the deportation of up to 1.5 to 2 million Armenians allegedly for political and security considerations. These measures affected a huge majority, close to 75%-80% according to estimates, of all the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Many died directly through Ottoman massacres and atrocities, while others died as a result of mass deportations and forced population movements, and more through unlawful Kurdish militia attacks.

As for the remaining Armenians in the Eastern parts of the country, they found refuge by 1917–1918 in the Caucasus and eventually within the areas controlled by the newly established Democratic Republic of Armenia and never returned to their original homes in Eastern Turkey.

Some Armenians, about 300,000 according to some estimates, were adopted by Turks and Kurds or married with Muslim populations in a process of Turkification and Kurdification to avoid facing a similar fate.

Most of the Armenian survivors ended up in northern Syria and the Middle East in general, with some temporarily returning to their homes in Turkey at the end of World War I particularly during the French Mandate, as a result of France being allocated the control of southeastern Turkey and all of Cilicia according to the Sykes–Picot Agreement. The Armenian population suffered a final blow with ongoing massacres and atrocities throughout the period 1920–1923, the period of the Turkish War of Independence, the ones suffering most being the remnants of the Armenians in the East and the South of the country, as well as the Greeks in the Black Sea Region. Mass deportations of Turkey's surviving Armenian population continued especially after the withdrawal of the French forces from the area. The few remaining Armenians left anyway.

By the end of the 1920s, only a handful number of Armenians were left in Turkey scatterered sparsely throughout the country, with the only viable Armenian populace remaining in Istanbul area and the environs.

Demographics: The present Armenian population is estimated between 40,000 and 70,000 mostly living in Istanbul and the environs. Even the small number of actual Turkish Armenians living in Turkey is diminishing further due to emigration to Europe, Americas and Australia.

The community is recognized as a separate "millet" in the Turkish system and has its own religious, cultural, social and educational institutions and its distinct media. The Turkish Armenian community struggles very hard to keep its own institutions and schools open and media running, against diminishing demand due to emigration and quite considerable economic sacrifices.

The Turkish Armenian community is divided into a majority Apostolic Orthodox Armenians belonging to the Armenian Apostolic Church with a small minority belonging to the Armenian Catholic Church and the Armenian Evangelical Church.

Crypto-Christian Armenian Turks: However many say that the actual number of people of Armenian ethnic origin currently living in Turkey is higher than the official numbers given (40,000-70,000), which comprise Armenians as per the definition of a Christian minority (ekalliyet).

During the Armenian Genocide many Armenian orphans were adopted by local Muslim families, who sometimes changed their names and converted them to Islam. One source cites 300,000 but another analysis considers this an overestimate, leaning towards 63,000, the figure cited in the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople's 1921 report to the United States Department of State.

When relief workers and surviving Armenians started to search for and claim back these Armenian orphans after World War I, only a small percentage were found and reunited, while many others continued to live as Muslims. Additionally, some Armenian families had converted to Islam in order to escape the genocide.

Because of this, there are an unknown number of people of Armenian origin in Turkey today who are not aware of their ancestry as well as around 300,000 "secret" Armenians, called Crypto-Christians. The figure [of 300,000] may have been accurate in 1915, but several generations have passed since then, so figures must be much higher, particularly for mixed heritage. The figure of just how many individuals of some Armenian descent existing in Turkey is hotly disputed, because of the natural progression of populations. But most conservative estimates would put them passed the one-million mark by the late 20th century.

 

The Hemshin Peoples are a number of diverse groups of people who in the past history or present have been affiliated with the Hemşin area which is in Turkey's eastern Black Sea region.

They are called (and call themselves) as Hemshinli (Turkish: Hemşinli), Hamshenis, Homshentsi meaning resident of Hemshin (historically Hamshen) in the relevant language. The term "The Hemshin" is used also in some publications to refer to Hemshinli.

The area was annexed by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century and during the Ottoman period, there was a process of migrations and Islamization. The details and the accompanying circumstances for the migrations and the Islamization process during the Ottoman era are not clearly known and documented.

Most sources agree however that prior to Ottoman era, the great majority of the residents of Hemshin were mainly ethnic Armenians and members of the Armenian Apostolic Church and practiced Christianity. They also kept a lot of the elements of Armenian ethnicity in their traditions and local language to this day.

As a result of those developments, distinctive communities with the same generic name have also appeared in the vicinity of Hopa, Turkey as well as in the Caucasus. Those three communities are almost oblivious to one another's existence.

 

 

Turkification

Turkification is a term used to describe a process of cultural change in which something or someone who is not a Turk becomes one, voluntarily or by force. It can be used in contexts in connection with Anatolian, Balkan, Caucasian and Middle Eastern peoples from different ethnic origins, as for example: Albanians, Arabs, Armenian Muslims, Assyrians, Greek Muslims, Jews, Roma, various Slavic peoples (such as Bosniaks and Pomaks), Iranian peoples (mainly Azaris and Kurds and Zazas), as well as Lazs and even Turkic ethnicities (such as Tatars) from all regions of Ottoman Empire. Another meaning of the term includes the earlier assimilative processes of the indigenous peoples in Anatolia. They occurred trough religious conversion, cultural and language assimilation during the time of Seljuk Empire. The use of the term does not assert a denial of the existence of individuals who feel pride or are comfortable in their Turkishness, nor a questioning of their identity.

Appearance of Turks in Anatolia: Anatolia was home to many different peoples in ancient times, including the Carians, Lydians, Lycians, Cappadocians, Cilicians, and scores of others. Hellenization gradually caused many of these peoples to abandon their own languages in favor of Greek, especially in cities and along the western and southern coasts, a process reinforced by Romanization. Nevertheless, in the north and east, especially in rural areas, many of the native languages continued to survive. Even by the eleventh century, when Turks first appeared, "Greek culture was little more than a veneer so far as the mass of the people were concerned." Especially along the frontiers, the Byzantines persecuted local populations for Christian heretical beliefs, causing these areas to have little sympathy for Greek culture. Byzantine authorities routinely conducted large-scale population transfers in an effort to impose religious uniformity and the Greek language. They were particularly keen to assimilate the large Armenian population. To that end, in the eleventh century, the Armenian nobility were removed from their lands and resettled throughout western Anatolia. An unintended consequence of this resettlement was the loss of local military leadership along the eastern frontier, opening the path for the inroads of Turkish invaders. Beginning in the eleventh century, war with Turks led to the deaths of many in the native population, while others were enslaved and removed. As areas became depopulated, Turkic nomads moved in with their herds.

Once an area had been conquered, and hostilities had ceased, agricultural villagers may have felt little inconvenience with the arrival of these pastoralists, since they occupied different ecological zones within the same territory. Turkic pastoralists, however, made up only a small minority of the population, and the gradual Turkification of Anatolia was due to the conversion of Christians to Islam, and their adoption of the Turkish language. The reasons for this conversion were first, the weak hold Greek culture had on much of the population, and second, the desire by the conquered population to "retain its property or else to avoid being at a disadvantage in other ways." One mark of the progress of Turkification was that by the 1330s, place names in Anatolia had changed from Greek to Turkish. The Ottomans had relative tolerance for different cultures and religions. The men of the ruling dynasty took wives from various ethnic groups and thus were of mixed ethnic and cultural heritage.

The Imprecise Meaning of Türk: The word Türk was a derogatory term until the late 19th century, referring to backwards Anatolian nomads or peasants. The Ottoman elite identified themselves as Sunni Muslims and Ottomans, never as Turks. In the late 19th century, as European ideas of nationalism were adopted by the Ottoman elite, and as it became clear that the Turkish-speakers of Anatolia were the most loyal supporters of Ottoman rule, the term Türk took on a much more positive connotation. During Ottoman times, the millet system defined communities on a religious basis, and a residue of this remains in that Turkish villagers will commonly consider as Turks only those who profess the Sunni faith, and will consider Turkish-speaking Jews, Christians, or even Alevi Muslims to be non-Turks. On the other hand, Kurdish-speaking or Arabic-speaking Sunnis of eastern Anatolia are often considered to be Turks. The imprecision of the appellation Türk can also be seen with other ethnic names, such as Kürt, which is often applied by western Anatolians to anyone east of Adana, even those who speak only Turkish. Thus, the category Türk, like other ethnic categories popularly used in Turkey, does not have a uniform usage. In recent years, centrist Turkish politicians have attempted to redefine this category in a more multi-cultural way, emphasizing that a Türk is anyone who is a citizen of the Republic of Turkey. Now article 66 of the Turkish Constitution defines a "Turk" as anyone who is "bound to the Turkish state through the bond of citizenship".

Genetic Testing of Language Replacement Hypothesis in Anatolia, Caucasus and Balkans: The region of the Anatolia represents an extremely important area with respect to ancient population migration and expansion, and the spread of the Caucasian, Indo-European and Altaic languages, as well as the extinction of the local Anatolian languages. During the late Roman Period, prior to the Turkic invasion, the population of Anatolia had reached an estimated level of over 12 million people . The extent to which gene flow from Central Asia has contributed to the current gene pool of the Turkish people, and the role of the 11th century invasion by Turkic peoples, has been the subject of several studies. These studies conclude that local Anatolian groups are the primary source of the present-day Turkish population. DNA results suggests the lack of strong genetic relationship between the Mongols and the Turks despite the historical relationship of their languages.

Anatolians do not significantly differ from other Mediterranean populations, indicating that while the Asian Turks carried out an invasion with cultural significance (language and religion), the genetic significance is only weakly detectable. Recent genetic research has suggested the local Anatolian origins of the Turks and that genetic flow between Turks and Asiatic peoples might have been slight. These findings are consistent with a model in which the Turkic languages, originating in the Altai-Sayan region of Central Asia and northwestern Mongolia, were imposed on the indigenous peoples with relatively little genetic admixture, possible example of elite cultural dominance - driven linguistic replacement. These observations also may be explained by Anatolia having the lowest migrant/resident ratio at the time of Turkic migrations. Analysis suggested that, genetically, Anatolians are more closely related also with the Balkanian populations than to the Central Asian populations. Analogical results have been received in neighbouring Caucasus region by testing Armenian and Turkic speaking Azerbaijanian populations, therefore representing language replacements, possibly via elite dominance involving primarily male migrants. As concussion, today the major DNA components in Anatolian population are shared with European and neighboring Near Eastern populations and contrast with only a minor share of haplogroups related to Central Asian, Indian and African affinity, which supports the language replacement hypothesis in the region.

Anatolianism (Turkish: Anadoluculuk) is a term used to refer to the political view, that asserts a idea the Turkish people to be a descedents of indigenous population in Anatolia. Anatolianism is based in a historical and racial views, which celebrates the cultures and civilisations of the local ancestors. It was generated by some Turkish intellectuals in the early part of the 20th century, by whom the idea of a national identity, limited by geographical borders have played a significant role. Anatolianism embraces autochtony and the genealogical link between the modern Turks and the ancient peoples of the region. It became also an element in the process of nation-building in Turkey.

 

Identity and Identity Formation in the Ottoman World: A Volume of Essays in Honor of Norman Itzkowitz by Baki Tezcan (Editor), Karl K. Barbir (Editor)

 

 

 

 

Armenian Diaspora

Armenian Diaspora: Small Armenian trading communities have existed outside of Armenia for centuries. For example, a community has existed for over a millennium in the Holy Land, and one of the four quarters of the walled old city of Jerusalem has been called the Armenian Quarter. There are also remnants of formerly populous communities in India, Myanmar, and South East Asia. However, most Armenians have scattered throughout the world as a direct consequence of the genocide of 1915, constituting the Armenian diaspora.

Within the diasporan Armenian community, there is an unofficial classification of the different kinds of Armenians. For example, Armenians who originate from Iran are referred to as Parskahay (Պարսկահայ), while Armenians from Lebanon are usually referred to as Lipananahay (Լիբանանահայ). Armenians of the Diaspora are the primary speakers of the Western dialect of the Armenian language. This dialect has considerable differences with Eastern Armenian, but speakers of either of the two variations can usually understand each other. Eastern Armenian in the diaspora is primarily spoken in Iran, Russia and former Soviet states such as Ukraine and Georgia (where they form a majority in the Samtskhe-Javakheti province). In diverse communities (such as in Canada and the U.S.) where many different kinds of Armenians live together, there is a tendency for the different groups to cluster together.

Since the arrival of Martin the Armenian to the Jamestown Colony around 1618, Armenians have dispersed all throughout the United States. Watertown, Massachusetts; Fresno, California; Detroit, Michigan; Glendale, California; and Los Angeles, California are centers of Armenian population in the United States; there is also a significant concentration in New York City. In Canada, large numbers of Armenians can be found in Toronto, Ontario, and Montreal, Quebec. Armenians are also present in every country in Latin America, with the largest concentrations being found in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Mexico.

Glendale, California, in particular, is famous for its high concentration of Armenians; there are approximately 78,000 Armenians, according to the 2000 U.S. census. Armenian residents of the city are active members in the municipal government and chamber of commerce. In Hollywood, California, a small portion is known as "Little Armenia", extending east to west from Wilton Avenue to Vermont Avenue and north and south from Hollywood Boulevard to Santa Monica Boulevard.

 

Armenians in India

Antiquity: It is believed that the Armenians might have first come to India around 2000 BC, along with Semiramis, the warrior queen of Assyria who had invaded India, as faithful allies. Several centuries later, in 327 BC, Armenians are believed to have come to India, when some Armenians joined the auxiliary elements of the forces under the command of Alexander the Great when he crossed Armenia en route to India. The earliest documented references to the mutual relationship of Armenians and Indians are found in Cyropaedia (Persian Expedition), an ancient Greek work by Xenophon (430 BC – 355 BC). These references indicate that several Armenians traveled to India, and they were well aware of land routes to reach India, as also the general and political geography, socio-cultural milieu, and economic life of the Indian subcontinent.

History: Armenians had trading relations with several parts of India, and by the 7th century a few Armenian settlements had appeared in Kerala, an Indian state located on the Malabar Coast. Armenians controlled a large part of the international trade of the area, particularly in precious stones and quality fabrics.

An archive directory (published 1956) in Delhi, India states that an Armenian merchant-cum-diplomat, named Thomas Cana, had reached the Malabar Coast in 780 using the overland route. Seven hundred years thereafter, in the year 1498, Vasco da Gama reached the Malabar Coast. Thomas Cana was an affluent merchant dealing chiefly in spices and muslins. He was also instrumental in obtaining a decree, inscribed on a copperplate, from the rulers of Malabar, which conferred several commercial, social and religious privileges for the Christians of that region. In current local references, Thomas Cana is known as "Knayi Thomman" or "Kanaj Tomma", meaning Thomas the merchant.

The Armenians in India can justly be proud of a glorious past but their present and future are not at all bright. They have greatly decreased in number. Now there are hardly 100 Armenians in India, mostly in Kolkata, where the Armenian College still functions.

Settlements: Several centuries of presence of Armenians, described as "The Merchant Princes of India”, resulted in the emergence of a number of several large and small Armenian settlements in several places in India, including Agra, Surat, Mumbai, Chinsurah, Candernagore, Calcutta, Saidabad, Chennai, Gwalior, Lucknow, and several other locations currently in the Republic of India. Lahore and Dhaka – currently respectively in Pakistan and Bangladesh, – but, earlier part of Undivided India, and Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, also had an Armenian population. There were also many Armenians in Burma and Southeast Asia.

• Akbar (1556-1605), the Mughal emperor, invited Armenians to settle in Agra in the 16th century, and by the middle of the 19th century, Agra had a sizeable Armenian population. By an imperial decree, Armenian merchants were exempted from paying taxes on the merchandise imported and exported by them, and they were also allowed to move around in the areas of the Mughal empire where entry of foreigners was otherwise prohibited. In 1562, an Armenian Church was constructed in Agra.
• During the 16th century onwards, the Armenians (mostly from Persia) formed an important trading community in Surat, the most active Indian port of that period, located on the western coast of India. The port city of Surat used to have regular sea borne to and fro traffic of merchant vessels from Basra and Bandar Abbas. Armenians of Surat built two Churches and a cemetery there, and a tombstone (of 1579) in Surat bears Armenian inscriptions. The second Church was built in 1778 and was dedicated to Virgin Mary. A manuscript written in Armenian language in 1678 (currently preserved in Saltikov-Shchedrin Library, St. Petersburg) has an account of a permanent colony of Armenians in Surat.
• The Armenians settled in Chinsurah, near Calcutta, West Bengal, and in 1697 built a Church there. This is the second oldest Church in Bengal and is still in well preserved on account of the care of the Calcutta Armenian Church Committee.
• During the period of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, a decree was issued which allowed Armenians to form a settlement in Saidabad, a suburb of Murshidabad, then the capital of Mughal suba (province) of Bengal. The imperial decree had also reduced the tax from 5% to 3.5% on two major items traded by them, namely piece goods and raw silk. The decree further stipulated that the estate of deceased Armenians would pass on to the Armenian community. By the middle of 18th century, Armenians had become very active merchant community of Bengal. In 1758, Armenians had built a Church of the virgin Mary in Saidabad’s Khan market.

Personalities: Armenians in India share a history of 2,000 years with Indians. In India, they had remained involved basically with trade and commerce, but had also contributed for enrichment of the Indian civilization and culture. Several Armenians in India rose to prominence at different point of time and under different rulers.

• Abdul Hai was the Chief Justice of Mughal Empire during the time of Akbar.
• Domingo Pires was a Portuguese interpreter of Akbar’s court, and he was sent to Goa in September 1579 to present royal invitations to Jesuits to come to Akbar’s court for religious discussions.
• Lady Juliana, believed to be a sister of one of Akbar’s Armenian wives, was a doctor in the royal harem of Akbar. Lady Juliana built the first Church in Agra. She was later married Prince Jean Philipe de Boubon of Navarre, a royal house of France.
• Mariam Zamani Begum, one of the wives of Akbar, was believed to be an Armenian. Marium Zamani Begum’s palace still stands in Fatehpur Sikri, Uttar Pradesh, India. But now most historians agree that Mariam Zamani was the First Hindu Wife of Akbar and the princess of Amber.
• An Armenian lady, Nawab Sultan Mariam Begum Saheba, also known as Vilayati Begum (literal meaning English Queen) was married to King Ghaziuddin Hyder, who became a king of Oudh, when the British conferred on him the title of King in 1814.
• Mirza Zul Quarnain, adopted son of Akbar and his Armenian wife, was an Armenian. He was well versed in several languages, particularly Portuguese. Upon the death of his father in 1613, he succeeded as a collector of tax levied on salt produced in Sambhar (Rajputana). His rise was fast and he held positions in turn as the Governor of Sambhar, Mogor, Babraich (Oudh), Lahore and Bengal. Emperor Jahangir conferred on him the title of Amir. He also maintained very cordial relations with Jesuits in India of his time. Mirza was also a poet, singer and playwright, and he composed verses in Urdu and Persian.
• Sarmad (an Arabic word for “eternal”), an Armenian of Aurangjeb’s (1658-1707) time was a scholar and a mystic saint and his grave is near the Jama Masjid. His poetic talents are often compared with gifted poets like Firdausi, Sayadi, Hafez and Khayam. He was allegedly executed by Aurangjeb in 1671.

 

Armenians in Burma

The first Armenians in Burma arrived in 1612, and dwelt in Syriam, the first tombstone being dated 1725. They were merchants.

History: Armenians were deported in large numbers to New Julfa, on the outskirts of Isfahan (Persia), early in the seventeenth century. Many continued on to India and Southeast Asia in the eighteenth century as conditions turned against them in Persia. By the 19th century they were to be found chiefly in Burma, the Malay peninsula (particularly Penang and Malacca), and Java, and were usually accepted as 'European' or 'White'. They tended to emigrate further from around World War I, notably to Australia.

In Burma, major Armenian traders were employed as officials by the Burmese kings, especially in charge of customs and relations with foreigners. They survived the First Burmese War in 1826, when the British annexed Arakan and Tenasserim, but the British conquest of Lower Burma, the commercial heart of the country, in 1852, led to renewed accusations (from the British) that Armenian merchants were anti-British, and even pro-Russian. Nevertheless, the Armenians of Yangon built their church in 1862, on land presented to them by the King of Burma.

The 1871-1872 Census of British India revealed that there were 1,250 Armenians, chiefly in Kolkata, Dhaka and Yangon. The 1881 Census stated the figure to be 1,308; 737 in Bengal and 466 in Burma. By 1891, the total figure was 1,295.

The Armenian Apostolic Church of St. John the Baptist still stands at No. 66, 40th Street (now Bo Aung Kyaw Street) in Yangon. According to its records, 76 Armenians were baptised in Burma between 1851-1915 (Yangon, Mandalay and Maymyo (now Pyin U Lwin)), 237 Armenians were married between 1855-1941 and over 300 Armenians died between 1811-1921.

Sarkies Brothers

Notable Armenians of Burma: Thackers Indian Directory lists many Armenian language names in Burmese business and government. The Sarkies Brothers (a group of four Armenian brothers, best known for founding a chain of hotels throughout Southeast Asia) first opened the Eastern & Oriental Hotel in Penang in 1884 before expanding their business to the Raffles Hotel in Singapore and The Strand Hotel in Yangon in 1901. Many Armenians remaining in Burma might also be considered part of the Anglo-Indian or, more correctly, the Anglo-Burmese community.

 

 

 

I can't hate for long. It isn't worth it

William Saroyan

William Saroyan (31 August 1908 - 18 May 1981) was an American dramatist and author. The setting of many of his stories and plays is the center of Armenian-American life in California in his native Fresno.

Saroyan was born in Fresno, California to Armenian immigrants from Bitlis, Turkey. At the age of three, after his father's death, Saroyan was placed in the orphanage in Oakland, California, together with his brother and sister, an experience he later described in his writing. Five years later, the family reunited in Fresno, where his mother, Takoohi, secured work at a cannery. He continued his education on his own, supporting himself by taking odd jobs, such as working as an office manager for the San Francisco Telegraph Company.

As a writer Saroyan made his breakthrough in Story magazine with The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934), the title taken from the nineteenth century song of the same title (listen). The protagonist is a young, starving writer who tries to survive in a Depression-ridden society:

“

Through the air on the flying trapeze, his mind hummed. Amusing it was, astoundingly funny. A trapeze to God, or to nothing, a flying trapeze to some sort of eternity; he prayed objectively for strength to make the flight with grace.

”

Saroyan served in the US Army during World War II. He was stationed in Astoria, Queens, spending much of his time at the Lombardy Hotel in Manhattan, far from Army personnel. In 1942, he was posted to London as part of a film unit. He narrowly avoided a court martial when his novel, The Adventures of Wesley Jackson, was seen as advocating pacifism.

Saroyan's stories celebrated optimism in the midst of the trials and tribulations of the Depression. Several of Saroyan's works were drawn from his own experiences, although his approach to autobiographical fact contained a fair bit of poetic license.

His advice to a young writer was: "Try to learn to breathe deeply; really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell." Saroyan endeavored to create a prose style full of zest for life and seemingly impressionistic, that came to be called "Saroyanesque".

Saroyan is probably best remembered for his play The Time of Your Life (1939), set in a waterfront saloon in San Francisco. It won a Pulitzer Prize, which Saroyan refused on the grounds that commerce should not judge the arts; he did accept the New York Drama Critics' Circle award. The play was adapted into a 1948 film starring James Cagney.

 

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze: And Other Stories by William Saroyan

 

 

 

Human Comedy by William Saroyan

 

 

 

 

The Armenian Trilogy by William Saroyan

 

 

 

 

The Time of Your Life