Armenian Highlands

Oldest Winery Excavated in Armenia - January, 2011

2011-01-11T08:41:00.000-08:00

Until recently, the global community was essentially clueless about the historical importance of the Armenian Highlands. Until recently, western academia was essentially clueless about the vastly important archeological treasures that the Armenian Highlands hid under its ancient soil. The information that I have been posting within this unique blog is only now gradually beginning to receive international exposure. There is no doubt that human civilization started within the Armenian Highlands. I am confident that the entire world will eventually come to the understanding that the Armenian Highlands was where mankind first walked onto the pages of history.

Arevordi

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Earliest Known Winery Found in Armenian Cave

Ancient Vat Hints at Man's First Winery: http://online.wsj.com/video/ancient-vat-hints-at-mans-first-winery/32430D60-3B20-4663-953C-B1016B6AEEA4.html?mod=googlewsj

As if making the oldest known leather shoe wasn't enough, a prehistoric people in what's now Armenia also built the world's oldest known winery, a new study says. Undertaken at a burial site, their winemaking may have been dedicated to the dead—and it likely required the removal of any fancy footwear. Near the village of Areni, in the same cave where a stunningly preserved, 5,500-year-old leather moccasin was recently found, archaeologists have unearthed a wine press for stomping grapes, fermentation and storage vessels, drinking cups, and withered grape vines, skins, and seeds, the study says. "This is the earliest, most reliable evidence of wine production," said archaeologist Gregory Areshian of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). "For the first time, we have a complete archaeological picture of wine production dating back 6,100 years," he said. The prehistoric winemaking equipment was first detected in 2007, when excavations co-directed by Areshian and Armenian archaeologist Boris Gasparyan began at the Areni-1 cave complex. In September 2010 archaeologists completed excavations of a large, 2-foot-deep (60-centimeter-deep) vat buried next to a shallow, 3.5-foot-long (1-meter-long) basin made of hard-packed clay with elevated edges. The installation suggests the Copper Age vintners pressed their wine the old-fashioned way, using their feet, Areshian said. Juice from the trampled grapes drained into the vat, where it was left to ferment, he explained. The wine was then stored in jars—the cool, dry conditions of the cave would have made a perfect wine cellar, according to Areshian, who co-authored the new study, published Tuesday in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Wine Traces

To test whether the vat and jars in the Armenian cave had held wine, the team chemically analyzed pottery shards—which had been radiocarbon-dated to between 4100 B.C. and 4000 B.C.—for telltale residues. The chemical tests revealed traces of malvidin, the plant pigment largely responsible for red wine's color. "Malvidin is the best chemical indicator of the presence of wine we know of so far," Areshian said. Ancient-wine expert Patrick E. McGovern, a biomolecular archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, agrees the evidence argues convincingly for a winemaking facility. One thing that would make the claim a bit stronger, though, said McGovern, who wasn't involved in the study, is the presence of tartaric acid, another chemical indicator of grapes. Malvidin, he said, might have come from other local fruits, such as pomegranates. Combined with the malvidin and radiocarbon evidence, traces of tartaric acid "would then substantiate that the facility is the earliest yet found," he said. "Later, we know that small treading vats for stomping out the grapes and running the juice into underground jars are used all over the Near East and throughout the Mediterranean," he added.

Winery Discovery Backed Up by DNA?

McGovern called the discovery "important and unique, because it indicates large-scale wine production, which would imply, I think, that the grape had already been domesticated." As domesticated vines yield much more fruit than wild varieties, larger facilities would have been needed to process the grapes. McGovern has uncovered chemical and archaeological evidence of wine, but not of a winery, in northern Iran dating back some 7,000 years—around a thousand years earlier than the new find. But the apparent discovery that winemaking using domesticated grapevines emerged in what's now Armenia appears to dovetail with previous DNA studies of cultivated grape varieties, McGovern said. Those studies had pointed to the mountains of Armenia, Georgia, and neighboring countries as the birthplace of viticulture. McGovern—whose book Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages traces the origins of wine—said the Areni grape perhaps produced a taste similar to that of ancient Georgian varieties that appear to be ancestors of the Pinot Noir grape, which results in a dry red. To preserve the wine, however, tree resin would probably have been added, he speculated, so the end result may actually have been more like a Greek retsina, which is still made with tree resin. In studying ancient alcohol, he added, "our chemical analyses have shown tree resin in many wine samples."

Ancient Drinking Rituals

While the identities of the ancient, moccasin-clad wine quaffers remain a mystery, their drinking culture likely involved ceremonies in honor of the dead, UCLA's Areshian believes. "Twenty burials have been identified around the wine-pressing installation. There was a cemetery, and the wine production in the cave was related to this ritualistic aspect," Areshian speculated. Significantly, drinking cups have been found inside and around the graves. McGovern, the ancient-wine expert, said later examples of ancient alcohol-related funerary rituals have been found throughout the world. In ancient Egypt, for example, "you have illustrations inside the tombs showing how many jars of beer and wine from the Nile Delta are to be provided to the dead," McGovern said. "I guess a cave is secluded, so it's good for a cemetery, but it's also good for making wine," he added. "And then you have the wine right there, so you can keep the ancestors happy." Future work planned at Areni will further investigate links between the burials and winemaking, study leader Areshian said.

Winemaking as Revolution

The discovery is important, the study team says, because winemaking is seen as a significant social and technological innovation among prehistoric societies. Vine growing, for instance, heralded the emergence of new, sophisticated forms of agriculture, Areshian said. "They had to learn and understand the cycles of growth of the plant," he said. "They had to understand how much water was needed, how to prevent fungi from damaging the harvest, and how to deal with flies that live on the grapes. "The site gives us a new insight into the earliest phase of horticulture—how they grew the first orchards and vineyards," he added. University of Pennsylvania archaeologist Naomi Miller commented that "from a nutritional and culinary perspective, wine expands the food supply by harnessing the otherwise sour and unpalatable wild grape. "From a social perspective, for good and ill," Miller said, "alcoholic beverages change the way we interact with each other in society."

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The ancient-winery study was led by UCLA's Hans Barnard and partially funded by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration. (The Society owns National Geographic News.)

Source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/01/110111-oldest-wine-press-making-winery-armenia-science-ucla/

Perhaps a Red, 4,100 B.C.

In Armenia, Scientists Find Oldest Known Winery; A Big Vat for Treading Grapes

Scientists have discovered the world's oldest known winery, secreted amid dozens of prehistoric graves in a cavern in Armenia, an international research team said Tuesday. Outside a mountain village still known for its wine-making skill, archaeologists unearthed a large vat set in a platform for treading grapes, along with the well-preserved remains of crushed grapes, seeds and vine leaves, dating to about 6,100 years ago—a thousand years older than other comparable finds. On three pot shards, researchers from the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles, found a residue of malvidin, a pigment that gives grapes and wine a dark red hue.

The ancient seeds belonged to a domesticated grape variety, known as Vitis vinifera vinifera, that is still used to make red wine today, the team reported. "It looks like this cave complex was used during the Copper Age as a cemetery and a place of ritual," said UCLA archaeologist Gregory Areshian, who was co-director of the excavation effort. "The production of wine could be related to those rituals." The find, funded by National Geographic and to be reported Tuesday in the Journal of Archaeological Science, is evidence that the quest for a decent red may be as old as civilization itself. The team involved archaeologists from the U.S., Armenia and Ireland's University College Cork. "For this time and period, it is a very surprising discovery of advanced large-scale wine production," said biomolecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern, of an authority on the origins of fermented beverages at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, who was not involved in the project.

A Prehistory of Wine

No one knows who first made wine or domesticated wild grapes, but vintners today produce about 6.6 billion gallons of wine every year. Recent archaeological discoveries suggest that the art of fermenting wine is a biotechnology breakthrough as old as civilization itself.

9,000 years ago – World's oldest known fermented beverage, a rice wine made with honey and fruit, from traces on pottery shards found in the village of Jiahu in northern China.
7,400 years ago – Earliest chemical evidence of grape wine, unearthed at Hajii Firuz Tepe in the Zargos Mountains of Iran.
6,500 years ago – Earliest evidence of mashed grapes in Greece and of wine production in Europe.
6,100 years ago – Earliest known winery, found in Armenia, including a basin for squeezing, fermentation jars and the remains of crushed grapes, leaves and vines.
5,100 years ago – Earliest evidence of medicinal wine in Egypt, from jars encrusted with wine residue found in tomb of Pharaoh Scorpion I.
5,000 years ago – World's oldest known wine press, found in the ruins of Vathypetro in Crete.
4,000 years ago – Earliest documented mention of wine, in a Sumerian clay tablet that, in ancient cuneiform, recorded a receipt for jugs of wine.
3,300 years ago – First evidence of white wine in Egypt, from traces in jugs found in the tomb of King Tutankhamen.
3,000 years ago – Oldest known surviving sample of Chinese rice wine.
2,200 years ago – Chinese grape wine first produced, when domesticated European grapes are introduced to Asia.
1,686 years ago – Oldest known surviving bottle of wine, sealed in a glass amphora by ancient Romans and buried in a stone sarcophagus in Germany; unearthed in 1867, it is still sealed and on display.

Source: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Journal of Archaeological Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science News, Archeology.

No one knows exactly who invented the biotechnology of grape wine. In northern China, villagers made fermented rice wine as early as 9,000 years ago. The advent of grape wine, though, can be traced to the Middle East through Egyptian tomb paintings, Sumerian clay tablets and the ancient Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, arguably the oldest known work of literature. The Bible's Book of Genesis credits Noah as the first to plant a vineyard, make wine, and become intoxicated. The earliest chemical evidence of grape wine, dating to about 7,400 years ago, was found on pots unearthed at Hajii Firuz Tepe in the Zargos Mountains of Iran. Through an extensive gene-mapping project in 2006, Dr. McGovern and his colleagues analyzed the heritage of more than 110 modern grape cultivars, and narrowed their origin to a region in Georgia, adjacent to present-day Armenia.

The winery cavern, called Areni-1, was originally surveyed during the Cold War era by defense planners from the Soviet Union who were looking for cave shelters deep enough to withstand a nuclear attack. Not until 2007, however, did archeologists explore the complex of 39 caves nestled in a steep canyon at the head of a narrow fertile valley, long planted with orchards and vineyards. As the Scientists made exploratory trenches dstarted to make exploratory trenches across the cave floor, theyand broke through a thick crust of hardened sheep dung into several layers of remarkablywell-preserved textiles, leather and wooden artifacts, dating to a time when metal tools were starting to replace stone implements and the wheel was first coming into use. The researchers have excavated six graves, of the dozens identified so far in the cave.

They excavated the wine vat, which can hold 14 to 15 gallons of liquid, in September. They also found storage jars, a drinking cup and bowls. Other finds included the earliest known leather shoe, dating to about 5,500 years ago, a discovery announced in June. "The cave was never looted and never disturbed," said Dr. Areshian. "It gives us this wonderful preservation of artifacts and organic remains."

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704458204576074141252276326.html?mod=rss_Food_and_Drink

Armenian archeologists: 5,900 year old skirt found - October, 2010

2010-11-14T19:24:00.000-08:00

Armenian archeologists: 5,900 year old skirt found

An Armenian archaeologist says that scientists have discovered a skirt that could be 5,900 year old. Pavel Avetisian, the head of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography in Yerevan, said a fragment of skirt made of reed was found during recent digging in the Areni-1 cave in southeastern Armenia. Avetisian told Tuesday's news conference in the Armenian capital that the find could be one of the world's oldest piece of reed clothing. Earlier excavation in the same location has produced what researchers believe is a 5,500-year-old shoe, making it the oldest piece of leather footwear known to researchers. Boris Gasparian, an Armenian archaeologist who worked jointly with U.S. and Irish scientists at the site, said they also found a mummified goat that could be 5,900-year-old, or more than 1,000 years older than the mummified animals found in Egypt.

Source: http://www.archaeologydaily.com/news/201010275408/Armenian-archeologists-5900-year-old-skirt-found.html

Eneolithic people found in Armenia

Well preserved burial places of people of the eneolithic age have been found in the caves of Areni 1, Vaiots Dzor, Armenia. Excavations are conducted in cooperation with archeologists from the University of California (USA) and University College Cork (UCC) (Ireland), head of the Armenian team Boris Gasparyan said. He said that the specialists have found the bodies of adults and children in clay tombs. Children's bodies are intact, whereas the adults were dismembered. The find is a unique opportunity to find out the children's genetic code by means of DNA analyses. This, in turn, will supply scientists with valuable information on the humans' genetic evolution. However, deciphering the genetic code is a most expensive procedure, laboratory analyses cost ¬ 60,000, Gasparyan said. Since colors were not widely spread in the Armenian territory in the eneolithic age, the colorful vessels with the sun and animals painted on them are most interesting. The excavations are of paramount importance for putting together the picture of Armenia's ancient past and of the cultural and historical picture of Western Asia in the eneolithic age. This year the archeologists have found a drinking horn of the eneolithic age in Areni 1. The excavations started in 2007, and the most ancient leather shoe was found in a cave the next year. NEWS.am reminds readers that a 5,500-year-old shoe was found in September 2008. A number of research centers confirmed the age of the finding as a result of independent research. The 23.5-cm-long and 7.6- to 10-cm-wide moccasin-like shoe was well-preserved due to a layer of sheep droppings, which blocked the air.

Source: http://www.archaeologydaily.com/news/201010275409/Eneolithic-people-found-in-Armenia.html

Expedition discovers mummified goat in Areni cave

An expedition excavating Areni cave discovered a mummified goat head, part of body, perhaps, also brain, head of the Armenian party in the expedition, Boris Gasparyan told reporters. He supposes the mummified goat is 1000-1500 years older than Egyptian mummies. According to Pavel Avetisyan, Director of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Egyptian mummifications are man-made while Areni cave mummifications are triggered by environment. The expert said the mummified goat gives a possibility to study the process of domestication of animals. If scientists prove that the goat dates from late 5th millennium or early 4th millennium BC, they will have a good basis to study wild goat species.

Source: http://www.archaeologydaily.com/news/201010265401/Expedition-discovers-mummified-goat-in-Areni-cave.html

Mesopotamia’s Civilization Originated in Armenia - August, 2010

2010-08-04T11:03:00.000-07:00

Mesopotamia’s Civilization Originated in Armenia

Shengavit (official website): http://www2.widener.edu/~msrothma/shengavitweb2.html

Unique discoveries revealed as a result of excavations at Shengavit (4000-3000 B.C.) confirm that Armenia is the motherland of metallurgy, jeweler’s art, wine-making and horse breeding. A group of archaeologists studying the ancient city concluded that 4000-3000 B.C. Armenia was a highly developed state with exclusive culture. The excavations are carried out by an Armenian-American archaeological expedition. Director of the Scientific and Research Institute of Historical and Cultural Heritage of the RA Ministry of Culture Simonyan said that for example, the glass beads discovered at the territory of Shengavit are of a higher quality than the Egypt samples.

“Meanwhile, the amount of revealed horse bones at the territory has exceeded all expectations of the researchers. With respect to this, German paleozoologist Hans Peter Wertman stated that he has not observed such a quantity of horses in the entire Ancient East. A great number of stone tools have been found in workrooms. While the discovered evidences of copper production prove that a systematized iron production was established in Armenia,” said Simonyan, adding that many surprises are still awaiting us.

For his part, Mitchell S. Rothman, a Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology and founder of the Anthropology Department at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania, said that all the discoveries prove that around 6,000 years ago the culture of Shengavit has spread over the ancient world. “All that was known in Mesopotamia came from Armenia. Armenia is the absent fragment in the entire mosaics of the ancient world’s civilizations construction. Shengavit has supplemented the lacking chains, that we had been facing while studying the ancient culture of Mesopotamia,” concluded Rothman.

Source: http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/society/news/50844/Mesopotamias_civilization_originated_in_Armenia

Միջագետքի քաղաքակրթությունն իր սկիզբն առնում է Հայաստանից

Շենգավիթի պեղումների ժամանակ հայտնաբերված եզակի գտածոները հաստատում են, որ Հայաստանը մետաղագործության, ոսկերչության, գինեգործության ու ձիաբուծության հայրենիքն է: Ամեն ինչ ապացուցում է, որ մ.թ.ա 4-3 հազար տարի առաջ Հայաստանը զարգացած պետություն է եղել, բացառիկ մշակույթի կրող: Նման եզրակացության է հանգել այդ հինավուրց բնակատեղին ուսումնասիրող հնագետների խումբը: Պեղումներն անց է կացնում հայ-ամերիկյան հնագիտական գիտարշավը:

«Օրինակ, Շենգավիթի տարածքում հայտնաբերված ապակյա ուլունքներն իրենց որակով գերազանցում են Եգիտոսում հայտնաբերվածները: Իսկ այդ տարածքում հայտնաբերված ձիերի ոսկորների քանակը գերազանցել է հետազոտողների բոլոր ակնկալիքները: Այդ առնչությամբ, գերմանացի հնեակենդանաբան Հանս Պիտեր Ուերթմանը հայտարարել է, որ այդ քանակությամբ ձիերի ոսկորներ նա չի տեսել ողջ Հին Արևելքում: Արհեստանոցներում հայտնաբերվել են մեծ քանակությամբ քարե գործիքներ: Իսկ պղնձագործության հետքերը թույլ են տալիս դատել այն մասին, որ Հայաստանում կանոնավոր բրոնզի արտադրություն կար»,- հուլիսի 2-ին տեղի ունեցած մամլո ասուլիսում հայտարարել է ՀՀ մշակույթի նախարարությանն առընթեր պատմամշակութային ժառանգության գիտահետազոտական կենտրոնի տնօրեն, Հակոբ Սիմոնյանը: «Դա միայն սկիզբն է: Մեզ դեռևս բազում անակնկալներ են սպասում»,-հավելել է նա:

Իր հերթին մարդաբանության բաժնի ղեկավար, Փենսիլվանիայի համալսարանի դասախոս Միշել Ռոտմանը հայտարարեց, որ ամեն ինչ վկայում է այն մասին, որ մոտավորապես մ.թ.ա 3-րդ հազարամյակում Շենգավիթի մշակույթը տարածվեց հին աշխարհով մեկ: «Այն ամենն, ինչ կարողանում էին անել Միջագետքում, դուրս է եկել Հայաստանից: Հայաստանն է հին աշխարհի քաղաքակրթությունների խճանկարի բացակայող տարրը: Շենգավիթը լրացրեց այն բոլոր թերի օղակները, որոնց մենք բախվում ենք Միջագետքի հին մշակույթն ուսումնասիրելիս»,-հավելել է Ռոտմանը:

Աղբյուր: http://www.panarmenian.net/arm/society/news/50844

Oldest Leather Shoe Found in Armenia - June, 2010

2010-06-10T17:10:00.000-07:00

The same cave complex that yielded the world's oldest remnant of a human brain and the world's oldest evidence for wine making last year, gives us another oldest - the world's oldest leather shoe. Armenia continues to fascinate the archeological world as it rewrites the early history of mankind. I believe that these types of fascinating finds will continue to astonish the world as Armenia begins to reveal more and more of its ancient secrets laying dormant underneath its much trodden land.

Arevordi

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Oldest Leather Shoe Steps Out After 5,500 years

World's Oldest Leather Shoe Found in Armenian Cave: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVfvosnFsDA&feature=player_embedded#!

About 5,500 years ago someone in the mountains of Armenia put his best foot forward in what is now the oldest leather shoe ever found. It'll never be confused with a penny loafer or a track shoe, but the well-preserved footwear was made of a single piece of leather, laced up the front and back, researchers reported Wednesday in PLoS One, a journal of the Public Library of Science. Worn and shaped by the wearer's right foot, the shoe was found in a cave along with other evidence of human occupation. The shoe had been stuffed with grass, which dated to the same time as the leather of the shoe — between 5,637 and 5,387 years ago. "This is great luck," enthused archaeologist Ron Pinhasi of University College Cork in Cork, Ireland, who led the research team.

"We normally only find broken pots, but we have very little information about the day-to-day activity" of these ancient people. "What did they eat? What did they do? What did they wear? This is a chance to see this ... it gives us a real glimpse into society," he said in a telephone interview. Previously the oldest leather shoe discovered in Europe or Asia was on the famous Otzi, the "Iceman" found frozen in the Alps a few years ago and now preserved in Italy. Otzi has been dated to 5,375 and 5,128 years ago, a few hundred years more recent than the Armenian shoe. Otzi's shoes were made of deer and bear leather held together by a leather strap. The Armenian shoe appears to be made of cowhide, Pinhasi said.

Older sandals have been found in a cave in Missouri, but those were made of fiber rather than leather. The shoe found in what is now Armenia was found in a pit, along with a broken pot and some wild goat horns. But Pinhasi doesn't think it was thrown away. There was discarded material that had been tossed outside the cave, while this pit was inside in the living area. And while the shoe had been worn, it wasn't worn out. It's not clear if the grass that filled the shoe was intended as a lining or insulation, or to maintain the shape of the shoe when it was stored, according to the researchers.

The Armenian shoe was small by current standards — European size 37 or U.S. women's size 7 — but might have fit a man of that era, according to Pinhasi. He described the shoe as a single piece of leather cut to fit the foot. The back of the shoe was closed by a lace passing through four sets of eyelets. In the front, 15 pairs of eyelets were used to lace from toe to top. There was no reinforcement in the sole, just the one layer of soft leather. "I don't know how long it would last in rocky terrain," Pinhasi said. He noted that the shoe is similar to a type of footwear common in the Aran Islands, west of Ireland, up until the 1950s. The Irish version, known as "pampooties" reportedly didn't last long, he said. "In fact, enormous similarities exist between the manufacturing technique and style of this (Armenian) shoe and those found across Europe at later periods, suggesting that this type of shoe was worn for thousands of years across a large and environmentally diverse region," Pinhasi said.

While the Armenian shoe was soft when unearthed, the leather has begun to harden now that it is exposed to air, Pinhasi said. Oh, and unlike a lot of very old shoes, it didn't smell. Pinhasi said the shoe is currently at the Institute of Archaeology in Yerevan, but he hopes it will be sent to laboratories in either Switzerland or Germany where it can be treated for preservation and then returned to Armenia for display in a museum. Pinhasi, meanwhile, is heading back to Armenia this week, hoping the other shoe will drop. The research was funded by the National Geographic Society, the Chitjian Foundation, the Gfoeller Foundation, the Steinmetz Family Foundation, the Boochever Foundation and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA.

Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hVNA_n-UZX9pwMoI6EfJsWLQa4TwD9G8054G0

This Shoe Had Prada Beat by 5,500 Years

Think of it as a kind of prehistoric Prada: Archaeologists have discovered what they say is the world’s oldest known leather shoe. Perfectly preserved under layers of sheep dung (who needs cedar closets?), the shoe, made of cowhide and tanned with oil from a plant or vegetable, is about 5,500 years old, older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids, scientists say. Leather laces crisscross through numerous leather eyelets, and it was worn on the right foot; there is no word on the left shoe. While the shoe more closely resembles an L. L.Bean-type soft-soled walking shoe than anything by Jimmy Choo, “these were probably quite expensive shoes, made of leather, very high quality,” said one of the lead scientists, Gregory Areshian, of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

It could have fit a small man or a teenager, but was most likely worn by a woman with roughly size 7 feet. The shoe was discovered by scientists excavating in a huge cave in Armenia, part of a treasure trove of artifacts they found that experts say provide unprecedented information about an important and sparsely documented era: the Chalcolithic period or Copper Age, when humans are believed to have invented the wheel, domesticated horses and produced other innovations.

Along with the shoe, the cave, designated Areni-1, has yielded evidence of an ancient winemaking operation, and caches of what may be the oldest known intentionally dried fruits: apricots, grapes, prunes. The scientists, financed by the National Geographic Society and other institutions, also found skulls of three adolescents (“subadults,” in archaeology-speak) in ceramic vessels, suggesting ritualistic or religious practice; one skull, Dr. Areshian said, even contained desiccated brain tissue older than the shoe, about 6,000 years old.

“It’s sort of a Pompeii moment, except without the burning,” said Mitchell Rothman, an anthropologist and Chalcolithic expert at Widener University who is not involved in the expedition. “The shoe is really cool, and it’s certainly something that highlights the unbelievable kinds of discoveries at this site. The larger importance, though, is where the site itself becomes significant. You have the transition really into the modern world, the precursor to the kings and queens and bureaucrats and pretty much the whole nine yards.”

Previously, the oldest known leather shoe belonged to Ötzi the Iceman, a mummy found 19 years ago in the Alps near the Italian-Austrian border. His shoes, about 300 years younger than the Armenian shoe, had bearskin soles, deerskin panels, tree-bark netting and grass socks. Footwear even older than the leather shoe includes examples found in Missouri and Oregon, made mostly from plant fibers.

The Armenian shoe discovery, published Wednesday in PLoS One, an online journal, was made beneath one of several cave chambers, when an Armenian doctoral student, Diana Zardaryan, noticed a small pit of weeds. Reaching down, she touched two sheep horns, then an upside-down broken bowl. Under that was what felt like “an ear of a cow,” she said. “But when I took it out, I thought, ‘Oh my God, it’s a shoe.’ To find a shoe has always been my dream.” Because the cave was also used by later civilizations, most recently by 14th-century Mongols, “my assumption was the shoe would be 600 to 700 years old,” Dr. Areshian said, adding that “a Mongol shoe would have been really great.” When separate laboratories dated the leather to 3653 to 3627 B.C., he said, “we just couldn’t believe that a shoe could be so ancient.”

The shoe was not tossed devil-may-care, but was, for unclear reasons, placed deliberately in the pit, which was carefully lined with yellow clay. While scientists say the shoe was stuffed with grass, acting like a shoe tree to hold its shape, it had been worn. “You can see the imprints of the big toe,” said another team leader, Ron Pinhasi, an archaeologist at University College Cork in Ireland, who said the shoe resembled old Irish pampooties, rawhide slippers. “As the person was wearing and lacing it, some of the eyelets had been torn and repaired.” Dr. Pinhasi said the cave, discovered in 1997, appeared to be mainly used by “high-status people, people who had power,” for storing the Chalcolithic community’s harvest and ritual objects. But some people lived up front, probably caretakers providing, Dr. Areshian said, the Chalcolithic equivalent of valet parking.

Many tools found were of obsidian, whose closest source was a 60-mile trek away. (Perhaps why they needed shoes, Dr. Areshian suggested.) “It’s an embarrassment of riches because the preservation is so remarkable,” said Adam T. Smith, an anthropologist at the University of Chicago who has visited the cave. He said that distinguishing Chalcolithic objects from later civilizations’ artifacts in the cave had been complicated, and that “we’re still not entirely clear what the chronology is” of every discovery. “The shoe,” he said, “is in a sense just the tip of the iceberg.” (He probably meant to say wingtip.)

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/science/10shoe.html?scp=2&sq=armenia&st=cse

Armenian Cave Yields Oldest Remains of Human Brain - January, 2009

2009-10-02T20:03:00.000-07:00

Armenian Cave Yields Ancient Human Brain

Excavations have produced roughly 6,000-year-old relics of a poorly known culture existing near the dawn of civilization

In a cave overlooking southeastern Armenia’s Arpa River, just across the border from Iran, scientists have uncovered what may be the oldest preserved human brain from an ancient society. The cave also offers surprising new insights into the origins of modern civilizations, such as evidence of a winemaking enterprise and an array of culturally diverse pottery. Excavations in and just outside of Areni-1 cave during 2007 and 2008 yielded an extensive array of Copper Age artifacts dating to between 6,200 and 5,900 years ago, reported Gregory Areshian of the University of California, Los Angeles, January 11 at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America. In eastern Europe and the Near East, an area that encompasses much of southwest Asia, the Copper Age ran from approximately 6,500 to 5,500 years ago. The finds show that major cultural developments occurred during the Copper Age in areas outside southern Iraq, which is traditionally regarded as the cradle of civilization, Areshian noted.

The new cave discoveries move cultural activity in what’s now Armenia back by about 800 years. “This is exciting work,” comments Rana Özbal of Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. A basin two meters long installed inside the Armenian cave and surrounded by large jars and the scattered remains of grape husks and seeds apparently belonged to a large-scale winemaking operation. Researchers also found a trio of Copper Age human skulls, each buried in a separate niche inside the three-chambered, 600-square–meter cave. The skulls belonged to 12- to 14-year-old girls, according to anatomical analyses conducted independently by three biological anthropologists. Fractures identified on two skulls indicate that the girls were killed by blows from a club of some sort, probably in a ritual ceremony, Areshian suggested. Remarkably, one skull contained a shriveled but well-preserved brain. “This is the oldest known human brain from the Old World,” Areshian said. The Old World comprises Europe, Asia, Africa and surrounding islands.

Scientists now studying the brain have noted preserved blood vessels on its surface. Surviving red blood cells have been extracted from those hardy vessels for analysis. It’s unclear who frequented Areshi-1, where these people lived or how big their settlements were. No trace of household activities has been found in or outside the cave. Whoever they were, these people participated in trade networks that ran throughout the Near East, Areshian proposes. Copper Age pottery at the site falls into four groups, only one of which represents a local product. A group of painted ceramic items came from west-central Iran. Some pots display a style typical of the Maikop culture from southern Russia and southeastern Europe. Still other pieces were characteristic of the Kura-Arax culture that flourished just west of Maikop territory in Russia.

Radiocarbon dating of pottery and other Copper Age finds pushes back the origins of the Maikop and Kura-Arax cultures by nearly 1,000 years, Areshian says. Additional discoveries at Areni-1 include metal knives, seeds from more than 30 types of fruit, remains of dozens of cereal species, rope, cloth, straw, grass, reeds and dried grapes and prunes. A hard, carbonate crust covering the Copper Age soil layers, along with extreme dryness and stable temperatures inside the cave, contributed to preservation of artifacts and, in particular, the young girl’s brain. Medieval ovens from the 12th to 14th centuries have also been excavated at the cave’s entrance, underneath a rock shelter. Areshian expects much more material to emerge from further excavations at Areni-1 and from explorations of the many other caves bordering the Arpa River. “One of these caves is much larger than Areni-1, covering about an acre inside,” he said.

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39826/title

ARMENIA: ARCHEOLOGISTS SAY THEY’VE FOUND REMAINS OF WORLD’S OLDEST HUMAN BRAIN

An Armenian-American-Irish archeological expedition claims to have found the remains of the world’s oldest human brain, estimated to be over 5,000 years old. The team also says it has found evidence of what may be history’s oldest winemaking operation. The discoveries were made recently in a cave in southeastern Armenia.

An analysis performed by the Keck Carbon Cycle Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory at the University of California, Irvine confirmed that one of three human skulls found at the site contains particles of a human brain dating to around the first quarter of the 4th millennium BC. "The preliminary results of the laboratory analysis prove this is the oldest of the human brains so far discovered in the world," said Dr. Boris Gasparian, one of the excavation’s leaders and an archeologist from the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology in Yerevan. "Of course, the mummies of Pharaonic Egypt did contain brains, but this one is older than the Egyptian ones by about 1,000 to 1,200 years."

The Keck Carbon Cycle Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, like other research laboratories examining the Areni finds declined to comment to EurasiaNet about its test results. In late 2008, researchers in the United Kingdom found a roughly 2,000-year-old human brain -- at the time believed to rank as among the world’s oldest. The team in Armenia, comprised of 26 specialists from Ireland, the United States and Armenia, had been excavating the three-chamber cave where the brain was found since 2007. The site, overlooking the Arpa River near the town of Areni, is believed to date mostly to the Late Chalcolithic Period or the Early Bronze Age (around 6,000 to 5,000 years ago). It also contains evidence of elaborate burial rituals and agricultural practices.

The skull with the brain was found in a chamber that contained three buried ceramic vessels containing the skulls of three women, about 11 to 16 years old. The cave’s damp climate helped preserve red and white blood cells in the brain remains. Additional finds are expected, excavation leaders say: the project team so far has examined only about 10 percent of the 500-square-meter site. "It is a unique first-hand source of information about the genetic code of the people who inhabited this place, and we’re now studying it," Gasparian said in reference to the nine-centimeter-long, seven-centimeter-high brain fragment. It is still being determined from what part of the brain the fragment comes.

Excavation co-leader Ron Pinhasi, a biological anthropologist from Ireland’s University College Cork, called the remains "a mystery we have to understand." "These are obviously ritualistic secondary burials, which means the three bodies were beheaded after being buried, and then re-buried in these vessels," said Pinhasi. Microscopic analysis revealed blood vessels and traces of a brain hemorrhage, perhaps caused by a blow to the head, Gasparian said.

Next to one of the three skulls, the team also found four adult femoral shafts -- midsections of a thigh bone -- that may have also played a role in the ritual. "Interestingly, some of them were not just burnt, but rather evenly roasted from all sides, which directly points to a ceremonial practice. This may have been a case of ceremonial cannibalism, but it still needs to be proved," said Gasparian. The excavation has also unearthed another potential record-setter -- vessels, pots, grape seeds and grape vine shoots, which, according to Gasparian and Pinhasi, could classify the site as one of the world’s oldest wineries. "If the analysis confirms the place has been a winery, for the first time ever we will be able to say wine has been produced as early as about 6,000 years ago," Gasparian said.

Winemaking with wild grapes is believed to have gotten its start in Georgia, Armenia’s neighbor to the north, and in Iran, not far from the Areni-1 site, between 6,000 BC and 5,000 BC. Areni is distinct because the number and volume of the vessels found suggests that wine was produced here in commercial qualities and from domesticated grapes, according to Gasparian. Near the spot where the three skulls were buried, the excavation team found more then 30 vessels ranging in size from 50 liters to one with a diameter of 1.5 meters. The one vessel’s volume has yet to be quantified.

Grape seeds and a grape branch sent to Oxford University’s Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit for Carbon-14 analysis have been dated to the late 5th millennium BC or the early 4th millennium BC, he said. Researchers are now waiting for the results of a chemical analysis to confirm whether the vessels contained wine or vinegar or some other substance. "If the analyses prove our hypothesis, Areni can be called the Armenian equivalent of French Provence and Champagne" in terms of the volume of wine produced, Gasparian added.

Source: http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insightb/articles/eav093009b.shtml

Areni Wine-Making Industry 6 Thousand Years Old

“If this is a wine-press, so we have really had a wine-making industry”,-informed Aysor.am Boris Gasparyan, the co-leader of the archaeological team from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of RA. In the cave of Areni Birds, in Vayots Dzor Marz, during the excavations 50 liters clay jars, pitchers, samples of crockery, vines were found, which entitled the scholars to suppose that there was an industrial area of wine production there. According to the results of the examinations made in Oxford laboratory, the vine found in the cave dated to the end of the 5 century and beginning of the 4 century. “The results of the examination made in Oxford laboratory are out of doubt”, said Boris Gasparyan.

The Armenian small caves of volcanic origin, which are spread along the feet of Aragats, in the gorges of Qasakh and Hrazdan, are well-examined.

And the caves, which originate in case of the limestone structure of the massifs, now are being examined. The caves in Areni are suchlike and are of a great archaeological value. Since 2007 joint excavations are being held by the archaeologists of Ireland, California, Great Britain and Armenia. “The substances found in the caves mostly refer to Eneolith period, the end of the 5th century and the mid of the 4th century (4.100-4.200), i.e. 3 500 years, so we have the Middle Ages substances. Last year we found pieces of manuscripts in Armenian and Persian. Also we have some buildings and hearths of the Middle Ages”, - told Boris Gaspatyan.

In the niches of the caves the organic substances are well preserved, here the microclimate is not changing much in winter and summer. The caves in Areni are not exceptions. The archaeologist reminded about the Armenian tale of Anahit and Vachagan where the whole craftsmanship was held in the cave, and this was not groundless and had a historical basis. In the economy, the monument of Areni had an important role, and the caves served as places for living, cult worshiping and household activities. In the caves in Areni the skulls of young girls were found, which pointed to the fructification ritual funerals. Also the bones of goat and sheep were found. As montioned Boris Gasparyan the goats were mostly bred for milk and wool, and sheep were bred for meat and wool.

The archeologists dug to 4 meters and there the stratum of cultural activities of the Copper Stone Age ended, and the sediments of Pleistocene period started. “This little surface does not let us dig deeper and we could not widen the hall not to damage the nearby clay constructions”,-mentioned Boris Gaspartan. These archeological samples now are in different laboratories of the world. The archeologists are looking forward to the results, and the excavations of the caves in Areni are still going on.

Source: http://www.aysor.am/en/news/2009/08/26/arenivine/

DISCOVERY OF 12,000 YEAR OLD TEMPLE COMPLEX COULD ALTER THEORY OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT - April, 2008

2009-01-29T18:35:00.001-08:00

Recent findings by a German archeologist in the southern Armenian Highlands (modern day Turkey) has effectively turned our understanding of ancient history upside down. Estimated to be approximately 12,000 years old, Gobekli Tepe, located within confines of historic Armenia, is by far the oldest stone-built structure/monument ever unearthed. If the dating on this magnificent and mystical site is proven to be accurate, it can be said that this is precisely the vicinity where human civilization began. The following articles provides a fascinating look at Gobekli Tepe.

Arevordi

***

DISCOVERY OF 12,000 YEAR OLD TEMPLE COMPLEX COULD ALTER THEORY OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

Gobekli Tepe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XqfjWCUgfk

Göbekli tepe.wmv: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTqt61K4qZM&feature=related

CNN International Explores the Secrets of Armenia's Stone Henge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBh9qOFOIf0&feature=player_embedded#at=15

As a child, Klaus Schmidt used to grub around in caves in his native Germany in the hope of finding prehistoric paintings. Thirty years later, representing the German Archaeological Institute, he found something infinitely more important -- a temple complex almost twice as old as anything comparable on the planet. "This place is a supernova", says Schmidt, standing under a lone tree on a windswept hilltop 35 miles north of Turkey’s border with Syria. "Within a minute of first seeing it I knew I had two choices: go away and tell nobody, or spend the rest of my life working here." Behind him are the first folds of the Anatolian plateau. Ahead, the Mesopotamian plain, like a dust-colored sea, stretches south hundreds of miles to Baghdad and beyond. The stone circles of Gobekli Tepe are just in front, hidden under the brow of the hill.

Compared to Stonehenge, Britain’s most famous prehistoric site, they are humble affairs. None of the circles excavated (four out of an estimated 20) are more than 30 meters across. What makes the discovery remarkable are the carvings of boars, foxes, lions, birds, snakes and scorpions, and their age. Dated at around 9,500 BC, these stones are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia, and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge. Never mind circular patterns or the stone-etchings, the people who erected this site did not even have pottery or cultivate wheat. They lived in villages. But they were hunters, not farmers. "Everybody used to think only complex, hierarchical civilizations could build such monumental sites, and that they only came about with the invention of agriculture", says Ian Hodder, a Stanford University Professor of Anthropology, who, since 1993, has directed digs at Catalhoyuk, Turkey’s most famous Neolithic site. "Gobekli changes everything. It’s elaborate, it’s complex and it is pre-agricultural. That fact alone makes the site one of the most important archaeological finds in a very long time."

With only a fraction of the site opened up after a decade of excavations, Gobekli Tepe’s significance to the people who built it remains unclear. Some think the site was the center of a fertility rite, with the two tall stones at the center of each circle representing a man and woman. It’s a theory the tourist board in the nearby city of Urfa has taken up with alacrity. Visit the Garden of Eden, its brochures trumpet, see Adam and Eve. Schmidt is skeptical about the fertility theory. He agrees Gobekli Tepe may well be "the last flowering of a semi-nomadic world that farming was just about to destroy," and points out that if it is in near perfect condition today, it is because those who built it buried it soon after under tons of soil, as though its wild animal-rich world had lost all meaning. But the site is devoid of the fertility symbols that have been found at other Neolithic sites, and the T-shaped columns, while clearly semi-human, are sexless. "I think here we are face to face with the earliest representation of gods", says Schmidt, patting one of the biggest stones. "They have no eyes, no mouths, no faces. But they have arms and they have hands. They are makers." "In my opinion, the people who carved them were asking themselves the biggest questions of all," Schmidt continued. "What is this universe? Why are we here?"

With no evidence of houses or graves near the stones, Schmidt believes the hill top was a site of pilgrimage for communities within a radius of roughly a hundred miles. He notes how the tallest stones all face southeast, as if scanning plains that are scattered with archeological sites in many ways no less remarkable than Gobekli Tepe. Last year, for instance, French archaeologists working at Djade al-Mughara in northern Syria uncovered the oldest mural ever found. "Two square meters of geometric shapes, in red, black and white - a bit like a Paul Klee painting," explains Eric Coqueugniot, the University of Lyon archaeologist who is leading the excavation. Coqueugniot describes Schmidt’s hypothesis that Gobekli Tepe was meeting point for feasts, rituals and sharing ideas as "tempting," given the site’s spectacular position. But he emphasizes that surveys of the region are still in their infancy. "Tomorrow, somebody might find somewhere even more dramatic." Director of a dig at Korpiktepe, on the Tigris River about 120 miles east of Urfa, Vecihi Ozkaya doubts the thousands of stone pots he has found since 2001 in hundreds of 11,500 year-old graves quite qualify as that. But his excitement fills his austere office at Dicle University in Diyarbakir. "Look at this", he says, pointing at a photo of an exquisitely carved sculpture showing an animal, half-human, half-lion. "It’s a sphinx, thousands of years before Egypt. Southeastern Turkey, northern Syria - this region saw the wedding night of our civilization."

Source: http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav041708a.shtml

Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?

Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the world's oldest temple.

"Guten Morgen," he says at 5:20 a.m. when his van picks me up at my hotel in Urfa. Thirty minutes later, the van reaches the foot of a grassy hill and parks next to strands of barbed wire. We follow a knot of workmen up the hill to rectangular pits shaded by a corrugated steel roof—the main excavation site. In the pits, standing stones, or pillars, are arranged in circles. Beyond, on the hillside, are four other rings of partially excavated pillars. Each ring has a roughly similar layout: in the center are two large stone T-shaped pillars encircled by slightly smaller stones facing inward. The tallest pillars tower 16 feet and, Schmidt says, weigh between seven and ten tons. As we walk among them, I see that some are blank, while others are elaborately carved: foxes, lions, scorpions and vultures abound, twisting and crawling on the pillars' broad sides.

Schmidt points to the great stone rings, one of them 65 feet across. "This is the first human-built holy place," he says. From this perch 1,000 feet above the valley, we can see to the horizon in nearly every direction. Schmidt, 53, asks me to imagine what the landscape would have looked like 11,000 years ago, before centuries of intensive farming and settlement turned it into the nearly featureless brown expanse it is today.

Prehistoric people would have gazed upon herds of gazelle and other wild animals; gently flowing rivers, which attracted migrating geese and ducks; fruit and nut trees; and rippling fields of wild barley and wild wheat varieties such as emmer and einkorn. "This area was like a paradise," says Schmidt, a member of the German Archaeological Institute. Indeed, Gobekli Tepe sits at the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent—an arc of mild climate and arable land from the Persian Gulf to present-day Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Egypt—and would have attracted hunter-gatherers from Africa and the Levant. And partly because Schmidt has found no evidence that people permanently resided on the summit of Gobekli Tepe itself, he believes this was a place of worship on an unprecedented scale—humanity's first "cathedral on a hill."

With the sun higher in the sky, Schmidt ties a white scarf around his balding head, turban-style, and deftly picks his way down the hill among the relics. In rapid-fire German he explains that he has mapped the entire summit using ground-penetrating radar and geomagnetic surveys, charting where at least 16 other megalith rings remain buried across 22 acres. The one-acre excavation covers less than 5 percent of the site. He says archaeologists could dig here for another 50 years and barely scratch the surface.

Gobekli Tepe was first examined—and dismissed—by University of Chicago and Istanbul University anthropologists in the 1960s. As part of a sweeping survey of the region, they visited the hill, saw some broken slabs of limestone and assumed the mound was nothing more than an abandoned medieval cemetery. In 1994, Schmidt was working on his own survey of prehistoric sites in the region. After reading a brief mention of the stone-littered hilltop in the University of Chicago researchers' report, he decided to go there himself. From the moment he first saw it, he knew the place was extraordinary. Unlike the stark plateaus nearby, Gobekli Tepe (the name means "belly hill" in Turkish) has a gently rounded top that rises 50 feet above the surrounding landscape. To Schmidt's eye, the shape stood out. "Only man could have created something like this," he says. "It was clear right away this was a gigantic Stone Age site." The broken pieces of limestone that earlier surveyors had mistaken for gravestones suddenly took on a different meaning.

Schmidt returned a year later with five colleagues and they uncovered the first megaliths, a few buried so close to the surface they were scarred by plows. As the archaeologists dug deeper, they unearthed pillars arranged in circles. Schmidt's team, however, found none of the telltale signs of a settlement: no cooking hearths, houses or trash pits, and none of the clay fertility figurines that litter nearby sites of about the same age. The archaeologists did find evidence of tool use, including stone hammers and blades. And because those artifacts closely resemble others from nearby sites previously carbon-dated to about 9000 B.C., Schmidt and co-workers estimate that Gobekli Tepe's stone structures are the same age. Limited carbon dating undertaken by Schmidt at the site confirms this assessment.

The way Schmidt sees it, Gobekli Tepe's sloping, rocky ground is a stonecutter's dream. Even without metal chisels or hammers, prehistoric masons wielding flint tools could have chipped away at softer limestone outcrops, shaping them into pillars on the spot before carrying them a few hundred yards to the summit and lifting them upright. Then, Schmidt says, once the stone rings were finished, the ancient builders covered them over with dirt. Eventually, they placed another ring nearby or on top of the old one. Over centuries, these layers created the hilltop. Today, Schmidt oversees a team of more than a dozen German archaeologists, 50 local laborers and a steady stream of enthusiastic students. He typically excavates at the site for two months in the spring and two in the fall. (Summer temperatures reach 115 degrees, too hot to dig; in the winter the area is deluged by rain.) In 1995, he bought a traditional Ottoman house with a courtyard in Urfa, a city of nearly a half-million people, to use as a base of operations.

On the day I visit, a bespectacled Belgian man sits at one end of a long table in front of a pile of bones. Joris Peters, an archaeozoologist from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, specializes in the analysis of animal remains. Since 1998, he has examined more than 100,000 bone fragments from Gobekli Tepe. Peters has often found cut marks and splintered edges on them—signs that the animals from which they came were butchered and cooked. The bones, stored in dozens of plastic crates stacked in a storeroom at the house, are the best clue to how people who created Gobekli Tepe lived. Peters has identified tens of thousands of gazelle bones, which make up more than 60 percent of the total, plus those of other wild game such as boar, sheep and red deer. He's also found bones of a dozen different bird species, including vultures, cranes, ducks and geese. "The first year, we went through 15,000 pieces of animal bone, all of them wild. It was pretty clear we were dealing with a hunter-gatherer site," Peters says. "It's been the same every year since." The abundant remnants of wild game indicate that the people who lived here had not yet domesticated animals or farmed.

But, Peters and Schmidt say, Gobekli Tepe's builders were on the verge of a major change in how they lived, thanks to an environment that held the raw materials for farming. "They had wild sheep, wild grains that could be domesticated—and the people with the potential to do it," Schmidt says. In fact, research at other sites in the region has shown that within 1,000 years of Gobekli Tepe's construction, settlers had corralled sheep, cattle and pigs. And, at a prehistoric village just 20 miles away, geneticists found evidence of the world's oldest domesticated strains of wheat; radiocarbon dating indicates agriculture developed there around 10,500 years ago, or just five centuries after Gobekli Tepe's construction.

To Schmidt and others, these new findings suggest a novel theory of civilization. Scholars have long believed that only after people learned to farm and live in settled communities did they have the time, organization and resources to construct temples and support complicated social structures. But Schmidt argues it was the other way around: the extensive, coordinated effort to build the monoliths literally laid the groundwork for the development of complex societies.

The immensity of the undertaking at Gobekli Tepe reinforces that view. Schmidt says the monuments could not have been built by ragged bands of hunter-gatherers. To carve, erect and bury rings of seven-ton stone pillars would have required hundreds of workers, all needing to be fed and housed. Hence the eventual emergence of settled communities in the area around 10,000 years ago. "This shows sociocultural changes come first, agriculture comes later," says Stanford University archaeologist Ian Hodder, who excavated Catalhoyuk, a prehistoric settlement 300 miles from Gobekli Tepe. "You can make a good case this area is the real origin of complex Neolithic societies."

What was so important to these early people that they gathered to build (and bury) the stone rings? The gulf that separates us from Gobekli Tepe's builders is almost unimaginable. Indeed, though I stood among the looming megaliths eager to take in their meaning, they didn't speak to me. They were utterly foreign, placed there by people who saw the world in a way I will never comprehend. There are no sources to explain what the symbols might mean. Schmidt agrees. "We're 6,000 years before the invention of writing here," he says. "There's more time between Gobekli Tepe and the Sumerian clay tablets [etched in 3300 B.C.] than from Sumer to today," says Gary Rollefson, an archaeologist at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, who is familiar with Schmidt's work. "Trying to pick out symbolism from prehistoric context is an exercise in futility."

Still, archaeologists have their theories—evidence, perhaps, of the irresistible human urge to explain the unexplainable. The surprising lack of evidence that people lived right there, researchers say, argues against its use as a settlement or even a place where, for instance, clan leaders gathered. Hodder is fascinated that Gobekli Tepe's pillar carvings are dominated not by edible prey like deer and cattle but by menacing creatures such as lions, spiders, snakes and scorpions. "It's a scary, fantastic world of nasty-looking beasts," he muses. While later cultures were more concerned with farming and fertility, he suggests, perhaps these hunters were trying to master their fears by building this complex, which is a good distance from where they lived.

Danielle Stordeur, an archaeologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in France, emphasizes the significance of the vulture carvings. Some cultures have long believed the high-flying carrion birds transported the flesh of the dead up to the heavens. Stordeur has found similar symbols at sites from the same era as Gobekli Tepe just 50 miles away in Syria. "You can really see it's the same culture," she says. "All the most important symbols are the same."

For his part, Schmidt is certain the secret is right beneath his feet. Over the years, his team has found fragments of human bone in the layers of dirt that filled the complex. Deep test pits have shown that the floors of the rings are made of hardened limestone. Schmidt is betting that beneath the floors he'll find the structures' true purpose: a final resting place for a society of hunters. Perhaps, Schmidt says, the site was a burial ground or the center of a death cult, the dead laid out on the hillside among the stylized gods and spirits of the afterlife. If so, Gobekli Tepe's location was no accident. "From here the dead are looking out at the ideal view," Schmidt says as the sun casts long shadows over the half-buried pillars. "They're looking out over a hunter's dream."

Source: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html#

Do these mysterious stones mark the site of the Garden of Eden?

For the old Kurdish shepherd, it was just another burning hot day in the rolling plains of eastern Turkey. Following his flock over the arid hillsides, he passed the single mulberry tree, which the locals regarded as 'sacred'. The bells on his sheep tinkled in the stillness. Then he spotted something. Crouching down, he brushed away the dust, and exposed a strange, large, oblong stone. The man looked left and right: there were similar stone rectangles, peeping from the sands. Calling his dog to heel, the shepherd resolved to inform someone of his finds when he got back to the village. Maybe the stones were important. They certainly were important. The solitary Kurdish man, on that summer's day in 1994, had made the greatest archaeological discovery in 50 years. Others would say he'd made the greatest archaeological discovery ever: a site that has revolutionised the way we look at human history, the origin of religion - and perhaps even the truth behind the Garden of Eden.

The site has been described as 'extraordinary' and 'the most important' site in the world

A few weeks after his discovery, news of the shepherd's find reached museum curators in the ancient city of Sanliurfa, ten miles south-west of the stones. They got in touch with the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul. And so, in late 1994, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt came to the site of Gobekli Tepe (pronounced Go-beckly Tepp-ay) to begin his excavations. As he puts it: 'As soon as I got there and saw the stones, I knew that if I didn't walk away immediately I would be here for the rest of my life.'

Remarkable find: A frieze from Gobekli Tepe

Schmidt stayed. And what he has uncovered is astonishing. Archaeologists worldwide are in rare agreement on the site's importance. 'Gobekli Tepe changes everything,' says Ian Hodder, at Stanford University. David Lewis-Williams, professor of archaeology at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, says: 'Gobekli Tepe is the most important archaeological site in the world.' Some go even further and say the site and its implications are incredible. As Reading University professor Steve Mithen says: 'Gobekli Tepe is too extraordinary for my mind to understand.' So what is it that has energised and astounded the sober world of academia? The site of Gobekli Tepe is simple enough to describe. The oblong stones, unearthed by the shepherd, turned out to be the flat tops of awesome, T-shaped megaliths. Imagine carved and slender versions of the stones of Avebury or Stonehenge. Most of these standing stones are inscribed with bizarre and delicate images - mainly of boars and ducks, of hunting and game. Sinuous serpents are another common motif. Some of the megaliths show crayfish or lions. The stones seem to represent human forms - some have stylised 'arms', which angle down the sides. Functionally, the site appears to be a temple, or ritual site, like the stone circles of Western Europe. To date, 45 of these stones have been dug out - they are arranged in circles from five to ten yards across - but there are indications that much more is to come. Geomagnetic surveys imply that there are hundreds more standing stones, just waiting to be excavated. So far, so remarkable. If Gobekli Tepe was simply this, it would already be a dazzling site - a Turkish Stonehenge. But several unique factors lift Gobekli Tepe into the archaeological stratosphere - and the realms of the fantastical.

The Garden of Eden come to life: Is Gobekli Tepe where the story began?

The first is its staggering age. Carbon-dating shows that the complex is at least 12,000 years old, maybe even 13,000 years old. That means it was built around 10,000BC. By comparison, Stonehenge was built in 3,000 BC and the pyramids of Giza in 2,500 BC. Gobekli is thus the oldest such site in the world, by a mind-numbing margin. It is so old that it predates settled human life. It is pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-everything. Gobekli hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant, right back in our hunter-gatherer past. How did cavemen build something so ambitious? Schmidt speculates that bands of hunters would have gathered sporadically at the site, through the decades of construction, living in animal-skin tents, slaughtering local game for food. The many flint arrowheads found around Gobekli support this thesis; they also support the dating of the site. This revelation, that Stone Age hunter-gatherers could have built something like Gobekli, is worldchanging, for it shows that the old hunter-gatherer life, in this region of Turkey, was far more advanced than we ever conceived - almost unbelievably sophisticated.

The shepherd who discovered Gobekli Tepe has 'changed everything', said one academic

It's as if the gods came down from heaven and built Gobekli for themselves. This is where we come to the biblical connection, and my own involvement in the Gobekli Tepe story. About three years ago, intrigued by the first scant details of the site, I flew out to Gobekli. It was a long, wearying journey, but more than worth it, not least as it would later provide the backdrop for a new novel I have written. Back then, on the day I arrived at the dig, the archaeologists were unearthing mind-blowing artworks. As these sculptures were revealed, I realised that I was among the first people to see them since the end of the Ice Age. And that's when a tantalising possibility arose. Over glasses of black tea, served in tents right next to the megaliths, Klaus Schmidt told me that, as he put it: 'Gobekli Tepe is not the Garden of Eden: it is a temple in Eden.' To understand how a respected academic like Schmidt can make such a dizzying claim, you need to know that many scholars view the Eden story as folk-memory, or allegory. Seen in this way, the Eden story, in Genesis, tells us of humanity's innocent and leisured hunter-gatherer past, when we could pluck fruit from the trees, scoop fish from the rivers and spend the rest of our days in pleasure. But then we 'fell' into the harsher life of farming, with its ceaseless toil and daily grind. And we know primitive farming was harsh, compared to the relative indolence of hunting, because of the archaeological evidence.

To date, archaeologists have dug 45 stones out of the ruins at Gobekli

When people make the transition from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture, their skeletons change - they temporarily grow smaller and less healthy as the human body adapts to a diet poorer in protein and a more wearisome lifestyle. Likewise, newly domesticated animals get scrawnier. This begs the question, why adopt farming at all? Many theories have been suggested - from tribal competition, to population pressures, to the extinction of wild animal species. But Schmidt believes that the temple of Gobekli reveals another possible cause. 'To build such a place as this, the hunters must have joined together in numbers. After they finished building, they probably congregated for worship. But then they found that they couldn't feed so many people with regular hunting and gathering. 'So I think they began cultivating the wild grasses on the hills. Religion motivated people to take up farming.' The reason such theories have special weight is that the move to farming first happened in this same region. These rolling Anatolian plains were the cradle of agriculture. The world's first farmyard pigs were domesticated at Cayonu, just 60 miles away. Sheep, cattle and goats were also first domesticated in eastern Turkey. Worldwide wheat species descend from einkorn wheat - first cultivated on the hills near Gobekli. Other domestic cereals - such as rye and oats - also started here.

The stones unearthed by the shepherd turned out to be the flat tops of T-shaped megaliths

But there was a problem for these early farmers, and it wasn't just that they had adopted a tougher, if ultimately more productive, lifestyle. They also experienced an ecological crisis. These days the landscape surrounding the eerie stones of Gobekli is arid and barren, but it was not always thus. As the carvings on the stones show - and as archaeological remains reveal - this was once a richly pastoral region. There were herds of game, rivers of fish, and flocks of wildfowl; lush green meadows were ringed by woods and wild orchards. About 10,000 years ago, the Kurdish desert was a 'paradisiacal place', as Schmidt puts it. So what destroyed the environment? The answer is Man. As we began farming, we changed the landscape and the climate. When the trees were chopped down, the soil leached away; all that ploughing and reaping left the land eroded and bare. What was once an agreeable oasis became a land of stress, toil and diminishing returns. And so, paradise was lost. Adam the hunter was forced out of his glorious Eden, 'to till the earth from whence he was taken' - as the Bible puts it. Of course, these theories might be dismissed as speculations. Yet there is plenty of historical evidence to show that the writers of the Bible, when talking of Eden, were, indeed, describing this corner of Kurdish Turkey.

Archaeologist Klaus Schmidt poses next to some of the carvings at Gebekli

In the Book of Genesis, it is indicated that Eden is west of Assyria. Sure enough, this is where Gobekli is sited. Likewise, biblical Eden is by four rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates. And Gobekli lies between both of these. In ancient Assyrian texts, there is mention of a 'Beth Eden' - a house of Eden. This minor kingdom was 50 miles from Gobekli Tepe. Another book in the Old Testament talks of 'the children of Eden which were in Thelasar', a town in northern Syria, near Gobekli. The very word 'Eden' comes from the Sumerian for 'plain'; Gobekli lies on the plains of Harran. Thus, when you put it all together, the evidence is persuasive. Gobekli Tepe is, indeed, a 'temple in Eden', built by our leisured and fortunate ancestors - people who had time to cultivate art, architecture and complex ritual, before the traumas of agriculture ruined their lifestyle, and devastated their paradise. It's a stunning and seductive idea. Yet it has a sinister epilogue. Because the loss of paradise seems to have had a strange and darkening effect on the human mind.

Many of Gobekli's standing stones are inscribed with 'bizarre and delicate' images, like this reptile

A few years ago, archaeologists at nearby Cayonu unearthed a hoard of human skulls. They were found under an altar-like slab, stained with human blood. No one is sure, but this may be the earliest evidence for human sacrifice: one of the most inexplicable of human behaviours and one that could have evolved only in the face of terrible societal stress. Experts may argue over the evidence at Cayonu. But what no one denies is that human sacrifice took place in this region, spreading to Palestine, Canaan and Israel. Archaeological evidence suggests that victims were killed in huge death pits, children were buried alive in jars, others roasted in vast bronze bowls. These are almost incomprehensible acts, unless you understand that the people had learned to fear their gods, having been cast out of paradise. So they sought to propitiate the angry heavens. This savagery may, indeed, hold the key to one final, bewildering mystery. The astonishing stones and friezes of Gobekli Tepe are preserved intact for a bizarre reason. Long ago, the site was deliberately and systematically buried in a feat of labour every bit as remarkable as the stone carvings.

The stones of Gobekli Tepe are trying to speak to us from across the centuries - a warning we should heed

Around 8,000 BC, the creators of Gobekli turned on their achievement and entombed their glorious temple under thousands of tons of earth, creating the artificial hills on which that Kurdish shepherd walked in 1994. No one knows why Gobekli was buried. Maybe it was interred as a kind of penance: a sacrifice to the angry gods, who had cast the hunters out of paradise. Perhaps it was for shame at the violence and bloodshed that the stone-worship had helped provoke. Whatever the answer, the parallels with our own era are stark. As we contemplate a new age of ecological turbulence, maybe the silent, sombre, 12,000-year-old stones of Gobekli Tepe are trying to speak to us, to warn us, as they stare across the first Eden we destroyed.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1157784/Do-mysterious-stones-mark-site-Garden-Eden.html#

Extending the Domestication of Livestock by 1,000 Years - August, 2008

2009-01-24T12:06:00.000-08:00

Extending The Domestication Of Sheep & Goats In Mediterranean By 1,000 Years

A representation of the time at which these animals were domesticated

Abstract
The past decade has witnessed a quantum leap in our understanding of the origins, diffusion, and impact of early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin. In large measure these advances are attributable to new methods for documenting domestication in plants and animals. The initial steps toward plant and animal domestication in the Eastern Mediterranean can now be pushed back to the 12th millennium cal B.P. Evidence for herd management and crop cultivation appears at least 1,000 years earlier than the morphological changes traditionally used to document domestication. Different species seem to have been domesticated in different parts of the Fertile Crescent, with genetic analyses detecting multiple domestic lineages for each species. Recent evidence suggests that the expansion of domesticates and agricultural economies across the Mediterranean was accomplished by several waves of seafaring colonists who established coastal farming enclaves around the Mediterranean Basin. This process also involved the adoption of domesticates and domestic technologies by indigenous populations and the local domestication of some endemic species. Human environmental impacts are seen in the complete replacement of endemic island faunas by imported mainland fauna and in today's anthropogenic, but threatened, Mediterranean landscapes where sustainable agricultural practices have helped maintain high biodiversity since the Neolithic.
Melinda Zeder

Last week, I shared with you all some research on the Neolithic/agricultural revolution in Iran and Turkey, specifically on barley and cattle domestication. Since then, PNAS has published a related paper, “Domestication and early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin: Origins, diffusion, and impact,” by Melinda Zeder. Zeder believes that the domestication of sheep and goat happened 1,000 years earlier than previously assumed. The bases this hypothesis on the observation that the previous, younger date is based upon the ‘culling of female goats and sheep,’ who are smaller, more gracile, and manageable. But, according to her, people were herding these animals much earlier. In fact, in places like Cyprus, native species like the pygmy elephants and pygmy hippopotamuses were replaced by introduced, domesticated species such as the sheep, goat, cattle, and pig by 10,500 years ago. Zeder has generated two useful graphs to document the the regions and dates where the four domesticated species were first pastoralized. The evidence from last week’s paper on the milk jugs in northwestern Turkey isn’t included, instead a Zeder marks a 10,000 year old mark for the domestication of cattle in northern Iraq and Syria.

Agricultural Expansion in Neolithic Mediterreanean

Source:http://anthropology.net/2008/08/14/extending-the-domestication-of-sheep-goats-in-mediterranean-by-1000-years/

The Location of Aratta - June, 2008

2009-01-13T08:38:00.000-08:00

The Location of Aratta

ԱՐԱՏՏԱ ՄԱՍ_1_ԻՆ ARATTA PART_1 (in Armenian): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcgoqjuvxbQ

ԱՐԱՏՏԱ ՄԱՍ_2_ՐԴ ARATTA PART_2 (in Armenian): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JprbzfP0g_g

Before making our remarks on the location of Aratta and the relations it had with Sumer, we deem it necessary to summarize some of the salient features of the four variants of the Sumerian epic tale which is, in general, based on the interrelationships of the lords of the two city-states. Aratta and Erech.

1. Inanna, the goddess of love and war, first belonged to Aratta where she had her temple, but later Enmerkar took her to Erech and built there the temple Eanna for her.

2. Inanna is considered to be the sister of Enmerkar who is assumed to be the son of the sun-god Utu.

3. In one variant of the epic tale, Enmerkar demands the submission of the lord of Aratta, in another he asks he asks Aratta’s help to save Erech from the siege laid by the enemy Martu; at other times it is the lord of Aratta that demands Enmerkar to submit to him.

4. There are exceptionally close political, religious, and cultural ties between Aratta and Erech.

5. Erech asks Aratta to supply precious metals (gold, silver, lapis lazuli), building stones (sons of the mountain), metal and stoneworkers, masons, and receives them sending wheat in return.

6. Enmerkar demands that the people of Aratta come down and build temples and shrines, particularly, the temple of Eridu.

7. As for transporting construction materials and craftsmen from Aratta to Erech, there is mention of a certain river and some unusual fish in the river, as well as water vessels which Enmerkar is supposed to build.

8. On his way to Aratta, Enmerkar’s emissary passes seven mountains going “from one end of Anshan to the other. “ This does not mean that he has crossed the Anshan range from one side to the other, but rather that he has gone “from one end to the other” in its direction, passing on his way seven (other) mountains, the most important of which was Mount Hurum. It is probable, therefore, that Anshan is the Zagros range which stretches from Elam to Vaspurakan, to the west of Lake Urmia.

9. On the road from Sumerian Erech to Aratta there is Mount Hurum, which Kramer assumes to be the home of the Hurrian people in the neighborhood of Lake Van. For the location of Aratta we find the following indications in the epic tale:

a) As it was just said, between Erech and Aratta, in the vicinity of Lake Van, there was Mount Hurum of the Hurrian people. Writes Kramer: “The Hurrians, as it is well known, lived originally on Mount Hurum, the region about Lake Van.” According to this indication, this mountain corresponds to the Haria highland below Lake Van where is the Uruatri range (the Ararad range, as mentioned by Khorenatsi). Therefore Aratta was situated above Haria-Uruatri. Since Mount Hurum was between Erech and Aratta, Aratta could not have been situated in the east of Lake Urmia, in the region of the Caspian Sea, because in that case, first, Mount Hurum would not have fallen between Erech and Aratta, and, secondly, Aratta’s metal and stone mines would have been far and out of the water-ways leading to Sumer. Aratta’s mashmash presumptuously states that he will subdue all the lands above and below, from the sea (the Persian Gulf) to the cedar (Amanus) mountain. If follows, then, that Aratta was situated directly above these regions, and not so far as the south of the Caspian Sea.

b) In the epic tale mention is made of a river and vessels to transport the construction materials from Aratta to Erech. In Mesopotamia the only navigable rivers leading to Sumer are the Tigris and the Euphrates; therefore, the reference must be to one of these rivers. This is a second proof that Aratta was situated in the highland where the headwaters of the Tigris and the Euphrates were. The details in the tale suggest that for the identification of this river we should consider particularly the Tigris and its important tributary, the Greater Zab, since both pass through the region or the vicinity of the Haria-Hurum highland.

c) A third proof that Aratta was situated around the upper streams of the Mesopotamian rivers is provided by the fact that the grain was transported to Aratta by pack animals and not by boats; obviously it would have been extremely difficult to navigate upstream.

d) Having in view the Greater Zab-Tigris waterway, we think that the mentioning of the Unusual fish in the river is very significant. This is not a figment of imagination in a legend but represents a reality. In fact, there is, in these regions, a certain species of fish that is unusually large for a river. Before the Second World War I have had personal experience of seeing some of these giant fish, about two meters long, that were brought to Mosul, cut into pieces and sold. It was incredible, indeed, that such a huge fish could live and grow in a river.

There is an interesting tradition in that part of the country today which, I think, must be somewhat related to the existence of this fish of uncommon size. Near Mosul, on the small hill of the ruins of Nineveh, there is a village called Nebi-Yunes. In the mosque of this village (built on the site of one of the oldest Christian monasteries that stand on the ruins of a pagan temple), in a deep and dark room, there is, hanging from a wall, a big bone, which, the natives traditionally believe, belonged to the fish that “swallowed the prophet Jones.” (In fact, Jones has been identified with the Babylonian fishgod Oannes.). It seems probable that the remote past (probably from Assyro-Babylonians) related to a kind of big and unusual fish that lived in the river nearby.

Sargon II in his invasion of Mana encountered a river called Aratta. This river could have been far from the city-state of Aratta and still carry that name merely by repetition, just as it is the case with two Haburs (one a branch of the Euphrates and the other of the Tigris), and the two Ararats (one in the south in Kortuk, on the eastern Tigris, and the other in the north on the Arax river). According to Sargon’s statement, the Aratta river appears to be the northernmost branch of the Lesser Zab, whose source is near Kelishin (south of Musasir) in the southern part of the Vaspurakan range and, perhaps, is reminiscent of the old name of this highland. From this region originates also the Araskh (at) rather than from Urartu, just as the place-name Ararad, mentioned by Khorenatsi, could be derived more easily from the name of the Arardi mountain of the same region, as mentioned by Assurnasirpal II, rather than from the name Uruatri.

It is obvious that the radical element Ar (or Ara) is a component of Aratta (or Ararta). It seems its composition is either Ara(t)ta or Ar-ar-ta, a reduplicated form, which can be compared with Horhoruni, Susuku, Haha, and other reduplicated names. It must have meant ‘Ar’s place (Ara-ta) or ‘the city-land of the Ar’s (Ar-ar-ta). Compare it with the land –name Baruata, mentioned in Arartian inscriptions, which was called Bit-Barrua, ‘house of Barrua’, in Assyrian. Hence the toponymic ending –ta of the form Barua-ta corresponds to the component bit ( ‘house, city-land’, cf. Arabic beit, ‘house) of Bit-Barrua. It seems, then, that Aratta (Ararta) meant ‘Ara’s house’ to which corresponded semantically the names Ayrarat ( Ara’s plain’) and Urartu/Ur-ardi (place of Ardi-Ara). From what has been reported by Khorenatsi, we already know that Ayrarat meant ‘Ara’s plain’. He writes: “Shamiram came in haste to the plain of Ara that was called Ayrarat after his name.” We also know that the Arartian divine name Ardi (‘sun’) corresponds to Ara. (This will be shown later in the section of Nuard.) In our previous works we have shown (and shall still show later) that the name Urartu, or Urardi (Ur-ardi) as written by Sargon II, meant ‘the place of Ardi’, that is, ‘the land of Ara’. This already corresponds to the name Ayrarat (Ara’s plain’). It is possible, therefore, that the name Urartu (Urardi, Uratri, or Uru-atri) is perhaps a later cuneiform expression of the name Ayrarat (Ararat) or Aratta (Ararta).

Thus it becomes apparent that the name Aratta (or Ararta) belongs to the group of place-names in the Armenian highland which are formed with Ar or Ara. It follows, then, that Aratta turns out to be the oldest city-state of the Armenian Highland known so far, dating from the beginning of the third and possibly from the end of the fourth millennium B.C., the memory of which persists, most probably, in the name Ayrarat.

As mentioned earlier, even though all the information regarding the ancient ties and relations between Aratta and Erech (hence Sumer) have reached us in the form of epic poems of some 1500 lines preserved on a series of cuneiform tablets, still they constitute a valuable source where we find the reflections of real historical events and socio-economic conditions. One must remember that the epic tale was the main and only style of historiography in that remote past, at the very beginning of written history. We find, therefore, that what is transmitted to us through the four variants of this epic tale has inestimable value for the history of the most ancient period of the Armenian Highland., the land wherein lie the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates.

Source: http://www.arattakingdom.com/The%20Location%20of%20Aratta/The%20Location%20of%20Aratta.html

The Great Musasir Temple of Armenia - April, 2008

2008-09-10T14:56:00.001-07:00

The historic significance of the Urartian era Musasir Temple is fundamentally this: the Greco-Roman looking architecture preceded the earliest Greco-Roman style constructions by hundreds of years. The Musasir Temple is yet another clear indicator that the advanced culture of the Armenian Highlands radiated far beyond its boundaries. Ancient civilizations such as the Minoans, who germinated Greek culture, and the Etruscans, who germinated Roman culture, trace their origin to within the vicinity of the Armenian Highlands.

Arevordi

***

The Great Musasir Temple of Armenia

IN 1843, an archeological team under the leadership of Paul-Emile Botta and sponsored by the French government, excavated a large mound in Khorsabad about fifteen miles northeast of Nineveh. At this site, the first of the Assyrian palaces was to be discovered covering an entire city within walls a mile long. A monumental palace was built by Sargon II, who ruled from 721 to 705 BC, on a scale never till then attempted by an Assyrian monarch. This structure was created with utmost care and splendor and was called Dur Sharrukin or "Sargon's Fortress". The results of Botta's excavations were published in a sumptuous edition! with ample funds provided by the French government and now an expensive rarity. During the early 1850's, the British Assyrian Excavation Fund entered the field under William Kennett Loftus and many antiquities and accurate drawings of wall sculptures were apportioned between the British Museum and the Louvre. However, a bas-relief destined for Paris forming part of an illstarred convoy of antiquities was attacked by Arab robbers while being shipped down the Tigris River, and today lies buried somewhere in the bed of that river. Fortunately that particular bas-relief was copied at its original location in the palace onto a drawing by Eugene Flandin(2) as Botta's chief artist. During this period of Assyrian campaigns, the northern Araratian regions were governed by Sardour -and later by his son Rusa (Hrachya, according to Movses Khorenatsi) with the capital at Toushpa (Tosp) located near the great city and the capital of the mighty Kingdom of Ararat, Van (Biaina) on the eastern shore of Lake Van. Sardour placed Urzana as the governor of the spiritual center of Ararat, Musasir.

We gather from the Louvre texts that in the summer of 714 BC, Sargon with a great army crossed the Kurdish mountains towards Lake Urmia, swept through the Araratian cities in the area and then turned westward into the land of Nairi, south of Lake Van. For good reason (knowing that many of his Assyrian predecors were thrown back from the gates of Van), Sargon by-passed Tushpa and marched around the northern and western reaches of the lake and stealthily attacked Musasir, throwing the entire countryside into panic and confusion. King Urzana and his retinue fled into the mountains, leaving the victorious Assyrians to overrun the city and capture the palace of the ruler with its store-rooms filled with immense treasure. He then entered the temple of the god Haldi (Khaldi) where even greater beauty was found. The list of valuables has been catalogued in the Louvre text(3) and it defies imagination and comprehension. It is sufficient to state that King Rusa had assembled the greater part of the treasures of Ararat (Urartu) in Musasir for safe-keeping under the care of his hand-picked ruler Urzana, to thwart the greedy appetite of the mighty Assyrian king. Indeed, the treasures of the Egyptian Tutankhamen discovered in the 1920's pales into insignificance when compared with the fantastic wealth that Sargon carried back to Assyria to record in text and bas-relief in the capital of Assur and the palace at Dur-Sharrukin. Fortunately, the boastful inscriptions and wall paintings of the military monarch have preserved for us the nature of the high culture of Ararat, which otherwise would have never seen the light of day. It has been stated that when Hrousha (Rusa) learned of the destruction and pillaging of Musasir and the abduction of his god Haldi, commited suicide.

And now, in the year 1986 or 2,700 years later, the author of this article has the audacity to claim that Musasir deserves the attention of the architectural world for no other reason than the preservation of the drawing of the temple by Flandin which accompanies the dissertation. Please look at the drawing and follow my line of reasoning. Here we see the oldest of the temples Ararat which, according to reliable sources, was built around 825 BC in the city of Musasir, which can be located with some certainty in the area between lakes Van and Urmia, in Historic Armenia.(4) It depicts the pillaging of this temple erected to the warrior God Haldi by the soldiers of Sargon's army, but our concern at this moment is not in robbery but in artistry. Notice the pitched or gabled roof of either wood or stone, the vertical triangular end from eaves to ridge of roof with a high pediment. The portico or facade has six columns or piers or pilasters, if you will. The effect is definitely like a Greek temple similar to the Partheonon in Athens with which everyone is familiar. That Greek edifice was built around the year 500 BC or 425 years later than the Armenian temple of our Araratian forefathers. Up till now, no monument has been found in Mesopotamia similar to the Musasir temple except in Asia Minor. In Phrygia, during the 8th to the 5th centuries, great facades were carved on rock-cut faces representing temples for the cult of the Great Mother. These too became the prototypes for the classical Greek temples.

However one approaches this problem, what the Musasir monument does show is the affinity of Armenian architecture in the ninth century BC, with the architecture of Asia Minor and of Greece - an important fact, since Armenia at a later date was under Mesopotamian influence. This fact was attested to by K. J. Basmadjian's(5) the editor of Panaser and a member of the Societe Asiatique in 1903. In writing to the Society he says, "My strongest argument is the similarity of the pediment of both the Parthenon and that of the temple of Musasir. In both cases exactly the same triangle is preserved. The oldest monument in the world having this triangular pediment is the temple of Musasir. Neither Assyria nor Babylonia, the two great powers which have always been in touch with the Araratians, have ever had this triangular form. From Armenia it was evidently transmitted to Phrygia and Lydia, and through these countries it was introduced to Athens, and afterwards back to Persia... the temple was probably constructed during the reign of Ishpuhini (828-784 BC), king of Ararat (Urartu) , for this was the first king who marched upon Musasir and conquered it "(6). If further proof is needed that the temple is not an isolated instance in point, then let us glance to the other bas-relief which is plate number 114 in Volume II of Botta's monumental work. Here we also see for the first time anywhere, the Armenian kiosk or "pleasurehouse" on the margin of a lake. Notice the columns or pillars strongly resembling those of the Ionic order in Greek architecture. Since 1959, the Historical Society and the Department of Antiquities have conducted excavations in the Yerznka area, west of Karin. Here at Altintepe was revealed an Araratian temple and other monuments.(7) It is significant to point out that although only the foundations of the temple are in view, this shrine to the god Haldi (Khaldi), located in the Ararat confederation of Haiasa, the heartland of Hai forefathers, contained many treasures very much alike those described by the bas-reliefs of the Assyrian king Sargon II.

Source: http://www.geocities.com/paris/leftbank/6507/chronicle400.html#toc

Stone And Bronze Ages Sites In Northern Armenia - March. 2008

2006-07-03T21:32:00.000-07:00

Stone And Bronze Ages Sites In Northern Armenia

During the survey carried out in October 2003 the writers were able to identify several Stone and Bronze Ages sites in northern Armenia, some of which necessitate further investigations with the use of multidisciplinary technique.

Metsavan

East of the Lorian Reservoir, the slopes of the Somkhetian Ridge are crossed by the valleys of several streams. The deposits exposed in one of the valleys consist of the1 – 3 m thick talus, resting on the 0.2 – 0.3 m of the interbedded sandy loam, presumably of the riverine origin, and 0.4- 0.5 m of the light blue lacusrtine clay with the inclusion of angular pebbles. All these deposits rest on the dolerite basalt lava, which outcrops near the stream bed. Following up the valley of one of the streams we were able to identify several Early Stone Age tools. The talus exposed in the valley yielded a partial ovate Acheulean biface made of the dolerite lava. Further upstream, in the same deposits we picked up a sub-triangular Levallois flake. 100 meters downstream, in the lacustrine deposits, we collected a large fossilized tibia of a wild horse.

Pechka rock-shelter has been found in the limestone outcrops of the Somkhetian Ridge, near the village of Kruglaya-Shishka. The rock shelter is found on the left bank of the valley of a dry stream, 16 m above its bed, at the altitude of 1,680 m above the sea-level. The stream’s source is found on the slope of the Siskyatskaya Mnt., further to the north. Altogether 14 Stone Age artifacts have been collected on the slope of the valley immediately beneath the rock-shelter. By their technical features, 10 artefacts manufactured from the andesine and dacit, may be classified as Mousterian; they include an exhausted core, two blades, a flake, four points, side scraper, and an end-scalper. Four obsidian artifacts may be deemed as the Post-Palaeolithic: a double angular burin, a point, a retouched flake, and a retouched fragment.

Metsavan (Chakhmakhkar) ‘workshop’. The slopes of the Chakhmakhkar Mountain, east of Metsavan village, include outcrops of the medium quality flint. The entire south-western slope of this mountain was virtually littered with artifacts, made predominantly of the local flint. Judging from their typological features, they include both Mousterian and Post-Palaeolithic tools. The Mousterian assemblage consists of single-platform Levallois cores, Levallois flakes and blades (the latter made predominantly of the dacite rocks). The Post-Palaeolithic series consist of prismatic cores, end-scrapers, small-size points, notched and combined tools, and rarely include the obsidian implements. A rock-shelter of that name was identified in the lower part of the Metsaru River canyon, on its left bank, 40 m above the river bed, at the height of 1,630 m above the sea-level. On the floor of the cavity, a retouched fragment of an obsidian blade, possibly a fragment of a point, was found, together with small fragments of bones and fragments of medieval pottery.

Kurtan

A large prehistoric settlement was identified on the elevated terrace of the Ghergherchay River west of the Kurtan village. Judging by the observable structures and the finds of pottery this was a fortified settlement of Bronze and Early Iron Ages. 20 m thick exposures of Early Quaternary lake deposits is located near this settlement.

Barozh 2 ‘workshop’

The site is located at the south-eastern bottom of the Pokr-Arteni Mountain, on a wide promontory formed by two canyons, 6 km to the south of the Satani-Dar, an Old Palaeolithic assemblage reported by Panichkina (1950), at the altitude of 1,310 m above sea-level. Numerous artefacts have been collected on the promontory’s higher level. Three typological groups were distinguished. The ‘Acheulean’ group, which is numerically inferior, includes a convergent side-scraper and two bifacial tools (a small hand-axe and a tool with a beak-like distal extremity). The ‘Mousterian’ group consists of a point, Levallois cores and flakes. The post-Palaeolithic group which is the most numerous includes end-scrapers, notched and beaked tools as well as blades with plain unprepared platforms. Judging from the partially removed old patina, the tools were often reshaped and reused.

Pagakhpyur-1, Atkalicvh ‘ workshop’

The detritus, consisting of large angular rock waist and fragmented dacite, was found on the banks of a small (200 by 300 m) lake of Atka (Ettik-Gel), west of Khurda-Jalal Mountain, at the altitude of 1,830 m. Amongst the rocks with the traces of intentional flaking, cores, flakes as well as fully accomplished tools were identified.. The clear dominance of the Levallois-type flaking is remarkable. Thick and crude flakes with either plain or oblique unfaceted striking platforms were also noted. Amongst the tools which were not numerous, three simple side scrapers, one angular (déjeté) side-scraper, three points (including a Levallois point with a thinned base, and another one with the alternative retouch and a single notched tool) could be acknowledged. Most blanks and tools may be recognised as Mousterian, but two crude side scrapers and several flakes attest Acheulean features. All the artefacts were strongly weathered, with the archaic-looking ones being more strongly affected. Several slightly weathered obsidian artefacts, including one notched tool and three flakes, are deemed as Post-Palaeolithic.

Pagakhpyur 2 workshop.

The outcrops of the dacite lava are found on the banks of a river and its tributary in Sarashlinsky Yurt area, south of the Georgia’s border, at the height of 1,930 m above the sea-level. Several dacite rocks reveal traces of the intentional flaking. The artefacts include three exhausted cores and two side-scrapers, as well as numerous obsidian flakes. Apart of the above-mentioned sites in the northern part of the country, we were able to visit several sites in its central and southern parts.

Sevan.

This largest lake in the Caucasus with the surface 1,416 km² and volume 58.5 km³ is located along the major fault-line. The Sevan Lake has a long history starting in the Pliocene. Its higher stands are acknowledgeable in the terraces located at 100-120, 80-90, 50-55, 38-40 and 18-20 m. The section of the latter, supposedly of the Upper Pleistocene age is visible near the prehistoric settlement of Kanagekh. The environmental changes that occurred during the Holocene are reflected in the 12 m thick sequence of lacustrine and riverine deposits exposed in the mouth of the Dznaget River in the lake’s south-eastern part (Sayadian 1985). Due to the artificial lowering of its level, which attained - 19.5m in 1998, about 20,000 hectares of its bottom became exposed. Archaeological surveys conducted on the dried up areas in the 1960s and 1970s identified several important Bronze Age sites, ranging in age between 6,000 and 2,000 BC, the time of the low stand of the lake-level. These include the Bronze Age ‘royal’ barrows at Lchashen and Norashen. Piliposyan excavated a group of rich Bronze Age burials with megalithic structures at Kanagekh, located on one of the Sevan’s lower terraces. A fortified settlement located near-by and so times.far not excavated includes layers ranging from the Neolithic until early Medieval epoch.

Aratashen. A multi-layered early agricultural sites located on the Ararat Plain, west of the town of Etchmiadzin. New excavations have exposed deposits attributable to the Aceramic Neolithic (Chastaigner 2002). They include several levels of oval-shaped circular structures, 3-4 m in diameter. The deposits include a rich obsidian industry, faunal remains of predominantly domestic animals (mostly sheep/goat and cattle), as well as cultivated plants (Triticum dicoccum, Hordeum vulgare, Lens culinaris, Vicia ervilla), with the full absence of pottery.

Zorakarer (Khoshundash), located near the town of Sisian in the southern part of Armenia, consists of several cemeteries ranging in age from the Bronze Age to the Urartian period. They include several hundreds of vertically positioned slabs forming regular rows. In one case we were able to identify a particular burial structure which included a burial chamber (crypt) covered with a ‘blind arch’ and connected to a corridor leading into a yard surrounded by a stone wall. It has been noted, that in several cases the slabs used in the newer structures were taken from the older graves.

Discussion.

The conducted survey raises several issues. First, it becomes obvious that contrary to the predominant view, northern Armenia is sufficiently rich in Old Stone Age sites, and hence been populated by the early Hominids at least since the Early Pleistocene. The site of Dmanisi in neighbouring Georgia, c. 40 miles north of the investigated area, includes the Homo erectus skeletal remains in the clear association with the Upper Villafranchian fauna and an archaic lithic industry, lies. At Dmanisi the fossiliferous deposits were found in the lake sediments which lie above the ‘Mashavera basalt’ with the radiometric age of 1.85±0.01 MA. On this basis, combined with the faunal evidence, and the hominid morphology, the age of the Dmanisi site is estimated as the MN 17/18 transition (Gabunia et al. 2000). The basalt lava exposed in the river valley at Metsavan equally belongs to the Mashavera unit. Consequently, the lake deposits from which stemmed the artefacts found at Metsavan were roughly contemporaneous with those which yielded the hominid remains and the archaic fauna at Dmanisi. These deposits were formed in a huge lake centred on the present-day Lorian Plain, and which full sequence is exposed near the village of Kurtan. Hence the new evidence supports the view that Armenia was part of the corridor via which early hominids were trekking from Africa into the Eurasian landmass.

This dispersal was following the common tectonic features that included the African Rift System and strike-slips and thrust-faulting in the area of the northern plate collision. Along these structures developed the landscapes, which became attractive for peripatetic hominids, with lakes rich in diverse and easily available food resources, and volcanoes providing in abundance easily manageable rocks. Our survey identified at least one cave site (Pechka) with the Mousterian industry. This implies a perspective occurrence of more stratified dwelling sites in the vicinity. The open-air assemblages or ‘workshops’ with the materials attestable as Acheulean, or Mousterian, or both, equally suggest an intensive Early and Middle Palaeolithic occupations with a probable occurrence of dwelling sites. The total absence of authentic Upper Palaeolithic assemblages is equally significant. Earlier writers (Panichkina 1950; Sardarian 1954) reported the finds of prismatic cores and blades with flat striking platforms which they identified as ‘Upper Palaeolithic’. In view or the recent experience all these tools may be classified as ‘Post-Palaeolithic’ within their probable age ranging from the Neolithic to Chalcolithic. This implies that, due to the severity of climatic conditions, the Armenia’s territory was totally abandoned by the humans during the Last Glacial Maximum and resettled again starting with the Neolithic.

Source: file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/T%20PES/My%20Documents/Pre-historic%20Sites%20in%20Armenia.htm

Armenian Archeologists Unearth Third Millennium B.C. Aryan Burial Mounds - 2007

2006-06-30T20:17:00.000-07:00

The field of archeology has been booming in Armenia for the past several years. From Agarak and Amanus to Ughtasar and Gegharot, many recent findings by international experts have yet again confirmed long held beliefs that the Armenian Highlands may perhaps be the epicenter of early human cultural development. This comes as no surprise to many of us Armenians who have for many years been drawing such conclusions. I believe that these recent findings are a fraction of what really exists underneath the sacred earth of the Armenian Highlands. Recently, an archeological site within Armenia revealed five thousand year old artifacts and human remains said to be of Aryan tribes - yet again adding credence to the belief that ancient Indo-Europeans originated within the Armenian Highlands. Third millennium BC is a significant date because it is long before the time when, according to mainstream Western academia, Indo-Europeans were supposed to have entered the region in question.

Arevordi

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Armenian Archeologists Unearth Third Millennium B.C. Aryan Burial Mounds

YEREVAN, Armenia Nov 9, 2005 — Archeologists said Wednesday they have unearthed burial mounds dating back to the third millennium B.C. which they believe contain remains and trinkets from ancient Aryan nomads. Historian Hakob Simonian said Wednesday that the four mounds were among 30 discovered about 35 miles west of the Armenian capital Yerevan, containing beads made of agate, carnelian and as well as the remains of what appears to be a man, aged 50-55. Also found were remains of domesticated horses and glazed pottery appearing to show chariots, Simonian said.

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=1297926

World Archaeologists Have an Avid Interest in Prehistoric Armenia

2006-06-30T20:02:00.000-07:00

World Archaeologists Have an Avid Interest in Prehistoric Armenia

“Take a close look because you’ll probably be the last Westerner to see these petroglyphs. They’ll probably be gone tomorrow,” Dr. Pavel Avetisyan told me, shaking his head. Dr. Avetisyan, an archaeologist at the Armenian Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, had taken me on a field trip to the Armavir region to see a breathtaking example of 6,000-year-old rock art near Aghavnatun. He was pointing to pictures of prehistoric people and animal scenes carved on what is now a small active tuff mine that is slowly devouring the artistic works of some of Armenia’s most ancient farmers. The good news is that, in many respects, the future of Armenian archaeology in the 21st century has never looked brighter. Unfortunately, just as Armenia’s rich archaeological heritage is beginning to gain the recognition of the international scientific community, many of its exposed and unprotected sites are under constant threat from construction projects, erosion, and vandalism. And for sites that are properly excavated, there is no funding available in Armenia to properly preserve the unique artifacts recovered by scientists.

Although laws designed to preserve archaeological and historic sites have existed since Soviet times, problems arose in Armenia and other newly independent republics as a result of the quick privatization of lands in the early 1990s. Still facing a daunting range of developmental issues following independence, it is perhaps not surprising that the Armenian government lacks the funding or political will to alleviate the mounting threat to Armenia’s archaeological heritage. Armenia has a whopping 33,000 known archaeological monuments within its borders with new ones discovered regularly. A perfect example is the spectacular 200-hectare site of Agarak that has been inhabited, with brief hiatuses, since the Early Bronze Age (about 2900 B.C.). The site was cut in half during construction of the main Yerevan-Gyumri highway, and although it was made a national park in 2001, there are currently no means for protecting the site from the elements or for creating interpretive signs for the increasing numbers of tourists visiting the area.

An appreciation for Armenia’s long, storied history, with its many accomplishments, is part of what ties Armenians across the globe together in a common identity. While the Soviet Union used symbols of Armenia’s history for its own political messages, today they are used by local companies and brands as marketing tools. In addition to the swelling tourist trade, Armenia is becoming renowned in the scientific community. During the last 10 years, exciting new discoveries and opportunities for international collaboration have made Armenia a new center for archaeological research. Like many recent developments in Armenia, it has been slow and without much fanfare. But in 2004 alone, archaeologists and graduate students from respected research institutions in the United States, France, Canada, Germany, Austria, England and Italy worked alongside Armenian archaeologists to study an array of Classical, Urartian, Late Bronze Age and Neolithic sites. These collaborations, forbidden during Soviet times, have attracted archaeologists from Europe and the U.S. seeking partnerships with their Armenian counterparts.

Armenia has joined the Near East as a hotbed of study for the “Neolithic Revolution”—the period that witnessed the shift from hunting-and-gathering to farming societies. Exploring how this transformation evolved in Armenia, an Armenian-French team recently completed excavations at the 8000 year old village of Aratashen (near Etchmiadzin), and found well-preserved spoons, shovels, and other household tools carved from animal bone; long, razor sharp obsidian blades; and burned grains of domesticated barley harvested by the region’s earliest farmers among circular adobe houses. Another international collaboration, the Armenian-American Project ArAGATS, has been excavating Late Bronze Age fortress settlements built around 1500 B.C. on the north slope of Mt. Aragats. Since 1998, Project ArAGATS has been working to understand this period, which dates centuries prior to Urartu.

Focusing their research within the Tsaghkahovit Plain northwest of Aparan, the team recently uncovered a large shrine at the fortress of Gegharot, whose altar was surrounded by the remnants of many large ceramic pots. Vast quantities of sheep and goat bones indicate that people from around the region were coming to make offerings to the shrine. This incredible discovery stunned the archaeologists, once they realized that they might have uncovered the regional center of ancient religious life 3500 years ago. Despite the recent flurry of scientific activity, interest in Armenia’s archaeological heritage is not new. In the late 1800s, Russian and European aristocrats and explorers were the first to describe the ruins of the classical temple of Garni while more and more evidence emerged that the south Caucasus was one of the ancient centers of metallurgy.

At the turn of the 20th century, digs at the medieval Armenian capital of Ani became a training ground for the first generation of Armenian archaeologists. And later, the landmark excavations at Karmir Blur, Erebuni, Metsamor, Dvin, and other sites helped complete part of the puzzle about Armenia’s ancient past. Despite general interest, few Armenian students have been interested in seeking training as archaeologists, preferring more lucrative fields. The troubles of the early 1990s led to a scientific “brain drain,” as scientists left the country or joined the ranks of the unemployed. Few from the younger generation are ready to take the place of scholars that remained. New international collaborations are beginning to make up for some of the dried up government funding in archaeology. However, the three biggest problems facing Armenian archaeology today continue to be (1) the lack of funding for research and modern technical analysis, (2) the lack of suitable, modern curation and conservation facilities, and (3) a widening generation gap resulting from the above, threatening the future of the discipline in Armenia.

To help address these problems, Project Discovery!, an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to the discovery and preservation of the archaeological and cultural legacy of ancient Armenia was formed in 2003. The aims of the organization include facilitating academic scholarship and research in the archaeology of Armenia; supporting the publication of archaeological research in Armenia; supporting the preservation and conservation of Armenia’s archaeological heritage; and fostering public awareness and appreciation of the archaeological and cultural legacy of Armenia. With the help of private donations, Project Discovery! offers funding opportunities to Armenian archaeologists and graduate students for digs, access to high-tech analytical techniques and travel expenses to participate in international conferences. For those interested in assisting with excavations, Project Discovery! also provides summer archaeological programs for amateur enthusiasts. For more about Armenian archaeology, visit Project Discovery! at www.projectdiscovery.net.

Source: http://www.agbu.org/agbunews/display.asp?A_ID=167

Project Discovery: http://www.projectdiscovery.net./index.html

Karahunj - 2007

2006-06-30T19:30:00.000-07:00

Karahunj

CNN International Explores the Secrets of Armenia's Stone Henge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBh9qOFOIf0&feature=player_embedded#at=15

History of Carahunge

Around 200km from Yerevan, the capital of the Republic of Armenia, not far from the town of Sisian, there is a Prehistoric Monument consisting of hundreds of Standing Stones on a territorial area of approximately 7 hectares. Many of these stones have smooth angled holes of 4 to 5cm in diameter, the angles of the holes being directed at different points on the horizon and outer space. Professor Paris Herouni, a member of the Armenian National Academy of Science and President of the Radiophysics Research Institute in Yerevan, has undertaken a series of scientific expeditions, starting from 1994 (four days each occasion), the timing of these expeditions being at equinox and solstice days. The objective of this research was to investigate and try to solve the mysteries of this Monument. During these expeditions, the following tasks were achieved:

• 223 Stones were numbered, 84 of which were found to have holes;
• the exact topographical map of the Monument was prepared;
• the latitude, longitude and magnetic deviation of the site was measured; and
• many unique astronomic instruments consisting of one, two or three Stones were identified, and using these, many observations of the Sun, Moon and stars at their rising, setting and culmination moments, were made. Research to date has established that the name of the Monument was carahunge (“Speaking Stones”). The age of Carahunge has been estimated to be 7500 years or older (VI millennium BC). This was accurately ascertained by taking readings of the motion of the Sun, Moon and stars, using four independent astronomical methods based on the laws of the changes of the Earth’s axis precession and incline. The period when Carahunge’s activities took place was also calculated, this being a period of more than 5500 years. It was also demonstrated that the main functions of Karahunge were:
1). to serve as the temple of AR (Sun) – The Father and Main God of the Armenians;

2). to provide protection through TIR, the old Armenian God of science;

3). to play the role of a large and sophisticated Observatory (the North and South stone Arms); and

4). to serve as a University. (The Armenian scientists of old, during the time of Carahunge, could accurately measure latitude; knew that the Earth was ball-shaped; that its radius was equal to 6300km; had an accurate calendar, etc). These scientists also planned and were involved in the implementation of other well known ancient Monuments, such as the Great Pyramid in Egypt (3000 years “younger” than Carahunge); Stonehenge in England (3500 years “younger”); and others. Many of these Monuments retain until now, a link with the original Armenian name, e.g. Stonehenge, which has the same connotation as Carahunge, because “stone” in Armenian is “kar” and “henge” (a word which is absent in English) is the same “hunge” (voice, sound, echo in Armenian).Another example is Callanish in Scotland (Luis island in North Gebrids), because “kal” = “car”, “nish” in Armenian is “sign” and Luis is “light”. The same principle applies to the name given to the standing Stones in Carnac in Brittany (France), in Egypt, etc.Finally, it must be very interesting to our readers that many of the world’s well known ancient Monuments were built in definite and equal latitudinal distances from Karahunge. For example, the latitude difference between Karahunge and Stonehenge is about +10°; Karahunge and the Great Pyramid is about –10°; between Carahunge,Kallanish and the oldest Egyptian observatory and Temple of the Principal God RA (AR), near present Assuan, is ±16°.Armenian scientists of old knew mathematics, geometry, written language, astronomy, philosophy, etc. There were laws and order in existence, and Armenia was a Kingdom with dynasties. Carahunge confirms that Armenia was the first civilization on Earth, propagated knowledge and kindness everywhere and was the cradle of Indo-Europeans and Indo- European languages.

Link: http://www.carahunge.com/history.html

GROUP OF ARMENIAN AND FRENCH ARCHAEOLOGISTS FIND FIRST EVER OPEN SETTLEMENT OF PRIMEVAL MAN - 2007

2006-06-30T19:13:00.000-07:00

GROUP OF ARMENIAN AND FRENCH ARCHAEOLOGISTS FIND FIRST EVER OPEN SETTLEMENT OF PRIMEVAL MAN

Yerevan, May 19. ArmInfo. For the first time in Armenia a group of Armenian and French archaeologists has found a open Stone Age settlement in the territory of the National Park of Dilijan, Tavush region. The head of the group Boris Gasparyan says that the find is a planned and organized proto-settlement near the village of Kalavan on the right bank of the river Barepat. Last year archaeologists found in Kalavan early Bronze age graves with remarkable ceramic and metal articles. Deeper exploration revealed stone constructions, obsidian and flint quarries, primitive weapons, bones of animals with spearheads inside. Experts say that this may be not just one site but a settlement consisting of several Stone Age camps. The most remarkable finds are weapons of jasper, flint and obsidian - mostly spearheads, cutters and scrapers. Experts infer that the Kalavan settlers were hunters. They probably hunted goats and rams and processed their bones and skins. The radiocarbon and geo-morphological tests will show how primeval people lived there.

ARMENIAN-BRITISH ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPEDITION FOUND FIRST IN ARMENIA MESOLITE MONUMENT, SITE OF NEANDERTHALS

Yerevan, May 19. ArmInfo. A group of Armenian and British archaeologists will start diggings of Neanderthals' site in the karst caves of Ijevan mountain ridge, on the left bank of Agstev river in 2006. The group manager Boris Gasparyan told ArmInfo that the finding is the first mesolite monument for the whole Armenia. The so-called cave "Ovk-1" and the rocky shed "Ovk-3" were chosen for diggings. During the last year's reconnaissance investigations of caves, the archaeological expedition found sites of Neanderthals there. "We've opened several cultural layers during diggings and only after the seven layer's removal, we succeed to find a must layer, rich by bone remains and magnificent stone tools of Neanderthals", Gasparyan said. Four archaeological layers were fixed there in the punched reconnaissance hole. As Gasparyan noted, the last layer with the mesolite-typical microlite tools from obsidian is the most important. According to the preliminary conclusions of archaeologists, the Ijevan hollow and the Agstev river canyon were settled in the must epoch at the least (200,000-40,000 years ago). The scientists will start the main diggings on June 10. The archaeologists do not consider it appropriate yet to call the concrete age of findings, as the monument materials have to pass complex radiocarbon analyses.

Source: Arminfo

Ancient Civilization Unearthed in Syria - 2007

2006-01-30T09:24:00.000-08:00

The following two articles are about archeological excavations within northern Syria that recently appeared in western news media. These archeological discoveries are of great interest to the topic of this blog because the excavation sites in question are essentially along the southern periphery of the Armenian Highlands. The first news article posted below basically describes the prehistoric conflicts that is said to have existed between the "north" and the "south" at the time. It is very interesting that the author of the article essentially states that archaeologists are now "re-thinking" the long held conventional wisdom that early civilization disseminated from Mesopotamia to Asia Minor (Armenian Highlands). The second article at the bottom of this page reports on a very interesting find close to the banks of the Tigris River in northern Syria (southern Armenian Highlands). The finding in question is an eleven-thousand year old house with painted walls. These fascinating discoveries need to be looked at as an extension of the archeological wealth emanating from the Armenian Highlands.

Arevordi

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Ancient Civilization Unearthed in Syria

An excavation project on the Syrian-Iraqi border has uncovered an ancient settlement wiped out by invaders 5,500 years ago. Discovered in northeastern Syria, the ruined city of Hamoukar appears to have been a large city by 4,500 B.C., said archaeologists Clemens Reichel and Salam al-Quntar, who co-directed Syrian-American excavations on the site. Reichel, a research associate at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, and al-Quntar, of the Syrian Department of Antiquities, jointly announced their discoveries on Thursday. They said Hamoukar was a flourishing urban center at a time when cities were thought to be relegated hundreds of miles to the south. The site is in the upper edges of the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys, near the Iraq border. Reichel said it may have been settled as long as 8,000 years ago. Scholars had long believed that urbanized societies started and were isolated in Uruk, in southern Mesopotamia. But excavations that started in 1999 at Hamoukar and at other sites in central Syria led to new ideas about the how urban culture spread in the region. Ancient Mesopotamia was a region that includes Iraq and parts of Syria. This year, the Syrian-American excavations discovered evidence of the battle that toppled and burned Hamoukar's walls and ended the city's independence. Researchers found that invaders likely hurled more than 1,200 sling-fired bullets at Hamoukar and more than 100 heavy, 4-inch clay balls. ''The whole area of our most recent excavation was a war zone,'' Reichel said. The ruins have preserved not only local pottery and artifacts, but also vast amounts of Uruk pottery. ''The picture is compelling,'' Reichel said. ''If the Uruk people weren't the ones firing the sling bullets, they certainly benefited from it. They took over this place right after its destruction.'' Reichel said if Hamoukar's residents were taken by surprise it will give researchers plenty to study because their possessions likely were buried with them under the debris.

Archaeologists Unearth a War Zone 5,500 Years Old

The archaeologists, who announced the find yesterday, described it as the oldest known excavated site of large-scale organized warfare. It was a clash of northern and southern cultures in ancient Mesopotamia, the land where urban civilization began, in a region that includes Iraq and parts of Syria. The discovery was reported by Clemens Reichel of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, who was co-director of the Syrian-American excavations at the site, known as Tell Hamoukar. The ruins are in the upper fringes of the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys, near the Iraq border and within sight of the Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey. "The whole area of our most recent excavation was a war zone," Dr. Reichel said in the announcement, made jointly by the University of Chicago and the Department of Antiquities in Syria. Earlier excavations at Hamoukar, begun in 1999, led to a reinterpretation of the spread of Mesopotamia's urban culture in the fourth millennium B.C. They showed that in some cases, the northern regions developed thriving cities independently of the better-known early southern cultures. It was previously thought that the culture had spread north through colonization, trade or conquest. The new research revealed that relations between north and south were not without major conflict.The archaeologists reported finding collapsed mud-brick walls that had undergone heavy bombardment and ensuing fire. All around, they collected more than 1,200 oval-shaped "bullets" used with slings and some 120 larger round clay balls. The layer of ruins from that time also held vast amounts of pottery from the Uruk culture of southern Mesopotamia. "The picture is compelling," Dr. Reichel said. "If the Uruk people weren't the ones firing the sling bullets, they certainly benefited from it. They took over this place right after its destruction."

Speaking by telephone from Damascus, Abdel-Razzaq Moaz, Syria's deputy minister of culture, said that Hamoukar was "one of the most important sites not only in the Middle East but in the Old World," and that the new discovery brought to light "a kind of turning point in the history of civilization." Dr. Moaz emphasized the site's contribution to the understanding of the rise of early cities, rather than the violent confrontations between the expanding cultures. Guillermo Algaze, an archaeologist at the University of California, San Diego, and an authority on Mesopotamian history, said recent finds and the new evidence of warfare were filling out the story of the expanding Mesopotamian culture. By 4000 B.C., Dr. Algaze said, the northern and southern regions appeared to be "equally poised for takeoff, but 500 years later, the south had taken off and the two were no longer equal." Hamoukar, he said, "fits this picture fairly well." Excavations by a British team show that Tell Brak, also in northern Syria, seems to have collapsed at about the same time. Dr. Algaze, who was not involved in the Hamoukar exploration, said the new evidence made it clear that "the southern expansion was accompanied by some conflict." One motivation, other archaeologists say, is that growing cities in the south sought raw materials like wood, stone and metals. As the excavation proceeds, Dr. Reichel said, the destruction of Hamoukar will give archaeologists a research advantage, especially if the besieged people were surprised. In that case, all of their possessions would presumably have been buried with them under the debris.

Such "frozen contexts," he said, are crucial for identifying the functions of buildings in a city that might have covered 80 acres. Archaeologists are beginning to distinguish among domestic dwellings, cooking or production sites and those for administrative or religious activities. Salam al-Quntar, an archaeologist with the Syrian Antiquities Department and Cambridge University in England, who is a co-director of the excavations, said the team was just getting started with investigations of the city's buried architecture. But the new excavations confirm earlier evidence that Hamoukar was a flourishing urban center by the middle of the fourth millennium B.C., before the southern Uruk culture began to dominate the region. Hamoukar's relations with the south at this time remain to be investigated more fully, Dr. Reichel said. Some of its buildings shared architectural similarities with those in southern urban centers. Dr. Algaze said it was not entirely clear from the excavations whether Hamoukar had collapsed or had been taken over as a result of war. "I cannot tell," he said, "but it seems to stand to reason that it's the latter."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/international/middleeast/16battle.html

Additional Source: http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/PROJ/HAM/NN_Sum00/NN_Sum00.htm l

World's oldest wall painting unearthed in Syria

French archaeologists have discovered an 11,000-year-old wall painting underground in northern Syria which they believe is the oldest in the world. The 2 square-meter painting, in red, black and white, was found at the Neolithic settlement of Djade al-Mughara on the Euphrates, northeast of the city of Aleppo, team leader Eric Coqueugniot told Reuters. "It looks like a modernist painting. Some of those who saw it have likened it to work by (Paul) Klee. Through carbon dating we established it is from around 9,000 B.C.," Coqueugniot said. "We found another painting next to it, but that won't be excavated until next year. It is slow work," said Coqueugniot, who works at France's National Centre for Scientific Research. Rectangles dominate the ancient painting, which formed part of an adobe circular wall of a large house with a wooden roof. The site has been excavated since the early 1990s.

The painting will be moved to Aleppo's museum next year, Coqueugniot said. Its red came from burnt hematite rock, crushed limestone formed the white and charcoal provided the black. The world's oldest painting on a constructed wall was one found in Turkey but that was dated 1,500 years after the one at Djade al-Mughara, according to Science magazine. The inhabitants of Djade al-Mughara lived off hunting and wild plants. They resembled modern day humans in looks but were not farmers or domesticated, Coqueugniot said. "There was a purpose in having the painting in what looked like a communal house, but we don't know it. The village was later abandoned and the house stuffed with mud," he said.

A large number of flints and weapons have been found at the site as well as human skeletons buried under houses. "This site is one of several Neolithic villages in modern day Syria and southern Turkey. They seem to have communicated with each other and had peaceful exchanges," Coqueugniot said. Mustafa Ali, a leading Syrian artist, said similar geometric design to that in the Djade al-Mughara painting found its way into art throughout the Levant and Persia, and can even be seen in carpets and kilims (rugs). "We must not lose sight that the painting is archaeological, but in a way it's also modern," he said. France is an important contributor to excavation efforts in Syria, where 120 teams are at work. Syria was at the crossroads of the ancient world and has thousands of mostly unexcavated archaeological sites. Swiss-German artist Paul Klee had links with the Bauhaus school and was important in the German modernist movement.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSOWE14539320071011

The Evolution of the Armenian Alphabet - 2007

2005-12-24T18:42:00.000-08:00

The Evolution of the Armenian Alphabet

The Art of Writing

Strange markings on a hillside curiously match the eloquent letters on parchment. The graceful arch of vowels and consonants devised in the 4th century CE are echoed in carvings showing the sun, moon, and the exact locations of constellations from the zodiac. Our guide smiles, and astonishingly covers 20,000 years of writing in a single sentence, "From stone to paper, you can find the curve of our people in a single path. Most people think the Armenian letters began with Mashtots in 406 CE.

But look here, and you will find a divine inspiration 19,000 years before then." Beginning from astral symbols found on the Geghama Lehr (Mountain Range) between Sevan and the Ararat Plain, including the signs of the Zodiac and star positions at Karahundj and Metsamor; to Vishaps, obelisks covered with cuneiform and pictograms, the Armenian language has its roots. From the heart of Noah to the furthest stretches of Mesopotamia, India and Europe, it spread to encompass most of the Old World. The guide points to controversy and historical fact, to scientific research and popular myth as he gathers energy with his argument. "The glories of manuscript art have their ancestors, just as we do and if you want to believe that the center of language and culture came from this part of the world, then you can’t also believe the Armenian’s were illiterate at the same time. There is a source, and it came before the Mashtots Script."

Beyond stone carvings (called "pictograms", since they represented ideas through pictures, as opposed to an alphabet, which captures sounds and is used to create words and sentences to express ideas), there is very little to suggest what a native language was like in Armenia between the Paleolithic and Urartian periods. Detailed maps showing ancient fortified towns and roads that exist to this day are scrawled on the sides of stone foundations, as are complex trigonometry and geometric formulas pointing to astral, solar and lunar phases. The inscriptions even include one of the first calendars and compasses ever created. The Metsamorians and their ancestors were the earliest known civilization to forge copper, bronze and iron, they created a pantheon of gods that foreshadow the Greek pantheon. Having one of the greatest cultures of the Bronze Age (the "Metsamor Kingdom"), Ancestral Armenians curiously left no written words behind.

Emma Khanzatian, director of excavations at Metsamor, and the Grande Dame of archeology in Armenia, does not find a missing language all that curious.

"It is impossible to have a culture this advanced with no written language," Ms. Khanzatian says. "Just impossible. They were among the leaders in the known world at that time in science, industry and trade. Metsamor era artifacts are found in Egypt, Syria, Persia, India and Central Asia. Their distinct black and geometric pottery made its way to Mycenae, they may even have created the wheel. They knew trigonometry, astronomy and geomtetry--you can have none of these sciences without notation, the forms of writing. How could they leave nothing in writing behind?"

Part of how is shown by several strata of excavations at Metsamor and other ancient cities. Black, charred earth, pottery and skeletons lie in heaps in several layers from the middle Bronze and early Iron Age. Sieges and burnt earth policy began far before recent memory. If anything like parchment was created along with spectacular bronze and gold objects uncovered at Metsamor, AdaBlur, Jerahovit and MokhraBlur, it was surely burned along with the population. More recent layers of excavation show continued sieges and burning in the common era, including a 4^th century layer that was a result of struggle between Pagan and Christian armies. It is not until the Urartian period (ca. 1300-550 BC) that a written language has been found and that was borrowed from Sumerians and Assyrians. Stone was the preferred medium of expression, though there is some proof that wood and leather parchment were used along with clay tablets in Mesopotamia and Egypt. But other than signs of zodiac, maps and geometric equations, no signs of writing from the Metsamor period have been uncovered.

Khanzatian smiles and nods her head towards a central mound at Metsamor. "We haven’t begun to uncover what lies beneath this ground. And just think what must be under a city as old as Jerahovit or Aigeshat. Just because we haven’t found it doesn’t mean it isn’t there." A wizened face carved from years of excavating the windswept earth on the Ararat plain laughs and points to the central mound. "And somewhere under the main citadel lies a treasure as important as any gold artifact the archive."

Read the rest here: http://www.tacentral.com/manuscripts_minia...s/writing1.html

Petroglyphs From Armenia, 9000-3000 BCE

Before hieroglyphic writing was developed, between 9000 and 7000 BCE, people of the Armenian region expressed themselves by carving and painting designs on rocks. These three pictographs (see source link) were executed between the 8th and 4th millenia BCE, (9000 to 3000 BCE). According to archaelogists, the drawings are associated with Neolithic cultures, especially in the higher mountain regions (Aragats and Aghmaghan and the basin of Lake Sevan). Around 3000 B.C.E., the Proto-Indo-European family of languages was probably closely unified, but by 2000 B.C.E., Greek and two extinct languages, Hittite and Sanskrit, were distinct languages. Though changes in grammar and meaning have taken place, analysis of vocabulary indicates that the people of the ancient Indo-European culture were metal-using farmers tending domestic animals. Recent discoveries suggest links to the Kurgan people, who lived on the steppes west of the Ural Mountains. In the Kingdom of Van, 810 BCE, inscriptions of economic and sacrificial nature were written in hieroglyphics. Specimens of Armenian hieroglyphics are also evident in Urartean excavations at Karmir-Blur, where pottery, bronze cups and cylinder seals were found. This type of writing was used by peoples living on the Ararat Plain, even before the penetration of the Urartian tribes, according to excavations at Cholagerd.

Source: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt...6lr%3D%26sa%3DN

Armenian Petroglyphs - 2007

2005-12-24T18:38:00.000-08:00

Armenian Petroglyphs

The Rock Arts of the Armenian Elevation are the Primary Source of the Armenian, Egyptian, Indian and Hettitian Ideograms (Hieroglyphs)

It is known, that with the appearance and the development of language the man is becoming a unique “symbolic animal”, passing a way from a biological being to a thinking one. But the reason is that the language, as an informatics object is a developing, open, huge library of interactive symbols, elements. Each of the elements is modeling, projecting and means one appearance of the world, out of the edges of the human race particularly and entirely. Taking in set that symbols and elements are summarized in one image of the space, environment, where live and create the users of that language. As the natural conditions, in which our forefathers lived, and the situation, which is expressed by the representatives of that culture, in many cases are changed from one ethnos to another, in the result we observe differences in the languages of various ethnic groups, and, in some cases, the differences are not essential in one ethnic group.

As the authors think, these differences obviously appeared in the stages of the development of rock art, rock images and pictures. Sometimes the graphical languages (executive manners, typical forms, etc.) of various ethnic groups are non-similar. It is supposed, that the complexes of the rock images, which were discovered on the historical territory of Armenia, are differed from each other in a measure of mental characteristics and dialect differences of the representatives of Armenian people from various parts and regions of Armenia. The graphical language, symbols and signs are available. They are invariant and never depend on time, geographical and natural coordinates. Many nations had successfully learned and developed this language. Language symbols are general and understandable basically in the limits of one ethnic group, in determined geographical space and time. The authors think that just the moment of the investigation of the graphical archetypes is supposed to be the start of the civilization. The graphical image, picture, symbol or sign, which is fixed on the stone, exists singly, never depends on its creator - «is alienated from him». All this systems possess by the feature of autonomy and independence. Linguist V.V. Martinov call the language – “Actuality – 2'', in diversity of “Actuality – 1”, which is the world environment.

The graphical language, the language of petrography and rock pictures allowed a floating, harmonic and efficient (less actions) passing from ''Actuality – 1'' to ''Actuality – 2''. The construction of ''Actuality – 2'' relative to the objective, real or imaginable process, weighing of negative and positive features, hesitation in sincerity of thoughts, projection and development of the structure of logical constructions, choice of more acceptable decisions and their spreading – for all mentioned the man and the human language are obliged to the features of graphical language, as well as to simultaneity, invariance, reflectiveness, regularity, totality, etc. The hieroglyphs or the symbols (the word “ideogram” comes from the Greek words “idea” and “I’m writing”) have a significant place in the history of letter writing. Hieroglyphs usually considered to be the first step in the development of letter writing and were on the lowest development degree, as if they do not express sounds or syllables. They express whole words or parts of them and, naturally, do not submit any grammatical rule and cause serious difficulties in reading. Egyptians, Shummers and Chinese implemented this kind of letter writing. The ancient nations, such as Armenian, also had hieroglyphs in their letter writing...

Source: http://www.iatp.am/ara/sites/gaghap/index.htm

2005-12-24T18:35:00.000-08:00

Olive tree was brought into Palestine from Armenia 4000 BC

Zaitounah Museum new addition to Tunisian heritage

The Zaitounah (olive) Museum which was opened recently in the eastern city of Sousse is considered a new addition to the Tunisian cultural heritage due to the pivotal role the olive tree plays in the lives of Tunisians and the population of the Medieterranean region. [...] Gadira said that it also aims at preserving the heritage of this "blessed" tree for future generations, noting that this tree remained steadfast before the various civilizations which ruled Tunisia over some 3000 years like the Berbers, Phoenicians, Byzantines, Arabs, Spaniards and Turks. He said that the most ancient documented sources available report that the olive tree was brought into Palestine from Armenia 4000 BC and then taken by the Phoenicians to Greece and later to North Africa, particularly Tunisia. Since the ancient times, olive oil was the choice of the elite and notables in Tunisia and other countries of the region. It was used in religious rituals, as a massage oil, producing perfumes and for other medical purposes. According to the latest figures, there are an estimated 55 million olive trees stretching from the country's north to south and covering an area of nearly 1.6 million hectares or 30 percent of Tunisia's farmlands. Tunisia is the world's second largest producer and exporter of olive oil after EU states, mainly Italy and Spain. Article originally published by Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) 12-Jul-04

Source: http://www.kuna.net.kw/English/Story.asp?DSNO=648372

Pantheon of Armenian Gods And Godessess - 2007

2005-12-24T18:31:00.000-08:00

Pantheon of Armenian Gods And Godessess

The first god in Armenia was one of the language’s first sounds, ‘AR’, which means sun or light. As the source of life, the sun became equated with power and the supreme god. Ararat is mentioned as early as ca. 6000 BC in the Sumerian epoch poem Gilgamesh, as the land of the mountains where the gods live. The word Ararat can be divided into three words: AR-AR-AT. AR-AR being a plural form or all encompassing god; ‘AT’ being an archaic version of the Armenian word ‘hat’, which means ‘a piece of’. Thus Ararat meant ‘a piece of gods, or a piece of creation. Early symbols for gods are closely connected with astral symbols. The first use of the sacred swastika and cross are found in ca. 20,000-15,000 BC inscriptions in the Geghama Mountain Range. Carvings dating back to ca. 8500 BCE show symbols associated with astronomy, giving them a god like prominence: the sun, moon, and constellations were thought to be deities in themselves, and astral occurrences such as an eclipse or a comet were considered communication from the gods. By the 5th millennium BC, Ancestral Armenians combined sun worship with sophisticated astronomy. They are now credited with assigning the constellations of the zodiac their design and names, and creating one of the first solar calendars based on 365 days in the year. Also around the 5th millennium BC a series of Vishaps (Dragon Stones) began to be erected on mountainsides throughout Armenia, near water sources. At first resembling fish (dragons in Armenian were thought to be huge fishlike creatures, something like a cross between a whale and a gigantic squid), the monolithic stones were later carved with snakes, the heads of beasts, swastikas and crosses. Around 3000 BC, Ancestral Armenians had created a specific iconography and pantheon of the gods. The Armenian gods were still centered on the worship of the sun, but by the Urartian period, they resembled Mesopotamian and Egyptian deities based on animal-human combinations.

Human deities emerged during the Armenian Hellenistic period. Though bearing remarkable likeness to Greek gods and goddesses, which first gave speculation as to their Greek origins, it is now thought that many of the Greek gods are actually inherited from Ancestral Armenian sources, with some coming from as far away as India. The heroic legends of Hercules, for example, were first attributed to the legend of the Armenian king-god Haik in the 3rd millennium BC.

Pantheon of Armenian gods: the Armenian god or goddess is listed with the Greek equivalent deity in parenthesis.

Aramazd (Zeus) - The father of all gods and goddesses, the creator of heaven and earth. The first two letters in his name, "AR" is the Indo-European root for sun, light, and life. Aramazd was the source of earth’s fertility, making it fruitful and bountiful. The celebration in his honor was called Am'nor, or New Year, which was celebrated on March 21 in the old Armenian calendar (also the Spring equinox).

Anahit (Artemis) - The goddess of fertility and birth, in early period she was the goddess of war. By the 1st c. BCE she was the main deity in Armenia.

Nuneh (Athena) - The goddess of wisdom, common sense, motherhood and protector of the home, keeper of the family.

Vahagan (Hephaestus) - The god of thunder, clouds and fire. Comes from "Vah" -god, "Agne" - fire. Vahagan is the constellation Orion.

Astghik (Aphrodite) - The goddess of love and beauty, symbolized by skylight. She was the wife or lover of Vahagan, the god of fire and metal. She was also the goddess of water. The celebration in her honor occurred in mid June and was called Vardevar. It is still celebrated in Armenia by pouring water on unsuspecting passersby.

Ara Geghetsik - "Ara the Beautiful’- the god of spring, flora, agriculture, sowing and water. He is associated with Isis, Vishnu and Dionysus, as the symbol of new life.

Haik - a king, but in legend the father of Armenia. He slew the Babylonian god Bel, which in history was Nemruth, the Babylonian king described in the bible as attempting to build the tower of Babel. Haik’s armies invaded Babylon, and establish the kingdom from which Armenians claim their heritage. The legend of Haik is the forerunner of the legend of Hercules.

Tsovinar, Nar - The goddess of water, sea, rain. She was a fire creature, who forced the rain and hail to fall from the heavens with her fury.

Vanatur - the god of hospitality and bountiful hosts.

Tir (Apollo) - the god of literature, science and art, also an interpreter of dreams.

Tork Angegh (Aries) - the god of power, bravery, war, the military.

Aralez - One of the oldest gods in the Armenian pantheon, Aralez was a god in the form of a dog, whose powers included the ability to resurrect the dead by licking wounds clean.

Source: http://www.tacentral.com/mythology.asp?story_no=2

Sumer and Ararat - 2007

2005-12-24T18:28:00.000-08:00

Sumer and Ararat

The Sumerians, an ancient peoples and one of the first civilizations in the world called Ararat, Arrata. In their great epic poems of Gilgamesh and Arrata, they tell of the land of their ancestors, the Arratans in the Highlands of Armenia. The Sumerians also in the epic poems describe the Great Flood and the rebirth of life after the terrible deluge that fell from the Highlands of Armenia unto the lands of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent. The Sumerians had a very close connection with the ancestral Land of Ararat and considered it as their ancestral homeland (many historians and archaeologists are convinced that the Sumerians initially lived in Northern Mesopotamia and Armenian Highland).The Greeks believed that the people who first worked with bronze and iron came from the same area, they called them Khaldi.

"The great majority of the cultivated plants of the world trace their origin to Asia. Out of 640 important cultivated plants, about 500 originated in Southern Asia. In Asia alone we have established five of the principle regions of cultivated plants.... The fifth region of origin in Asia is the Southwestern Asiatic centre and includes Asia Minor, Trans-Caucasia, Iran and Western Turkmenistan. This region is remarkable, first of all, for its richness in numbers of species of wheat resistant to different diseases...There is no doubt that Armenia is the chief home of cultivated wheat. Asia Minor and Trans-Caucasia gave origin to rye which is represented here by a great number of varieties and species....

Our studies show definitely that Asia is not only the home of the majority of modern cultivated plants, but also of our chief domesticated animals such as the cow, the yak, the buffalo, sheep, goat, horse, and pig...The chief home of the cow and other cattle, the Oriental type of horse, the goat and the sheep is specifically Iran....

As the result of a brilliant work of Dr. Sinskaya, the discovery was recently made that the home of alfalfa, the world's most important forage crop, is located in Trans-Caucasia and Iran....

From all these definitely established facts the importance of Asia as the primary home of the greatest majority of cultivated plants and domesticated animals is quite clear."

The above quotes from the book by Vavilov, N. , "Asia: Source of Species" in Asia, February 1937, p. 113, indicate a long held belief by many that cradle of civilization was in the hills of Armenia. Also the location of the Garden of Eden and the location of the flood and the landing place of the Ark of Noah! More recent studies conducted by Melinda A Zeder and Brian Hesse (Science 287 (2000) 2254-57) place the initial domestication of goats to the Zargos Mountains at about 10,000 years ago. And Manfred Heun's (Science 278 (1997) 1312-14) studies indicate that large scale wheat cultivation began from 8,000 to 9,000 years ago near the Karacadag Mountains. Both areas are very near where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers come close together.

Source: http://www.accuracyingenesis.com/ararat.html#urartu

Armenian Religion During the Pre-Christian Era - 2007

2005-12-24T18:22:00.000-08:00

Armenian Religion During the Pre-Christian Era

Similar to all the pre-historic nations, Armenians, during their Pre-Christian era worshiped the nature, the elements, spirits, eponymous and other legendary heroes and a number of gods. We can divide the Armenian pre-Christian era into three periods.

Period of nature worship:

During this time, Armenians had nature gods and worshiped the elements. Consequently they worshiped.- The mountains. Armenia being mountainous, Armenians worshiped the mountains in a special way and particularly the volcanoes. Massis, Arakatz, Krkour, Gortuk, Nebad, Varak, Sipan and Nemrout are some of them. It is noteworthy that Armenians had devoted particular days of the months to the above mentioned "mountain-gods". The trees and the flowers. Special place among Armenians' nature gods had the poplar and the plane-tree. The worship of the plane-tree had a special significance for Armenians.

In the valley of Mount Ararat (near Armavir city) a wood of plane-trees was planted, which unfortunately has not been preserved till nowadays. Armenians believed, that their priests (Kourms) could foretell the future or that they could communicate with the spirits of their ancestors by listening to the rustling of leaves. The offer of royal family boys to the plane-tree, called "sosanver", is also mentioned The water. Armenia also being full of water Armenians worshiped the very essential element for life, water.

They worshiped the rain, the flood, the water spring, the river, the lake and the sea. The lakes Sevan and Van and the rivers Arax, Yeprad, Dikris, Tzorokh and Gour were some of the worshiped "nature gods". The animals. Some of the animals worshiped by Armenians are the sheep, the pig, the cow, the horse, the dog, the cat, the mouse, the frog, the eagle, the crane, the stork, the swallow, the chicken, the xxxx, the lion, the bear, the wolf, the bull and the snake or dragon. The sun and the moon. Armenians had so deep faith to the sun that even after their conversion to Christianity they continued worshipping the sun, for some time. The planets and the stars. Together with the sun and the moon, Armenians worshiped the rest of the planets of the solar system, naming the days of the week after them. Armenians worshiped also our galaxy -the Milky Way-, and the rainbow. During this period the Armenians paid their respects mostly in the forest.

Period of spirits' and heroes' worship:

In the following centuries the Armenians started worshipping invisible and imaginary spirits and heroes. According to the Armenians these spirits belonged to their ancestors and to various nature elements and they were distinguished to "good" and "evil". They lived in water or on land having human, animal or both human and animal appearance. "The Braves", were good spirits. The most famous of them were those who inhabited at the foot of Massis (an other name for Mt. Ararat) and were vengeful spirits against bad people. The Haralez (Arlez or Aralez), were good spirits, having dog-form appearance who, by licking the wounds of dead brave soldiers, brought them back to life.

The Armenians continued worshipping the "Haralez"s for some time even after their conversion to Christianity. The Vishap (Dragon), was an evil and harmful spirit having various appearances.(Big snake, big fish) The Haverzahars, the nymphs, were good spirits protecting the women. They lived in beautiful places. Beside the mentioned spirits, the Armenians also worshiped others such as the.- Barig, Bai, Hamparou, Nhunk and Shahabed. In time, after the conversion to Christianity at 301AD, the spirits turned to either angels or demons.

The Pagan period:

During the 5th century BC Armenians adopted the Iranian form of these divinities and domesticated them. The principal gods Armenians worshiped were.- Aramazd, the father of the gods, the creator of the sky and the earth. Anahid, daughter of Aramazd, goddess of fertility and maternity, mother of all prudence and virtues. She was the favorite goddess of the Armenians. Her statue in Yeriza was golden. Vahakn, the god of fire, power and bravery. These three divinities constituted the "trinity". Mihr (of iranian origin), the son of Aramazd, god of light and sun. Dir, the god of rain.

He was also the scribe of Aramazd and the messenger of the gods. He was mosthe messenger of the gods. He was most likely the god of literature, science and the recorder of man's deeds of good and evil. One of his duties was to record the dead and take them near Aramazd. Astghik, the goddess of water, beauty, love and fertility. She was the mistress of Vahakn. Armenians used to celebrate, in order to honor Astghik, they offered her roses (vart in Armenian - therefore the celebration was called "Vartavar"), they let doves fly and sprinkled water on each other. Armenians still celebrate "Vartavar", having adopted it to a christian custom.

Nanne, daughter of Aramazd and the goddess of the sky, she Aramazd and the goddess of the sky, she represented the mind and the bravery. Parshamin (of syrian origin), the god of the sky and Vanadour, the god of germination and fruit bearing. During this period, Armenians built temples the "mehian"s. In these temples there were statues of the god or goddess for whom the temple was built, and in front of the statues there was the altar, called Pakin, where offerings were made to the god or goddess. There was also a special place called kantsaran (something more or less like a safe), where the gifts from the people were kept.

The priests were called kourm. In Armenia there were a lot of temples. However, only seven of them were the most famous. Armenians gathered there every year to worship. Those are The Temple of Aramazd, in Ani and Pakavan, the Temple of Anahid, in Yeriza and Ardashad, the Temple of Mihr, in Pakaraidz, the Temple of Dir, in Yerazamuin, the Temple of Astghik, in Ashdishad, where there were also the Temples of Vahakn and Anahid, the Temple of Nane, in Til and the statue of Parshamin in Tortan. All these temples were ruined during the 4th century by St. Gregory the Illuminator.

Source: http://www.ercole.net/hayaser/religion.asp

Ancient Astronomy in Armenia - 2007

2005-12-24T18:19:00.000-08:00

Ancient Astronomy in Armenia

The Armenian highland is one of the ancient cradles of civilisation. Many investigators of the history of astronomy , having no facts to hand, mainly by logical approach came to the conclusion that the ancient inhabitants of Armenia not only knew, but also took part in the formation of ancient astronomy (Maunder, 1906, Olcott, 1914). Thus Olcott (1914) wrote: "Astronomical facts correspond with historical and archaeological investigations and prove that people who have invented the ancient figures of constellations probably lived in the valley of the Euphrates , as well as in the region near the mountain Ararat." Maunder (1906), investigating the question of the origin of the constellations, wrote:

"People, who divided the sky into constellations, most probably lived between 36 and 42 degrees of the northern latitude, so neither Egypt nor Babylon could be the motherland of creation of constellations. Calculating in what place the centre of this empty region coincides with the North Pole, we got the figure 2800 BC, which is probably the date during which the naming of the constellations were completed. It was observed that such animals as the elephant, camel, hippopotamus, crocodile and tiger were not amongst the figures representing the constellations, therefore we, can assert India, Arabia and Egypt could not have been the place where the idea of firmament originated.

We can exclude Greece, Italy and Spain on the basis of the fact that the figure of tiger is present in the figures of constellations. Thus purely by logical thinking we can assert that the motherland of celestial figures must be Minor Asia and Armenia, that is to say a region limited by the Black, the Mediterranean, the Caspian and the Aegean Seas..." The above statements had to be confirmed. The discoveries made during the last decades in Armenia. have enriched our knowledge of the ancient civilisation and ancient astronomy in this region. On Armenian territory , a belt calendar and geocentric model of the universe were discovered from the Bronze Era, dating back to the XI century BC (rumanian, Mnazakanian, 1965) Furthermore, rock carvings of astro- nomical representations of the Sagittarius, lion and Scorpio constellations, along with symbols of the Sun and the Moon, were discovered on fragments.

of rocks older than 3000 years. The diameters of the pictures are different from each other. indicating the relative brightness of the stars. On one fragment the Sun, Moon. and five planets. as seen with the naked eye are pictured, and on another two fragments there are circles with short and 29 long rays. The rays carved on the rocks probably depict the period of repetition of the Lunar phases. A carved circle found on one of the rocks created a great deal of interest. This circle is divided into orthogonal lines, in which (on opposing sides) are also carved human figures.. These symbols represent the Earth and antipodes.

Source: http://www.iatp.am/resource/science/parsam...ew/pars-eng.htm

Ararat, Cradle of Civilization - 2007

2005-12-24T18:11:00.000-08:00

Ararat, Cradle of Civilization

Mt. Ararat, in the Armenian Highland, the final resting place of Noah’s Ark and the point of rebirth of life on earth. Mt. Ararat is located in the heart of Armenia and the world. Since prehistoric times Ararat has been a Holy Mountain and a Holy land for the people of the ancient world. The Summerians, an ancient peoples and one of the first civilizations in the world called Ararat, Arrata. In their great epic poems of Gilgamesh and Arrata, they call of land of their ancestors, the Arratans in the Highlands of Armenia. The Summerians also in their great poems describe, the Great Flood and the rebirth of life. The Summerians had a very close connection with the Land of Ararat and considered it as their ancestral homeland (some historians and archaeologists believe, that the Summerians initially lived in Northern Mesopotamia and Armenian Highland). The Egyptians, too believed that life began from a mountain, surrounded by water.

The Egyptians, too had since ancient times close connections with the people of Ararat. The great pharaohs many times married into the noble and royal families of ancient Armenian kingdom of Mittani. Their friendship and cooperation with the Kingdom of Mittani and close connections stretched from the Kingdom’s period into the Hyksos and Hurrian dynasties in Egypt from the Armenian Highland. The Holy Bible and the Hebrew scriptures too, tell us of the Great Flood and Noah’s Ark. Forty days of the Great Flood, which symbolizes the long time of the Flood and rains( the number forty in ancient civilizations, meant a lot, in Armenian Folklore it even had a significant and symbolic importance). When the rain stops and the water secedes, Noah descents from upon the Holy Mt. Ararat into the Araratian valley of Armenia.

He advises his three sons too go from Armenia, into all corners of the known world to repopulate the world. Japhet, Noah’s oldest son decides to stay with Noah in Armenia and becomes the forefather of the Armenian people. The Armenians since those times have considered Ararat as the Holiest place in the world. Josephus, a Hebrew Historian of first century A.D. writes that the Armenian people still remembered, and knew the place of Noah’s Ark. Agathangelos, a IV th century A.D. Armenian Historian, records that Armenian king Trdat ( Tiridates) III Arshakuni built the monastery of Hripsime, from the stones brought from Mt. Ararat, which were considered Holy.

Another Armenian Historian, Pavstos Buzand, writes that Archbishop Hakob of Mtsbin in IV th century A.D. made an expedition or Holy pilgrimage to Noah’s Ark, by climbing from the Northeastern part of Mt. Ararat and half way during their journey as the historian writes God, stopped them and told them that no mortal human being can see, or touch the Ark. God instead sends out an Angel with a board from the Ark, which the Angel gives to Archbishop (the board from the Ark to this day is still kept in the St. Echmiatsin’s Museum of the Church as one of the most precious and holiest relics, along with other priceless objects from the Churches 1700 year history).

In the XIII th century A.D. a French traveler named Ruebrouque, wrote in his diary, that the Armenians considered Mt. Ararat as Holy Ground, and they did not climb or get close to the Mountain, not because of its impregnability, but because of its Holiness and Gods direction of not getting close to the Mountain. As one Armenian told Ruebrouque " no one should climb the mountain, it is the cradle of the world". Indeed, Holy Mt. Ararat is the symbol of Armenia and Armenians and will be so forever with Gods Holy Blessing of the Cradle of Civilization, Armenia.

Source: http://www.geocities.com/paris/leftbank/65...ronicle100.html

Prehistoric Sites in Northern Armenia - 2007

2005-12-24T18:07:00.000-08:00

Prehistoric Sites in Northern Armenia

Pavel Dolukhanov, Stepan Aslanian, Evgeny Kolpakov & Elena Belyaeva

Acheulean, Mousterian and Post-Palaeolithic sites were known in various parts of the Republic of Armenia, predominantly on the outcrops of volcanic rocks (de Morgan 1909; Panichkina 1950; Sardarian 1954; Lyubin 1961; 1984, 1989; 2002; Kazarian 1986, Yeritsian 1970, 1975). Several Stone Age occurrences on the slopes of the Aragats Mountain are currently being studied (B. Gasparian, personal communication). King et al. (2003) have recently reported several new Palaeolithic sites in Armenia and Nagorny Karabakh. In October 2003 the authors carried out an intensive field survey in Northern Armenia, assisted by Mr G. Sarkisian, from Armenia's National Heritage, and Mr Samvel Nahapetyan from the Department of Geology, University of Yerevan.

Metsavan. An ovate Acheulean biface, a sub-triangular Levallois flake and a large fossilised tibia of a wild horse were collected from the outcrops of the lacusrtine clay, exposed in the valley of a stream on the slope of the Somkhetian Ridge. These deposits rest on the dolerite basalt lava, which may be tentatively correlated with the 'Mashavera basalt' in the Dmanisi area of neighbouring Georgia with the radiometric age of 1.85±0.01 MA (Gabunia et al. 2000).

A Pechka rock-shelter has been found in the limestone outcrops of the Somkhetian Ridge, near the village of Kruglaya-Shishka. The rock-shelter is located on the left bank of a dry stream, 16 m above its bed, at the altitude of 1680 m above sea level (Figure 3). Stone Age artefacts have been collected on the slope of the valley immediately beneath the rock-shelter. Several artefacts manufactured from andesine and dacit may be classified as Mousterian; they include an exhausted core, two blades, a flake, four points, side scraper, and an end-scalper (figure four).

Metsavan (Chakhmakhkar) 'workshop'. The slopes of the Chakhmakhkar Mountain, east of Metsavan village, are littered with artefacts, manufactured predominantly from the local dacite rocks. They include Mousterian tools: single-platform Levallois cores, Levallois flakes and blades. The Post-Palaeolithic series consist of prismatic cores, end-scrapers, small-size points, notched and combined tools.

Katnakhpyur. A rock-shelter was identified in the lower part of the Metsaru River canyon, on its left bank, 40 m above the river bed, at a height of 1630 m above sea level. A retouched fragment of an obsidian blade, possibly a point of post-Palaeolithic age, was found on the floor of the rock-shelter. A large fortified settlement with the pottery of Bronze and Early Iron Ages was identified on the elevated terrace of the Ghergherchay River west of the Kurtan village (figure five).

Pagakhpyur and Atkalich. Artefacts including cores, flakes and fully accomplished tools were collected on the banks the lake of Atka (Ettik-Gel), west of the Khurda-Jalal Mountain, at an altitude of 1830 m. The clear dominance of the Levallois-type flaking is remarkable. Thick and crude flakes with either plain or oblique unfaceted striking platforms were also noted. The tools include three simple side scrapers, one angular (déjeté) side-scraper, three points (including a Levallois point with a thinned base, and another one with the alternative retouch) and a single notched tool.

Most blanks and tools may be classified as Mousterian, but two crude side scrapers and several flakes attest Acheulean features. Several slightly weathered obsidian artefacts, including one notched tool and three flakes, are thought to be post-Palaeolithic.

The new evidence supports the view that Armenia was part of the corridor via which early hominids were expanding from Africa into the Eurasian landmass. Our survey identified at least one cave site (Pechka) with the Mousterian industry. This implies a possible occurrence of more stratified sites in the vicinity. Open-air sites ('workshops') with the materials attestable as Acheulean, or Mousterian, or both, equally suggest an intensive Early and Middle Palaeolithic occupations with a probable occurrence of dwelling sites.

The total absence of authentic Upper Palaeolithic assemblages is equally significant. Earlier writers (Panichkina 1950; Sardarian 1954) reported the finds of prismatic cores and blades with flat striking platforms which they identified as 'Upper Palaeolithic'. In view or the recent experience all these tools may be classified as 'post-Palaeolithic' with their probable age ranging from the Neolithic to Chalcolithic. This implies that, due to the severity of climatic conditions, Armenia was totally abandoned by humans during the Last Glacial Maximum and was resettled again starting with the Neolithic.

Source: http://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/dolukhanov/

2005-12-24T17:59:00.000-08:00

Etruscan Origins

Italian art history begins with the Etruscans. Etruscan Civilization was created on the now known Tuscany region of Italy. It isn't known where they came from, but the character of their art and many distinctive features of their religion make it clear that the original Etruscans were from a region in Asia Minor. During the Iron Age (1000 to 1 B.C.), urban civilization spread throughout Etruria - Tarquinia was probably the oldest city and is the most famous. The other centers were Caere (Cerveteri), Vulci, and Veii (Veio). When they arrived, they brought a high level of a Greek-like culture with them. Like the Greeks, the Etruscans lived in fortified cities. Their civilization stretched from the Arno River in the North to the Tiber River towards the center of the Italian peninsula in the South. The Etruscans were an agrarian people, but they also used military means to dominate the region. At the height of their power (c. 500 B.C.), the Etruscans dominated Italy from the Po river in the north to central Campania. These people rose to prosperity and power, and then disappeared, leaving behind many unanswered questions concerning their origin and their culture. For their Greek contemporaries and Roman successors, the Etruscans were clearly a different ethnic group. Little Etruscan literature remains and the language of inscriptions on their monuments has been only partially deciphered. They had an alphabet based on the Greek alphabet.Etruscan art appears nowhere as related primary upon the influences, concepts and methods of Greek art. There are marked similarities to the art of the Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon, Egypt, Asia Minor, and even Assyria. It also promotes Italian elements and reflects distinctively Etruscan religious beliefs. Etruscan art had great influence on subsequent Roman styles and was largely absorbed by the 1st century B.C.

[...]

Soure: http://www.huntfor.com/arthistory/ancient/etruscan.htm

Somewhere between 900 and 800 BC, the Italian peninsula was settled by a mysterious peoples called the Etruscans. We don't know where the Etruscans came from, but archaeologists suspect that they came from the eastern Mediterannean, possibly Asia Minor. We will, however, never really know where they came from or why they colonized Italy. We do know that when they came to Italy, they brought civilization and urbanization with them. They founded their civilizations in north-eastern Italy between the Appenine mountain range and the Tyrrhenian Sea. Their civilization stretched from the Arno river in the north to the
Tiber river towards the center of the Italian peninsula; it was on the Tiber river that a small village of Latins, the village that would become Rome, sat. So the Romans, who were only villagers during the rise of the Etruscan civilization, were in close contact with the Etruscans, their language, their ideas, their religion, and their civilization; the Etruscans were the single most important influence on Roman culture in its transition to civilization.

[...]


Source: http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/ROME/ETRUSCAN.HTM

Additional Information:
http://indoeuro.bizland.com/archive/article9.html

2005-12-24T17:50:00.000-08:00

Sumerian and Near Eastern Mythology

Mount Mashu

[16] To the Sumerians, Mashu was a sacred mountain. Its name means "twin" in Akkadian, and thus was it portrayed on Babylonian cylinder seals --a twin-peaked mountain, described by poets as both the seat of the gods, and the underworld (60). References or allusions to Mt.Mashu are found in three episodes of the Gilgamesh cycle which date between the third and second millennia B.C.

Mashu was located in a forest in the "land of the Living", where the names of the famous are written(61). It is alluded to in the episode "Gilgamesh and Humbaba". In this story, Gilgamesh and his friend, Enkidu, travel to the Cedar (or Pine) Forest which is ruled over by a demonic monster named Humbaba. While their motives for going to the Forest included gaining renown, it is also clear that they wanted the timber it contained. Humbaba, who had been appointed by the god Enlil to guard the Forest, is depicted as a one-eyed giant with the powers of a storm and breath of fire, perhaps the personification of a volcano (62). It is only with the help of another god, and a magically forged weapon that Gilgamesh triumphs over Humbaba. But before his battle, Gilgamesh and Enkidu gaze in awe at the mountain called "the mountain of cedars, the dwelling-place of the gods and the throne of Ishtar"(63).

They climb onto the mountain, sacrifice cereals to it, and, in response, the mountain sends them puzzling dreams about their futures (64). When they begin to fell trees, Humbaba senses their presence and, enraged, fixes his eye of death on the pair. [17] Although Gilgamesh finally defeats the monster, Enkidu eventually weakens and dies from Humbaba's gaze and curse (65). In addition to its reputation as the "land of the Living", this forest is also a way to the underworld or the other world. For right after killing Humbaba, Gilgamesh continues in the forest and "uncovered the sacred dwelling of the Anunaki"--old gods who, like the Greek Titans, had been banished to the underworld (66). Furthermore, Gilgamesh seems to go into a death-like trance here (67); and in the same general region, the goddess Ishtar, whom Gilgamesh spurned, threatened to break in the doors of hell and bring up the dead to eat with the living (68).

Mashu is mentioned directly in the episode "Gilgamesh and the Search for Everlasting Life". This story unfolds after the death of Gilgamesh's friend, Enkidu, a wrenching experience which makes Gilgamesh face his own mortality and go searching for eternal life. It is en route to Utnapishtim, the one mortal to achieve immortality, that Gilgamesh comes to Mashu "the great mountain, which guards the rising and setting sun. Its twin peaks are as high as the wall of heaven and its roots reach down to the underworld. At its gate the Scorpions stand guard, half man and half dragon; their glory is terrifying; their stare strikes death into men, their shining halo sweeps the mountains that guard the rising sun"(69). Gilgamesh is able to convince the Scorpion-people to open the gate and let him enter the long tunnel through the mountains. Eventually Gilgamesh emerges from the tunnel into a fantastic Garden of the gods, whose trees bear glittering jewels instead of fruit (70).

In the view of several scholars, Mashu is also the mountain mentioned in the story that Utnapishtim told Gilgamesh. [18] Utnapishtim, sometimes called the "Sumerian Noah", told Gilgamesh how the gods had become angered with humanity and decided on the Flood as one means to exterminate it. A sympathetic god warned Utnapishtim and told him to build a boat and board it with his family, relatives, craftsmen, and the seed of all living creatures (71). After six days of tempest and flood, Utnapishtim's boat grounded on a mountain. He released a dove and a swallow, both of which returned to him. Then he released a raven which did not return; Utnapishtim and his family came down from the mountain. When the disgruntled gods are finally reconciled with the re-emergence of humanity, Utnapishtim and his wife are taken by the god Enlil to live in the blessed place where Gilgamesh found him "in the distance, at the mouth of the rivers"(72).

In his classic study, Armenia in the Bible, father Vahan Inglizian compared the above myths with the Biblical accounts of the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2) and the Flood (Gen.7-8), both of which he sited in eastern Asia Minor (73). Accepting Lehmann-Haupt's equation of the tunnel through Mashu with the naturally occuring subterannean Tigris tunnel near Bylkalein, Inglizian suggested that Mashu should be sought in the Armenian Taurus mountain range, south of Lake Van (74). It is in this same southern area, rather than at Mt. Ararat, that many scholars, including Inglizian, place the mountain of Noah (Gen. 8.4)(75). Inglizian suggested that the phrase "at the mouth of the rivers" describing the blessed land where Utnapishtim lived, should be understood to mean "at the sources of the [Tigris and Euphrates] rivers"(76). This heavenly Dilmun of Mesopotamian mythology was later identified with Bahrain on the Persian Gulf (77).

Aratta

[19] Aratta was a city, city-state, or country with which Sumerians had close trade and religious ties in the third millennium B.C. Its location is not known. Of four general sites suggested for Aratta, two are located in eastern Asia Minor: the Van-Urmia area and the Ayrarat district of historical Armenia. The Anshan-Hamadan area of western Iran was the choice of S. Cohen who translated one of four sources to mention Aratta, Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta. However, since the publication of that work (1973), several of the criteria he used for locating Aratta have been challenged (78).

Aratta, apparently, was under the special protection of the Sun god's daughter, Inanna, the goddess of love and war. In "Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta", the goddess and/or her statue were taken from Aratta to the Sumerian city of Uruk by the ruler of Uruk, Enmerkar. Now believing himself to have the goddess' protection, the Sumerian king challenged the lord of Aratta. Enmerkar ordered him to send to Sumer precious metals, precious stones, building materials and the craftsmen to transform them into shrines (79). The lord of Aratta is willing to provide the materials if Enmerkar will send him large amounts of barley. When the barley arrives in Aratta, its lord unexpectedly refuses to fulfill his part of the agreement. After ten years, Enmerkar again sends his herald to Aratta. This time, the lord of Aratta challenges Enmerkar to select one of his champions to fight in single combat with one of Aratta's champions. Enmerkar accepts. Because his response was lengthy and his herald was "heavy of mouth", Enmerkar inscribed his message on [20] clay tablets and sent them to Aratta with his herald. The poet implies that this was the beginning of writing (80). However, at this point the famine, which apparently had been plaguing Aratta, lifts and Aratta's ruler takes courage, believing Inanna had not really abandoned him. Although the ending is fragmentary, Aratta eventually seems to provide the materials and craftsmen.

In a second Sumerian myth, "Enmerkar and Ensuhkeshdana", the lord of Aratta demands the submission of Enmerkar, king of Uruk, and the return of the goddess Inanna to her home in Aratta. Enmerkar refuses and demands Aratta's submission. The lord of Aratta consults with his advisors who urge him to capitulate, which he angrily refuses to do. Then his priest comes forward and boasts that he will subdue Uruk and other territories through magic. The lord of Aratta delightedly rewards the priest and sends him to Uruk. But the priest is assassinated there; and the lord of Aratta submits to Uruk (81).

Aratta is mentioned again in a third, briefer story known as "Lugulbanda and Enmerkar". In this myth, Enmerkar of Uruk is under military attack from the Martu people. Enmerkar desperately sends his messenger, Lugulbanda, to Aratta to the goddess Inanna, here called his sister. Inanna's response is unclear (82). However, it appears that Aratta again supplied Enmerkar with metals, precious stones, and craftsmen; and there is a suggestion that the materials were transported to Uruk by river (83). Finally, Aratta appears in a fourth myth, "Lugulbanda and Mount Hurum". Enmerkar and his army are traveling to Aratta to make it a vassal state. En route they stop at Mount Hurum where Lugulbanda becomes ill and "dies". His comrades place his body on Mount Hurum, [21] intending to retrieve it after their war in Aratta. However, Lugulbanda was not really dead. After praying to the sun, moon, and the star Venus, he emerges from his trance and wanders the highlands. Unfortunately, the ending of this story is lost (84).

The four myths outlined above portray Aratta as a wealthy and militarily powerful state with which Sumer had relations from very early times. It was located some distance from Sumer and protected by its forbidding mountains, but it was not so distant as to prevent trade relations. Aratta had building materials, precious stones, metals and craftsmen skilled in their transformation. Aratta also had primacy with regard to the religion of the mother goddess, Inanna, who resided in Aratta, was the patron of that state, and was taken or lured south to Sumerian cities. Uruk and Aratta also were in contest for military superiority--each demanding the submission of the other. The method of transporting the "stones of the mountain" from Aratta to Uruk and of transporting grain from Uruk to Aratta seems consistent with such trade historically between the Armenian highlands and areas to its south, namely, by boat from Aratta south, and by pack animal from Uruk north. If Aratta is indeed located in eastern Asia Minor, the general implication of the Aratta cycle of myths is that Aratta played a seminal role in the development of religion in Sumer, as well as in the construction of its cult structures; and that trade and diplomacy between the two states was of such importance that writing was developed specifically for them.

Kummiya/Qumme

[22] The city of Kummiya appears in the mythology of the Hurrian-speaking populations dwelling around Lake Van. This city, which has not been positively identified, is described as the home of the Hurrian weather god, Tessub, and the city which Ullikummi, the stone monster, was created to destroy. R. T. O'Callaghan, in his study, Aram Naharaim, suggested that Kummiya should be sought "somewhere between the Tigris and Lake Van" (85). Igor Diakonoff placed it, generally, on the Upper Zab river (86).

The story of Ullikummi is one episode in a cycle of related "songs" about the god Kumarbi. Kumarbi's overarching aim was to overthrow the weather god, Tessub, who was, through a curious circumstance, his own son (87). Kumarbi tries to achieve his end by producing monsters capable of destroying Tessub. First, Kumarbi and his wife, Sertapsuruhi, bear the dragon (or serpent) Hedamu. But Tessub's sister Sauska/Ishtar seduces and neutralizes Hedamu (88). Then Kumarbi has sexual intercourse with a rock cliff. The result of that union was a genderless, deaf, blind, yet sentient pillar of volcanic rock named Ullikummi. To hide Ullikummi during its "minority", Kumarbi has it taken to the underworld. Ullikummi is perched on the shoulder of Ubelluri, an Atlas-like figure who is holding up the world and does not seem to notice the additional weight. Ullikummi begins to grow like Jack's Beanstalk. Soon it emerges from the underworld into a body of water. The Sun God on his rounds sees this baleful phenomenon and quickly reports it to Tessub (89).

Tessub, his brothers and sister Sauska/Ishtar go up onto Mt. Hazzi and view the ever-growing monster in panic (90). [23] Once again, Tessub's sister tries to seduce the monster, but this time she is literally romancing a stone, and is unable to stop Ullikummi. By now, Ullikummi has grown up into the land of the gods itself, and is blocking the doorway of Tessub's wife, Hebat. "It took its stand before the gate of the city of Kummiya (Tessub's city) like a shaft" (91). The crisis is finally ended by Ea, the god of wisdom. Ea visits the place of the ancient primeval gods, gets from their storehouse a copper cutting instrument "which was used to separate the earth and the sky", and,using it, cuts Ullikummi from Ubelluri's shoulders (92).

Source: http://rbedrosian.com/Memyth.htm

Armenian Origins of Sumer - 2007

2005-12-24T17:33:00.000-08:00

Armenian Origins of Sumer

Although several location throughout the Armenian Highlands hosted advanced civilizations that were much older than Sumer, international academia considers Sumer to be the world's first advanced human civilization. The Sumerians were not the world's oldest civilization. They were, however, the most advanced civilization in the ancient world. According to Sumerian texts, the Armenian Highlands were considered to be a sacred locality, a mythical place were gods dwelt. There are also strong indicators that Sumerians themselves had originated in the vicinity of the Armenian Highlands and were perhaps one of the survivors of a great flood that had occurred in the region.

Some who are well versed in ancient history may have heard that the Sumerians spoke a "Turkic" language. The position by some western academics that Sumer was a Turkic language was simply based on the agglutinative characteristics of the language spoken in Sumer. Fortunately, modern linguistics and commonsense has now all but abolished the baseless "Turkic" theory. Sumerologists now believe that the language spoken in Sumer was either unique (has no relations to any known languages) or is a Caucasian language. Sadly, the old theories had given rise to Turkish wet dreams such as the "Sun Language Theory".

Nonetheless, although historians today claim that they do not know where the Sumerians first originated, many Armenian historians claim that they originated within the Armenian Highlands. And the following is more-or-less their working theory:

If the general vicinity of the Armenian Highlands hosted the oldest known advanced human settlements on earth, settlements predating Sumerian settlements, then logic would dictate that Sumerians emerged from Asia Minor, or the Caucasus. Even before the dawn of Sumerian civilization, various localities within the Armenian Highlands such as Metsamor, Shenkavit, Karahunj, Catal Huyuk and Gobekli Tepe were already prominent cities known for their urban planning, art, theology, astronomy and metallurgy.

According to Sumerian texts, some of their national gods and goddesses had a close connection to the Armenian Highlands.

Sumerian beliefs suggest that they thought life originated within the Armenian Highlands. This belief is echoed by the Sumerian epic tale pertaining to the biblical great deluge.

Depictions of Sumerians resemble typical Armenian phenotypes.

Sumerians seem to have built pyramid shaped temples called ziggurats upon the flat topography of Mesopotamia (similar to the ancient Egyptians) primarily to mimic sacred mountains.

The famous Sumerian epic tale of ARATTA describes the cultural and economic relationship between Sumer and the Armenian Highlands.

Moreover, the Armenian language shares over a hundred words with the now extinct Sumerian language, evidence that the two contemporary nations had intimate contact with each other in the ancient world.

Arevordi

Armenia’s Cradle of Civilization - 2007

2005-12-24T17:18:00.000-08:00

Armenia’s Cradle of Civilization

Armenia’s ‘Fertile Crescent’ was located in two places: at the headwaters of the Euphrates and Tigris, and along the Arax River, its tributaries a series of liquid ribs along a central Ararat spine. Within the Ararat Valley lies a smaller crescent of land, still bearing the marks of vast marshlands and forests that once covered the entire valley floor. As you wander through this area, you can spot sudden eruptions of the terrain, hills that seem to appear from nowhere. They do not ‘fit’ the contour of the land. These are the remains of the first urban civilization to leave its imprint on the ancient Armenian world: they are the sentinels of the Metsamor Kingdom, the ‘Cradle of Armenian Civilization’.

The oldest settlement found in Armenia is a 90,000 BC Stone Age settlement in suburban Yerevan. From then through the Paleolithic period, proof of human settlement is scattered between cave dwellings and stone inscriptions on the Geghama Lehr. Suddenly, at the end of the Mesolithic period, a complex web of cities and fortified settlements appeared throughout the Ararat valley, only handfuls of which have been excavated. But enough have been uncovered to show a startlingly developed culture that rivaled the Mesopotamian urban cities, and in the area of astronomy, led the way.

Between 7000 and 4000 BC, this series of cities appeared at evenly placed spots in this crescent, all of them built around the metal industry. The inhabitants were the first known to forge copper and bronze; and are the first recorded to successfully smelt iron. The metal ore mined in this area was among of the purest in the world, and the natives shaped their culture around it. They believed the technique for forging metal was given to them from the heavens, and their temples combined metal idols with sophisticated stone observatories that charted the night sky. The first recorded astronomers, they were the earliest to create a calendar that divided the year into 12 segments of time, among the first to devise the compass, and to envision the shape of the world as round.

The successful smelting of bronze (along with gold, silver and magnesium) and the mining of precious gems transformed an agrarian civilization into to an urban one. The first signs of fortified cities are traced to this era, beginning with the excavation at Metsamor (a thriving trade culture by 5,000 BC, and with many more strata to be uncovered, conjectured to be as old as 10,000 BC in its first incarnation). Other 5th millennium cities include Dari Blur (Armavir), Aratashen Blur, AdaBlur and Teghut. In the 4th millennium BC the cyclopic walls of Lechashen had been erected by Lake Sevan, while in the Ararat valley cities at Shengavit, Aigevan and Aigeshat were established.

By 3000 BC a large kingdom was established around Metsamor with additional cities at MokhraBlur Jerahovit, Lejapi Blur, Kosh and Voski Blur (Voski means “golden” in Armenian). Shengavit is distinct among the cities in Armenia for its use of round shaped dwellings made from river stones and mud brick. The artifacts found at Shengavit (ca. 5000-3000 BC) include black-varnished, red and gray pottery, in geometric patterns similar to those used in the Minoan culture. The culture had distinctive religious beliefs revolving around the sun and planets, reflected in burial artifacts found at the sites.

Ancestral Armenians developed a trading culture at a very early time. To do that, they needed to understand and create a system of navigation. Longitude, latitude, distance and direction had to be calculated for any trip farther than across a few mountains. Artifacts uncovered at Metsamor come from as far-flung cultures as those in Central Asia, Mesopotamia, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Others include navigational tools, inscribed in stone and accurately mapping the night sky. In Sissian, an astral observatory built from stone shows an incredibly sophisticated knowledge of the universe way before the Babylonians—which used to be thought the first astronomers—had built their first city.

Rapid development and unification through trading between the tribes in the Armenian plateau created a rich and prosperous culture that was to last for more than 5000 years. The metal based cultures that sprung up on the Armenian plateau were neighbors with Sumeria, Elam, and the first empire Akkad. They had mapped the constellations before the great pyramids were built, while Greece wasn’t even a thought, and the first dynasty in China was about 2000 years away.

The Rise of Astronomy in Armenia

By the Copper-Bronze Age (5000 - 2000 BC), pictograms at Metsamor and the Geghama Lehr record ever more sophisticated celestial iconography, including the signs of the zodiac. Two observatories found in Armenia show a developed awareness of astronomy at least by 2800 BC, and possibly as early as the 5th millennium BC. Using astronomy, Ancestral Armenians developed a calendar based on 365 days, one of the first compasses, and were able to envision the shape of the world as round. The appearance of the signs of the zodiac in Armenia occurred before the Hittite and Babylonian kingdoms, which were heretofore credited with developing astronomy. Conclusive dating is still being fought over, but two astral observatories in Armenia vie for the position of birthplace of the zodiac constellations.

At Metsamor (ca. 5000 BC), there is a series of stone platforms which were reported in 1967 to be part of an astronomical instrument dating to 2800 BC, about the time historians think the naming of the zodiac was completed. The observatory at Metsamor is oriented towards the star Sirius, the brightest in the northern sky. The Metsamorians are figured to have calculated the beginning of the New Year with the appearance of Sirius in the rays of the dawning sun at the spring solstice. Numerous carvings show the locations of stars in the night sky, and one is a compass pointed due East. Other inscriptions include the signs for Aries, Leo, Capricorn and Taurus.

Karahundj

A Second Observatory in southern Armenia lies near the town of Sissian. Initial studies suggested a 3rd millennium BC date for the site and noted a number of sighting holes bored into large stones placed at the site. The holes point to the locations where solar and lunar phases could be tracked during they year, as well as stars and constellations. Later investigations led to a conjectured dating of the oldest stone telescope at the site to around 4200 BC, when the star Capella was ascendant in the region. If true, this would make it the oldest astral observatory in the world. Located close to the village of Karahundj, which in Armenian is a direct translation of the English word Stonehenge, the stones are becoming the focus of increasing interest, suggesting a link between Ancestral Armenian exploration of the heavens with the naming of the zodiac and the numerous henges in Europe.

England's Stonehenge is dated ca. 2200-1800 BC. Both observatories in Armenia predate the English henge, Karahundj perhaps predating them as much as 2000 years. For perspective, the people living in the Metsamor Kingdom were neighbors with the oldest civilization Sumeria, the first important trade city Elam, and the first empire Akkad. They inhabited the Armenian Plateau before the great pyramids, Greece wasn’t even a thought, and the first dynasty in China was about 2000 years away. At the same time Metsamor was flourishing, the Minoans were beginning to create their culture on Crete, and the Old Kingdom in Egypt had just brought together the lower and upper kingdoms into one unified country.

Metal and Iron

Of course both are metal, but speaking poetically, we are thinking of the difference between soft metals and the hard stuff. Both liquids, the difference is in the way they freeze. Sometime between 3000 and 2000 BC, a new metal was forged for the first time, and its use would change everything about making weapons and building empires. We’re talking iron here, the thing that we buy Rustoleum to protect, but which the ancients worshipped and coveted. Iron is a plentiful resource; most areas of the world can extract it. Pure strains occur in abundance in the Armenian Plateau, just as pure strains of gold, copper, tin, mercury, manganese and silver were extracted by the Metsamor culture and developed into a large industry. Since metal foundries forging copper, brass and bronze go back to 5000 BC in Armenia; they would be pretty good places for research and development.

The difference between bronze and iron is like the difference between a Bic lighter and a blowtorch. With iron shields, helmets and weapons, soldiers lasted a lot longer in battle against arrows and spears. Those who had iron weapons pretty much made bronze and copper useless except as decorator items. And iron was a protected monopoly. At first restricted to large vessels and cooking utensils, the military applications soon became apparent, then coveted, the metal valued more than precious gems or gold. If not by bribery, they learned the secret through agents sent to ferret the secret out. If not by spying, then by war. When was iron first smelted? No one can say for sure, but the smelting of iron--like bronze--was engineered by the people living in this part of the world, the technique slowly migrating outwards to surrounding territories. Now, while the Hittites (which came on the scene along with the Babylonians and Assyrians about 1800 BC) are credited with being among the first, and it wasn’t until 1350 BC that the Egyptians were able to process it themselves, excavations in Armenia show the first smelting of iron as early as 3000 BC.

Metsamor reached its zenith in the Mid Bronze Age, when it encompassed more than 200 hectares (about 500 acres). At the center of trade between Asia and the budding cultures in the West, the mineral mines and metal forges in the Metsamor kingdom were the focus of constant warfare with neighboring city-states, and by the end of the 3rd millennium, with the growing empires in Mesopotamia. The Metsamor culture thrived through the Bronze and early Iron Age, when it was integrated into the Urartu Empire (ca. 7th c. BC). The city of Metsamor continued under the Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and Ottomans until the 18th century, when it was abandoned. 6700 years of continuous inhabitation, and counting—not a bad record.

The Second Wave

Close to the Mesopotamian cultures, ancestral Armenian tribes developed a series of city-states by the 3rd millennium BC, with federations formed and reformed between them for most of the Bronze Age period. The territory was described as a rich land between the rivers, with their head at the “mountains of the gods” (described as “Arartu”). This description comes from the oldest story known, Gilgamesh (ca. 5th millennium BC). To earn that kind of praise, a land would have to be very rich indeed. 2000-1800 BC cuneiform note migrating peoples from the outside who lived with the original tribes. These peoples would have been the migrating Indo-Europeans (including the Hittites), for cuneiform used such expressions as “we came, we conquered and we captured” as their calling cards.

The combination of migrating Indo-Europeans with native cultures was bound to create more than a little cross-fertilization of people and ideas, and within the next 1000 years several regional kingdoms using an Indo-European language emerged. By the 2nd millennium, trading between the tribes on the Armenian plateau led to a loose federation led by the Nairi, which were based around Southern Lake Van. The Nairi were recorded as early as 2000 BC on Assyrian cuneiform as the people from the “land between the rivers,” holding about 60 tribes and 100 cities. The Nairi were one tribe among many, but their name became synonymous with that for the entire region. From what we know of the tribes, their customs and traditions were similar to others found in Mesopotamia, and they mixed Semitic or Ugaritic origins with their earlier Indo-European genetic and cultural roots. Among the tribes in Nairi was one called Urartu.

Also around 2000 BC, a second wave of Indo-European migration began, this time coming full circle back to the Armenian plateau. Thousands of years of development created distinct dialects and physical attributes, which further influenced the “mother tribes” in Armenia. Among them were the Hittites, which entered the region of Asia Minor around 2000 BC. There is a clay tablet written by the Hittites about 2000 BC (discovered in an excavation of the Hittite capital Hatusas--or Boghazkeui-- in N. Central Turkey), which first mentions a tribe of people called Haius, and said they were from the country of Haiassa-Aza. This was a predominant tribe in the region, vassals of the Hittite kingdom, and said to be a distinct Indo-European tribe that introduced its language and customs to neighboring tribes. The Haius were often in rebellion with the Hittites, and they were influential in spreading their culture eastwards, to the peoples on the Armenian plateau.

In addition, the architectural and cultural influences of the Hittites were filtered into the region through Haiassa-Aza. Another movement of Indo-Europeans is recorded in the 12th c BC. It is about Thraco-Phrygian tribes (called “foreign settlers”) who were pushed out of Thrace and Phrygia by “the people of the Sea” (i.e., early Greeks, Minoans or Mycanaeans) around 1200 BC (there’s Troy again!), and who moved through the Euphrates into the Armenian Plateau. These tribes lived with Armenian Ancestors and other tribes and formed a hybrid culture which is the beginning of an extant Armenian identity, including an Indo-European language and Aryan features (tall with blonde-hair and blue-eyes) among the people. First inhabiting the land immediately East of the Trojan kingdom in Asia Minor, the Thraco-Phrygians settled on the Western edges of the Armenian plateau and intermingled with the Haiassa-Aza, further developing Indo-European language, culture and physical features.

Other rival tribes (or kingdoms, as they were called) in the area included the Mitanni, southwest of Lake Van, the Manah (around Lake Urmia) and the Diaukhi (around present day Erzurum). The Mitannians and Hurrians were dominant cultures in the Armenian Plateau until the mid 2nd millennium BC. Kurgans (burial mounds) of the 17th and 16th centuries BC have been excavated at Vanadzor showing chased gold and silver cups and bronze weapons. Kurgans in the following period excavated at Lechashen, and at a cemetery at the village of Artik on the slopes of Mt. Aragats uncovered Mitannian cylinder seals dating from the 15th to early 14th centuries BC—the final phase of the Mitannian kingdom. After the destruction of Mitanni by the Hittites at the turn of the 15th-14th cc. BC, the tribes on the Armenian plateau maintained their ties with the Hittites, which had begun to expand into Northern Syria.

By the time the Hittite kingdom fell around 1200 BC, the ancestral Armenian tribes had forged powerful alliances and were considered a challenge to the northward expansion of the Assyrians, who became the primary power after the fall of Mitanni. The Diaukhi were, at the time of the rise of Urartu, the most powerful political formation of the Nairi. By the time of Urartu’s rise, the Nairi tribes had retreated Southwest of Lake Van to a country called Khubushkia. The area of present day Armenia was held by the kings of Etwikhi (Etwini). Kept up with all this? If you have, then you begin to understand why it has been so hard to trace Armenia’s lineage in the region, and how--with all these tribes inhabiting the same land, more than a little cross-pollination occurred, creating a race of tribes which were all culturally related, sharing language and ethnic roots among them.

And frankly, even the Egyptians and Assyrians were pollinating like bees, being made up of several ethnic groups themselves. Cousins, the tribes in Armenia were still rivals for land and mineral resources, and a few rose to prominence. One of these tribes succeeded in uniting or conquering surrounding city-states into a single empire, which rivaled even the Assyrians and Hittites for power. They were called the Nairi and Urartians by the Assyrians. Let’s put this into perspective and mark ancetral continuously inhabiting the Armenian Plateau before and throughout the rise and fall of the Old and Middle Kingdoms in Egypt, the entire history of Minoan and Mycanaean cultures (ca 2200-1400 BC) and the Indus civilization in present day Pakistan (ca. 2500-1500 BC), the first semi-mythical Hsia (ca 2000-1523 BC) and most of the Shang (1766-1027 BC) Dynasties in China. Greece and Rome are by now a gleam in the eyes of historian researchers.

Source: http://www.tacentral.com/history.asp#

2005-12-24T17:05:00.000-08:00

Metallurgy Within Trans-Caucasia

The importance of metallurgical data for the formation of a Central Transcaucasian chronology

Archaeology in Georgia, as in other countries, is the science which studies human activities in the past and tries to reconstruct this past as comprehensively as possible. It was stated that the past is the main thing in our life, everything that exists belongs to it (A. France). Indeed, to reconstruct the past, archaeology needs as many ingredients based on the full range of technical and natural sciences as life itself is diverse. More and more archaeology becomes a meeting field for various sciences.

As scientific development is easily attainable in the zones of contacts and interactions between different sciences, completely new perspectives are opened for archaeology through its integration in other sciences. Archaeometallurgy is among the most important branches developed in consequence of this qualitative change - or better: the transformation of archaeology. In Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, three laboratories carry out analysis of metal artefacts: the State Museum of Georgia, the Metallurgical Institute and the Centre for Archaeological Studies. The metal inventory was investigated by Josef Grdzelishvili, Ferdinand Tavadze, Tamar Sakvarelidze, Rusudan Bachtadze, Tsisana Abesadze, Tina Dvali, Givi Inanishvili, Teimuraz Mudzhiri, Natela Saradzhishvili and others.

The study of metal and other kinds of artefacts, together with chronological and environmental studies, are usually considered as three of the prime areas of modem archaeological science. At the same time chronological studies are essentially connected with artefact studies. Already in the first half of the 19th century, Christian Thomson based the first archaeological periodisation on the kind of substances used for the artefacts and classified archaeological material by the chronological order as belonging to the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. This correlation of time and type of material in use was known even to the old Greeks.

Among all types of artefacts, metal objects in general and tools and weapons in particular, are subjected most of all to innovations - the development of society is considerably connected with their functional abilities. Therefore metallurgical data of the ancient societies - of one and the same geographical zone - have, in contrast to the data of other archaeological sources, such as pottery, architecture, burial habits and others, which are more apt to indicate the genetical relations, a special importance in the establishment of a relative chronology.

The first and second ..radiocarbon revolutions", the use of the radiocarbon dates for the creation of absolute time-scales first and the use of calibrated ¹⁴C dates afterwards, provoked the separation of the areas dated by the ¹⁴C technique - the northern periphery of the Near East and Europe - from the areas with historical chronologies, /.e. the Near East. The separation of these two regions from each other caused something like a "geological gap" - a "fault line" between them (Renfrew 1973: 104, Figs. 20, 21). The need to fill this gap is an urgent task of the contemporary archaeological studies. Besides the further improvement of the geochronological methods, it demands an intensive stimulation of the research in the field of relative chronology on both parts of the above-mentioned gap, and, as much as it is possible, to connect them.

One of the regions along the ,,fault line" is the Caucasus. Therefore chronological problems of this region have paramount importance in the foundation of a general Near Eastern - East European chronological system; it seems that the Caucasus is an important link in the Old World's chronological chain. The inclusion of the Caucasian chronological evidence into the common Near Eastern - East European chronological system must be preceded by the formation of an all-Caucasian chronological scale.

The Great Caucasian Ridge represents a barrier dividing the Caucasus in two main parts: Transcaucasia or the South Caucasus, and the North Caucasus. At the same time, the role of the pathes crossing it permits to consider the Caucasus as one and the same geo-political zone. Among the Caucasian regions Central Transcaucasia (i.e. Eastern Georgia, old Iberia) holds a key position (Fig. 1) - it is encircled by all other Caucasian regions (Western, Southern and Eastern Transcaucasia, North-Western and North-Eastern Caucasus), and therefore it represents a basis for the elaboration of the all-Caucasian chronological scale (Figs. 2, 3).

The more or less contemporary Kül Tepe II ¹⁴C date should also be taken into consideration: 3766-3543 cal B.C. (LE-163). Recently three dates were received from the AMS Facility at the University of Arizona for Satkhs, the site which is situated in Dzhavakheti (8 km northeast of Nino Tsminda), i.e. in the southeast direction from Amiranis Gora and Kura-Araxes layers of which have ceramic parallels with Mokhra Blur (Ararat valley), Kvatskhelebi and Amiranis Gora: 3072-2916 cal B.C. (AA-7768), 3343-3043 cal B.C. (AA-12853) and 3301-2926 cal B.C. (AA-12854) (Isaak et a/. 1994: 26, 28f). One date was obtained from a level associated with Early Bronze Age materials of the north-west Armenian site Horom in the Shirak valley: 3371-3136 cal B.C. (AA-7767) and two dates were from a tomb of the same site: 3341-3048 cal B.C. (AA-10191) and 3990-3823 cal B.C. (AA-11130). All three vessels of this tomb reveal in the opinion of the excavators relatively early forms of the Kura-Araxes culture (Badaljan et al. 1994: 14,Table Illc).

Source: http://www.geocities.com/komblege/ansch1.htm