THE ARMENIAN HIGHLANDS: CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION
HULIQ, NC
ds-cradle-of-civilization
Oct 4 2007
The highlands of Armenia is where human civilization thrived
thousands of years ago and to many what is known to be the ‘cradle
of civilization’. Many historians place the Indo-European homeland
in the Armenian Highlands.
Some scholars believe, for example, that the earliest mention of the
Armenians is in the Akkadian inscriptions dating to the 28th-27th
centuries BC, in which the Armenians are referred to as the sons
of Haya, after the regional god of the Armenian Highlands. (see:
Artak Movsisyan, Hnaguyn Petut’yunĕ Hayastanum-Aratta (Yerevan:
Depi yerkir 1992) 41.)
Many experts say that the Armenians started as a mixture of the
different peoples to move through the area in history: The Hurrians,
Urarteans, Luvians and Mushki. This last group, also knowns as
Phrygians may have brought their Indo-European language to Armenia.
The Armenian language today is Indo-European, but shows a lot of
influence from the earlier languages, especially Urartean.
("Armenians" in Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture or EIEC,
edited by J. P. Mallory and Douglas Q. Adams, published in 1997 by
Fitzroy Dearborn.)
Many hypothesis’s regarding the Indo-European homeland are around
Armenia, Greece, and the Caucasus. The Armenian Hypothesis which
places Armenia as the Indo-European homeland is accepted by many
Russian and Georgian historians specialized in European and Caucasus
history and who are known for there contributions to history in the
Caucasus and Armenia.
References: *Armenia: Cradle of Civilization by David Marshall Lang
*Martiros Kavoukjian, Armenia, Subartu, and Sumer *T. V. Gamkrelidze
and V. V. Ivanov, The Early History of Indo-European Languages,
Scientific American, March 1990 *I.M. Diakonoff, The Prehistory of
the Armenian People (1984).