Origin of the Armenians
The earliest universally accepted reference to the people and the country dates back to the 6th century BC Behistun Inscription, followed by several Greek fragments and books.
[5] Analyses of mitochondrial ancient DNA of skeletons from Armenia spanning 7,800 years, including DNA from Neolithic, Bronze Age, Urartian, classical and medieval Armenian skeletons,[6] have revealed that modern Armenians have the least genetic distance to them compared to neighboring peoples such as Turks and Azerbaijani Turks, but followed closely by Georgians.
The study shows that modern Armenians have the lowest genetic distance between the ancient individuals in this dataset—followed closely by Georgians—compared to other populations such as Turks, Persians, and Azerbaijanis.
Armenians seem to share a similar affinity to those Neolithic farmers as do other genetic isolates in the Near East, such as Greek Cypriots, Mizrahi Jews, and Middle Eastern Christian communities.
Collectively, they constitute 77% of the observed paternal lineages in the Armenian Plateau – 58% in Sason and an average of 84% in Ararat Valley, Gardman and Lake Van.
It reveals a "strikingly high" level of regional genetic continuity for over 6,000 years with only one detectable input from a mysterious Sardinian-like people during or just after the middle to late Bronze Age.
Modern Sardinians, having the highest genetic affinity to early European farmers who migrated into Europe from Anatolia and introduced farming around 8,000 years ago,[11] have 38–44% of ancestry from an Iranian, Steppe, and North-African-related source.
Starting from around 1200 BC, during the Late Bronze Age collapse, around the time when the Nairi tribal confederation and Urartu begin appearing in historical records, signs of admixture decrease to insignificant levels until today.
[15][16] The earliest record of what can unambiguously be identified as Armenian dates back to the trilingual Behistun Inscription,[17] authored sometime after c. 522 BC, in reference to a country and the people associated with it.
The following table breaks down the attestation in the three languages it was written in: The inscriptions chronicle Darius the Great's battles and conquests during the first Persian Empire.
In it, he mentions the Chalybes people in Pontus, past the Thermōdōn River, with Armenians as their southern neighbors:[26][27]Χάλυβες, περὶ τὸν Πόντον ἔθνος ἐπὶ τῷ Θερμώδοντι, περὶ ὧν Εὔδοξος ἐν πρώτῳ ... Καὶ Χάλυβοι παρ ̓ Ἑκαταίῳ· «Χαλύβοισι πρὸς νότον Ἀρμένιοι δμουρέουσι.»Xerxes I was king of Achaemenid Persia following the reign of his father, Darius the Great who authored the Behistun Inscription.
However, this is an etiological tag added by the ethnographer responsible for the list who felt an obligation to explain where each of the ethnic groups came from – the ancient Armenians themselves seem to have no knowledge of their ancestors' migration from Phrygia.
Both these together had as their commander Artochmes, who had married a daughter of Darius.This passage has often been cited to explain the origin of the Armenians and the introduction of the Proto-Armenian language into the South Caucasus region.
[10] In his book about Cyrus, the first Emperor of Persia, Xenophon writes about a conversation between Cyrus and the King of Armenia regarding a past war between Armenians and the Medes led by Astyages (events prior to the ones mentioned in the Behistun Inscriptions):[33][34]When everything was in order, he began his examination: “King of Armenia,” said he, “I advise you in the first place in this trial to tell the truth, that you may be guiltless of that offence which is hated more cordially than any other.
[45][46][47][48] There is evidence of Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Age cultures in lands historically and presently inhabited by Armenian people, dating to about 4000 BC.
[55] Thutmose III of Egypt, in the 33rd year of his reign (1446 BCE), mentioned as the people of "Ermenen", claiming that in their land "heaven rests upon its four pillars".
Hittite inscriptions deciphered in the 1920s by the Swiss scholar Emil Forrer testify to the existence of a mountain country, the Hayasa and/or the Azzi, lying around Lake Van.
[60] According to Igor Diakonoff, the Mushki were a Thraco-Phrygian group who carried their Proto-Armenian language from the Balkans across Asia Minor, mixing with Hurrians (and Urartians) and Luwians along the way.
[61] Diakonoff theorized that the root of the name Mushki was "Mush" (or perhaps "Mus," "Mos," or "Mosh") with the addition of the Armenian plural suffix -k'.
[64][65][66][67] Additionally, genetic research does not support significant admixture into the Armenian nation after 1200 BCE, making the Mushki, if they indeed migrated from a Balkan or western Anatolian homeland during or after the Bronze Age Collapse, unlikely candidates for the Proto-Armenians.
[70] It has been speculated that the Mushki (and their allies, the Urumu) were connected to the spread of the so-called Transcaucasian ceramic ware, which appeared as far west as modern Elazig, Turkey in the late second millennium BCE.
[71] This ceramic ware is believed to have been developed in the South Caucasus region, possibly by the Trialeti-Vanadzor culture originally, which suggests an eastern homeland for the Mushki.
According to Armenian tradition, the city of Mazaca was founded by and named after Mishak (Misak, Moshok), a cousin and general of the legendary patriarch Aram.
In particular, Movses Khorenatsi writes that the Armenian king Skayordi Haykazuni was a political foe of Assyria during the reign of Sennacherib (705-681 BCE), which would have been contemporaneous with the rule of Argishti II.
Armenologist Armen Petrosyan proposed that the powerful Etiuni confederation, located in what is now the territory of northeastern Turkey and Armenia, may have been the name the Urartians used to refer to Armenian-speaking tribes.
[95][96] It is generally assumed that proto-Armenian speakers entered Anatolia around 1200 BC,[97][98] during the Bronze Age Collapse, which was three to four centuries before the emergence of the Kingdom of Urartu.
[81] However, recent genetic research suggests that the Armenian ethnogenesis was completed by 1200 BCE, making the arrival of an Armenian-speaking population as late as the Bronze Age Collapse unlikely.
However, genetic signals of population mixture cease after ~1200 BCE when Bronze Age civilizations in the Eastern Mediterranean world suddenly and violently collapsed.
[109] The precise date of the foundation of the Orontid dynasty is debated by scholars to this day but there is a consensus that it occurred after the destruction of Urartu by the Scythians and the Medes around 612 BC.
During Median and Persian domination, Iranian religious influences began to mix with native Armenian beliefs, leading to the worship of new, syncretic deities such as Mihr, Aramazd, Vahagn, and Anahit.
