Prehistoric Armenia

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Prehistoric Armenia refers to the history of the region that would eventually be known as

Armenian Highlands from the Lower Paleolithic more than 1 million years ago until the Iron Age and the emergence of Urartu in the 9th century BC, the end of which in the 6th century BC marks the beginning of Ancient Armenia
.

Paleolithic

The Armenian Highlands have been settled by human groups from the

The most recent and important excavation is at the

Hrazdan river valley.[3] Thousands of 325,000 year-old artifacts may indicate that this stage of human technological innovation occurred intermittently throughout the Old World, rather than spreading from a single point of origin (usually hypothesized to be Africa), as was previously thought.[4]

Neolithic

The sites of

Mestamor archaeological site, located to the southwest of Armenian village of Taronik in the Armavir Province, also shows evidence of settlement starting from the Neolithic era.[citation needed
]

The

Kura-Araxes culture
, dated to the period of ca. 3400 - 2000 BC.

Bronze Age

Karahunj
).

An early Bronze-Age culture in the area is the

Ararat plain; thence it spread to Georgia by 3000 BC (but never reaching Colchis), proceeding westward and to the south-east into an area below the Urmia basin and Lake Van
.

From 2200 BC to 1600 BC, the

Early 20th-century scholars suggested that the name "Armenia" may have possibly been recorded for the first time on an inscription which mentions

The Bible. However, what all these attestations refer to cannot be determined with certainty, and the earliest certain attestation of the name "Armenia" comes from the Behistun Inscription
(c. 500 BC).

The earliest form of the word "Hayastan", an

endonym for Armenia, might possibly be Hayasa-Azzi, a kingdom in the Armenian Highlands that was recorded in Hittite
records dating from 1500-1200 BC.

Between 1200 and 800 BC, much of Armenia was united under a confederation of tribes, which Assyrian sources called

Nairi ("Land of Rivers" in Assyrian").[18]

Iron Age

The main object of early

Armenia
was to obtain metals. The iron-working age followed that of bronze everywhere, opening a new epoch of human progress. Its influence is noticeable in Armenia, and the transition period is well marked. Tombs whose metal contents are all of bronze are of an older epoch. In most of the cemeteries explored, both bronze and iron furniture were found, indicating the gradual advance into the Iron Age.

See also

Further reading

  • Armen Petrosyan. "The Problem of Armenian Origins: Myth, History, Hypotheses (JIES Monograph Series No 66)," Washington DC, 2018

References

  1. ^ Dolukhanov, Pavel; Aslanian, Stepan; Kolpakov, Evgeny; Belyaeva, Elena (2004). "Prehistoric Sites in Northern Armenia". Antiquity. 78 (301).
  2. PMID 18930308
    .
  3. .
  4. ^ 325,000 Year Old Stone Age Site In Armenia Leads To Human Technology Rethink
  5. ^ The earliest finds of cultivated plants in Armenia: evidencefrom charred remains and crop processing residues in pise´from the Neolithic settlements of Aratashen and Aknashen, Roman Hovsepyan, George Wilcox, 2008
  6. p12-24
  7. ^ Aynur Özifirat (2008), The Highland Plateau of Eastern Anatolia in the Second Millennium BCE: Middle/Late Bronze Ages pp.103-106
  8. ^ John A. C. Greppin and I. M. Diakonoff, Some Effects of the Hurro-Urartian People and Their Languages upon the Earliest Armenians Journal of the American Oriental Society Vol. 111, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1991), pp. 721 [1]
  9. ^ Joan Aruz, Kim Benzel, Jean M. Evans, Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C. Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)[2] (2008) pp. 92
  10. ^ Kossian, Aram V. (1997), The Mushki Problem Reconsidered pp. 254
  11. p.681
  12. ^ Simonyan, Hakob Y. (2012). "New Discoveries at Verin Naver, Armenia". Backdirt (The Puzzle of the Mayan Calendar). The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA: 110–113. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
  13. ^ Martirosyan, Hrach (2014). "Origins and Historical Development of the Armenian Language" (PDF). Leiden University: 1–23. Retrieved 5 August 2019. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  14. ^ Archi, Alfonso (2016). "Egypt or Iran in the Ebla Texts?". Orientalia. 85: 3. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  15. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1240524. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )
  16. ^ Martiros Kavoukjian, "The Genesis of Armenian People", Montreal, 1982.
  17. .
  18. ^ "The Longest Rivers in Armenia". 21 December 2020.

External links