Dear visitors of PeopleOfAr.com,
As a well known cliché goes: “time flies when you’re having fun”, 2015 is over and we find ourselves in the second month of 2016. This means that PeopleOfAr blog exists for over 4 years now and I would like to take the opportunity to look back at some of the past highlights and explain my vision for the near future.
Looking Back at the Highlights
As some of you might or might not know, this blog is run entirely by one individual. PeopleOfAr is an absolute passion project that emerged from a personal desire to discover and share Armenian heritage and culture.
It began its existence as a repository of information. Before the blog, however, there was YouTube. PeopleOfAr was at first only a channel on YouTube which I created to collect and share beautiful Armenian folk music and create informational and inspirational videos on Armenian history and culture. It started to gain some followers and soon it became clear to me that a YouTube channel was insufficient for preserving and sharing the wealth of information that I began to accumulate. First and foremost I needed a place to store the information and visual materials that I discovered in dusty books, magazines and often unknown websites on the internet. So I started a free wordpress.com blog with the same name peopleofar.worpress.com, first as a repository really, a place to store the information for usage in videos. It was only later that I began writing original articles as well. With a passion for academic conduct I’ve often tried to find solid references and provide sources to the original material in my articles. Soon after, I began to receive a lot of positive feedback from people around the world. Slowly but steadily PeopleOfAr grew to hundreds of visitors a day and things really began to take off.
Discovery of Tzarakar
Perhaps the first notable breakthrough came with an article I published about a discovery of Tzarakar a long lost Armenian monastery found inside a rock. As usually with such discoveries, they often remain isolated among the academic circles and often receive too little attention from the public, at least that’s my impression. I found out about this monastery in a 2011 edition of a digital journal publication of RAA (Research on Armenian Architecture) on their website. Apparently it was discovered a few years before that, but for some odd reason didn’t appear in any media outlet, that I was aware of. I found it fascinating and decided to write about it here. Apparently readers loved the story and it was picked up by several news sites. The viewership skyrocketed and at some point PeopleOfAr was even ranked 25th place in the top 100 most popular wordpress.com posts (see screenshot bellow). This was really encouraging.
As a consequence, I received a lot of massages from people asking me for directions on how to get to the monastery on holiday trips or with travel agencies.
In the Media
PeopleOfAr’s articles and images have since been cited, translated into different languages, mentioned and utilized in many different media outlets and I long lost track of all the cases, but here are just a handful that I was able to retrieve without much effort:
Ancient Armenian City Reveals New Secrets:
- Horizonweekly.ca (English)
- Panorama.am (Armenian)
- Asbarez.com (English)
- PanArmenian.net (Russian)
- PanArmenian.net (English)
- PanArmenian.net (Armenian)
- RT Spain (Spanish)
- Sott.net (English)
- a1plus.am (Armenian)
- Armday.com (Armenian)
- Ancient-Origins.net (English)
Long lost Armenian monastery found inside a rock!:
- PanArmenian.net (English)
- PanArmenian.net (Russian)
- PanArmenian.net (Armenian)
- Armeniancommunity.gr (Greek)
- Culture.am (English)
- Aysor.am (Armenian)
- 1in.am (Armenian)
- NovostiNK.ru (Russian)
3,000-year-old Settlement in Eastern Turkey reveals Armenian Traces:
- Asbarez.com (English)
- Armradio.am (Armenian)
- Horizonweekly.ca (English)
- Vipcatalog.com (English)
- Yerakouyn.com (Armenian)
- Ishtartv.com (Arabic)
- Armnews.com (French)
- accc.org.uk (English)
- ArmenianFreeVoiceNews (Armenian)
- Ragmamoul.net (Armenian)
10 World’s Oldest Things From Armenia:
- Horizonweekly.ca (English)
- Repatarmenia.org (English)
- Ragmamoul.net (English)
- Japanarmenia.com (English)
- WesternArmeniatv.com (English)
- Go2armenia.com (Russian)
- Go2armenia.com (English)
- Go2armenia.com (Armenian)
- Armeniangc.com (English)
- 9gag.com (English)
The city of Ras al-Khaimah was founded by Armenians:
- News.am (English)
- Council of the Armenian community in Dubai & the Northern Emirates (English)
- Dubayblog.com (English)
- Hayernaysor.am (English)
- Hayernaysor.am (Armenian)
- 168.am (Armenian)
- Culture.am (English)
- Novostink.ru (Russian)
- Russia-armenia.info (Russian)
Armenians Have A High Genetic Affinity To Ancient Europeans – NEW STUDY REVEALS:
- Armradio.am (English)
- Westernarmeniatv.com (English)
True Story of a Real life Superhero: Shavarsh Karapetyan:
- Magazin.atlas.sk (Slovak)
Armenian Christmas – 6th of January:
- Kanal3.bg (Bulgarian)
Sketches of Ancient Armenian Costumes by Eugène Lacoste (1877-1878):
- 168.am (Armenian)
- Ankakh.com (Armenian)
Armenia was the center of the World according to ancient Greeks:
- 168.am (Armenian)
Armenians of Byzantium (part 1):
- usa.greekreporter.com (English)
- Theorthodoxchurch.info (English)
The Six Pointed Star of Armenia:
- Israel-flash.com (French)
New DNA study shows Armenian genetic traces across the world:
- Culture.am (English)
and many more… (I think you get the idea). Needless to say I’m very pleased to see that people enjoy my articles and put them on their sites or use them as sources or simply as inspiration. It’s one of the reasons that kept me motivated over the years.
Spreading awareness
PeopleOfAr has always been about awareness, preservation and celebration of Armenian culture and heritage. As such I’ve tried to help many worthy causes and campaigns over the years, from crowdfunding to petitions.
When I was first approached by the organizer (Gevorg Martirosyan) of the petition to return the Armenian pagan Goddess Anahit’s statue to Armenia, I immediately thought it was a great cause and helped with spreading the word, even made a short informative video for this purposes (see bellow).
The petition was highly successful. It gained wide attention among Armenian media and the public to a point that even the minister of Science and Education of Armenia got involved. On March 7, 2012, a mass of young people gathered in front of the British Embassy in Yerevan and held posters of the goddess chanting, “Anahit, come home!” and wrote letters to the British Ambassador who replied that he was in favor of some sort of a loan exhibition to Armenia. The British Museum eventually agreed to a temporary exhibition of Anahit in Armenia, as stated by the British Embassy. However, as far as I’m aware the exhibition hasn’t taken place yet. The problem with this case is eventually that its Armenian origins are still disputed, even tough it was excavated on historic Armenian land of the appropriate period. Another issue is that it was acquired from a territory that is now part of Turkey. Thus return is unlikely. What was nevertheless very encouraging and invigorating to see is how passionate and organized Armenians got about preservation and return of Armenian heritage. If anything it had boosted Armenian awareness of the past and inspired young Armenians to stand up in defense of their heritage. Which I personally consider a major victory.
Many such campaigns, petitions and causes have been supported by PeopleOfAr ever since. More recently I was approached by organizers of an absolutely wonderful International Armenian street festival “Festivalul Strada Armeneasca” in Bucharest, Romania. Naturally I had to support it and spread the word about the festival and a photo-competition that would be held at the festival. As gratitude the organizers displayed the logo of PeopleOfAr during their three day festival and added it to their official posters and on their website together with a wonderful description (see screenshots):
As you can imagine I’m absolutely delighted and honored to be featured among supporters of such a wonderful event. There is only one thing I regret looking back, that is that I wasn’t able to attend this festival. I just hope they will continue the tradition next year, and I’ll certainly go to Romania to attend it myself!
Science
Even when it comes to science there have been some interesting highlights for PeopleOfAr. In particularly the case of The True Shape Of The Ancient Armenian Crown. As explained in the article, I have been pondering for quite a while about the true shape of the Armenian tiara from the Artaxiad period. Mainly because the reconstructions and drawings of this headgear that I have seen in books, art and on the internet did not match with the pictures of historic artifacts from that period. So I wrote an interesting analyses focusing on two main perspectives of the shape of this crown. Much to my surprise this subject hasn’t really been studied in the Armenian academia so far and I was contacted by Dr. Jack Nurpetlian from the American University of Beirut (AUB) who happened to be writing a paper on this subject from the numismatic perspective. He invited me to co-author his paper and thus we are in the process of finalizing it and hopefully publish the work in the near future.
Redesign and Migration
Last year I finally decided to move the blog to a custom domain www.peopleofar.com and update the website with a fresh new design. The old website was a free theme on wordpress.com that I’ve used for several years by then and grew to like its dark green yet very simple design. Unfortunately since it wasn’t a custom design tons of other blogs used the same theme and looked virtually the same (see bellow screenshot of the old website).
By far the biggest issue I had with the free wordpress blog however, was the fact that it was limited in possibilities. I couldn’t add plugins, sliders, polls, extra fields, special widgets etc… to make the website more appealing, easy to use and more interesting. So I decided to migrate to a custom domain and install a fresh new design that I customized myself to slightly resemble the old website. This gave me the complete freedom to modify the website and introduce new features. To add to that, the new website is completely responsive and therefore convenient to operate on all devices, be it a desktop, a laptop, a tablet or a smartphone. Interestingly some parts of the old website are still accessible through the Wayback Machine.
Not to drag this segment on for much longer I have to say in conclusion that it has been a wonderful experience so far and I’m looking forward taking this blog to the next level. Naturally there have been many more highlights for PeopleOfAr over the past years that I haven’t mentioned here, but this should give you a good idea of some of the developments made over the years. Today this blog receives thousands of viewers a day and I hope to make it even bigger and better in the future. With that we have come to the next segment of this post: Moving Forward.
Moving Forward
So what’s next? What’s in store for PeopleOfAr in 2016?
The short answer is more and better content, improved visuals and functionalities of the website and introduce new segments and a few new surprises that I don’t want to spoil at the moment. Basically what I’d like to do moving forward is to improve and grow PeopleOfAr. I won’t be making any long term predictions about the directions this blog will take, I will however discuss a few upcoming improvements and announcement that I have been planning recently.
Accepting guest posts!
I would love to dedicate more time to PeopleOfAr, however, my every day life constraints make it impossible for me to post as often as I’d want to. Therefore I’ve decided to let people submit posts to this blog as well. This means that everyone is allowed to submit a story, article, news, pictures or anything else related to Armenian culture and heritage to the blog. After a short review I will publish your submission here and you will be fully credited in the post.
In order to ensure the quality of the guest posts I will still be reviewing every article and if necessary improve it before publishing. There will also be some guidelines set for us to follow. For example historic claims have to be backed with (academic) sources and references so everyone will be able to research the content on its validity. This is not a very strict rule, since this is not some academic journal, but it will be highly appreciated and increase the chances of the submission getting accepted and published. I will explain the details in an upcoming post where I will introduce the guest post submission button on the website. So stay tuned!
New Logo!
Well technically it’s not new, it’s just updated! Yes ladies and gentlemen the PeopleOfAr logo has finally been updated 🙂 and without any further ado I present to you the new and improved logo of PeopleOfAr! Let me know what you think of it in the comments.
Changing the slogan
While the current one: “To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding.” is still a very good slogan and refers to the first sentence written in the recovered Armenian alphabet by Mesrob Mashtots, I’m going to (at least for a time) revert back to my original slogan that I’ve used from the very start. A much simpler yet powerful mantra: “Know who you are” (plus it kinda rhymes with PeopleOfAr).
More Languages
I’ve long considered to publish my articles in different languages. Time constraints and the lack of mastery of various languages, however, prohibit this from becoming a reality. Fortunately, as of late a number of people have approached me and offered their assistance in translating my posts into several languages, including Armenian, Russian and Spanish. Thus, I’ve decided to create separate versions of this blog in different languages. How to precisely achieve this I still have to figure out. I will probably add icons of different languages somewhere in the header, so people will be able to access the different language versions of this blog. I’ll announce it as soon as I figure out the details and have some content translated to show for.
New Surprises
I have some upcoming surprises planned for PeopleOfAr in the very near future. The nature of surprises however dictates that they are best kept secret until the release. So I can’t reveal any surprises right now, and I understand that it makes this announcement obsolete. However they are so exciting that I can’t hold myself from announcing that I’m working on surprises 🙂
The End
That’s it for now guys! Thank you for following this post till the bitter end. It turned out to be a lengthy one, but I hope it was interesting to read nonetheless. I have never done a look-back post before, nor have I ever explained or given readers some insight into developments of PeopleOfAr. Thus, I had plenty of catching up to do.
I can’t stress enough how pleased I am for people to enjoy this blog as much as I do and motivate me to continue and constantly improve. Like I’ve said previously, I can’t predict the long term future of PeopleOfAr, but I do know that 2016 is going to be a year that will take PeopleOfAr to the next level and I hope to take you with me on this journey.
Yours,
Admin of PeopleOfAr
THANK YOU and KUDOS to you and the work you are doing, your publications trough People of AR is equivalent to a website of a cultural ministry–ADMIRABLE !!!
I feel that there are many individuals that can and will contribute, I for one am ready and looking forward.
Most sincerely,
H.K
Thank you dear Hratch, always glad to hear your encouraging words. Will continue and improve! 🙂
I’m a 17 year old kid who is in high school. When I was 15, I saw the protests for the Armenian Genocide, and I always wondered, how I’m Armenian, yet I know absolutely nothing about my culture except for the genocide. At that point, I was slowly losing my Armenian, as I was substituting it with everyday English. So I taught myself Armenian again essentially. But this wasn’t enough for me, I needed something more, I needed to know my culture both in the present and in the past, and as I slowly became more and more nationalistic, I… Read more »
Wow that’s really awesome to hear Narek! I’m glad I was able to contribute to your growing appreciation for your Armenian roots. I had pretty much the same experience as you describe. I never grew up patriotic or anything like that, and I didn’t know a lot about our Armenian roots, except for the Genocide issue that I’ve heard about from relatives. I met some people on YouTube and stumbled upon some dusty websites a while back and they sparked my interest so I spend a lot of time on the internet and off the internet searching for more leads.… Read more »
Your dedication is laudable and the articles of utmost interest. My heartfelt thanks and best wishes for the future. If at any time I can be of help, please let me know. My field of studies are prehistory and pre-Mashtots’ proto-Armenian inscriptions.
Bless you, Gabriel
Thank you Gabriel,
I might indeed take you up on the offer when I’ll research that period. Thanks a lot!
I like your blog Peoples FAR that I follow and republish your arguments on my Facebook pages including the FB group I created with the name “ItaloArmeni” with more than 1300 members. I hope to have one day the Italian version of your blog. And I also hope to be able to send you articles written by me in Italian.
I like and follow the blog PeopleOfAr and republish your arguments on my Facebook pages including the FB group I created with the name “ItaloArmeni” with more than 1,300 members. I hope to have one day your blog in Italian version. And I also hope to be able to send you articles written by me in Italian.
That’s great Cesar, perhaps in the future I’ll branch out into Italian as well. I’ll let you know if and when I do.
Sono entusiasta del tuo blog PeopleOfAr che seguo e ripubblico i tuoi argomenti sulle mie pagine Facebook compreso il gruppo FB creato da me con il nome “ItaloArmeni” con più di 1300 scritti. Spero di avere un giorno la versione in Italiano del tuo blog. E spero anche di poter inviarti articoli scritti da me in Italiano.
I just discovered your wonderful blog this past year and always look forward to a new post. Thank you for making our Armenian heritage fuller with your articles–the notes on cultural exhibitions are especially good because it’s so hard to find out about them when they are in other countries. The work you have done on this blog is tremendous–the research, photos, everything. Learning more about my Armenian roots makes me even more proud to be Armenian.
Thank you Patricia for your encouraging words! I’m glad you enjoy and appreciate the content of this blog and that it helps you better understand and be more proud of your Armenian heritage. It has the same effect on me.
This site is simply wonderful! It’s one that I and my family and friends visit regularly. So often I have visited just to read the most recent post, but have spent an hour or longer reading previous posts and exploring the various links. The quality, presentation, and research are top-notch– second to none, virtual or otherwise. Congratulations to all involved, and I for one will keep spreading the word!!
Thank you Aram, much appreciated! Very glad you enjoy this blog!
Dear Person of Ar – I just recently stumbled across your blog as I was researching for the latest post on my own blog. I was immediately hooked as your other readers are. Quite simply what you are doing is first rate. The fact that you are anonymous also has an appealing effect. It makes your superb content stand out even more. I especially appreciate that you back up your content with resources. Thank you for taking the time to explain more about the past, present and future of PeopleOfAr. Your new slogan “Know Who You Are” is perfect. Armenians… Read more »
Thank you Dorothy for you wonderful encouraging words! I am very pleased to have such great visitors. Totally agree with what you’ve said. We will flourish again as a people but we need to uncover and protect our heritage, because what we know right now is but a tip of the iceberg. We have survived as a people extremely long in a very turbulent part of the world. Our ancestors have a great story to tell us and we need to recover it and carry that story to our future generations. As George Orwell fittingly noted in his work: “He… Read more »
Very nice logo. And the font is very pleasant. Do not prompt as to font name?
Your blog is awesome keep up the good work