When people talk about Urartu, they usually picture a powerful Iron Age kingdom that rose suddenly around Lake Van and then “collapsed” just as suddenly in the 7th–6th centuries BCE. In most popular narratives, Urartu vanishes in a blaze: Cimmerians, Scythians, Medes, fire, destruction, the usual suspects. But if you follow the stones themselves,...
The Floppy Hats of Urartu
Urartu, a rival kingdom to Assyria in the early 1st millennium BCE, is frequently mentioned and depicted in Neo-Assyrian sources. Among the visual depictions, one curious feature stands out: Urartian figures are often shown wearing distinctive “floppy” hats. These soft, conical caps with drooping peaks appear in Assyrian palace reliefs and have become an...
New Evidence for Indo-European Origins in Armenia
The quest to uncover the origins of the Indo-European language family has intrigued scholars for centuries, drawing together linguists, historians, and geneticists in a collaborative effort. In recent years, genetic and linguistic studies have made significant advances in analyzing the migrations of ancient populations linked to the Indo-European languages. Among the latest contributions is...
Does Nagorno-Karabakh have the legal right to independence?
For those who still haven’t heard the news, a brutal conflict was recently reignited between Azerbaijan and the ethnic Armenian people of Nagorno-Karabakh. Hostilities between Christian Armenians and Muslim (Trukic) Azerbaijanis have a long history, but this specific conflict could be best traced to the early days of the Soviet Union. After the 1st...
[VIDEO] Indo-European Homeland: The Revival of the Armenian Hypothesis
Because of recent developments in linguistics and especially archeaogenetics there has been a renewed interest in the Armenian Hypothesis. More and more credible evidence emerges suggesting that the first Indo-European language was spoken on the Armenian Plateau and spread east, west and north as people migrated from this central region. In this video I...
Are Armenians Caucasians?
This is a subject that will certainly ruffle some feathers and potentially cost me more than a few subscribers. But I’m sitting home in quarantine with nothing better to do, so I thought to myself, it’s time for a good old fashioned digital controversy. All joking aside though, if you thought the “dolma wars”...
The Mushki; a lost Armenian tribe?
Guest entry – Author: Norgrmaya Russian historian Igor M. Diakonoff (in)famously suggested in his oft-cited 1968 work, “The Pre-history of the Armenian People” that the Armenian language was brought to the Armenian Highlands in the early 12th century BCE, following the Bronze Age Collapse (when the Hittite Empire fell, leaving a power vacuum in Asia...
11,300-year-old temple found in historical Armenia
A 80-square-meter Neolithic era temple estimated to be around 11,300 years old was recently discovered in eastern Turkey (Dargeçit, Mardin district), a region that once was inhabited by Armenians. The structure is considered to be of the same age and style as the famous temple of Portasar (a.k.a. Göbekli Tepe) and probably belongs to...
Byzantine Emperors of Armenian descent on gold coin
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople. It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and...
Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia on medieval European maps
The Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia was established during the High Middle Ages amid fierce religious wars by the Rubenid dynasty, an offshoot of the larger Bagratid family, which at various times had held the thrones of Armenia and Georgia. Their capital was originally at Tarsus, and later became Sis. Cilicia was a strong ally...
