The Indo-European language family includes most of the European languages like English, Spanish, French, German, Greek, Russian, but also Armenian, Persian and Hindi. With over 400 languages (including dialects) it is by far the world’s largest language family and is spoken by almost 3 billion native speakers world wide. Armenian language is considered to...
A New Study Reveals 8000 Years of Genetic Continuity in Armenia
That the Armenians are an indigenous people of the Armenian Highlands has already been well established by prominent studies in the field of genetics. Haber et. al. (2015) for example could not find any traces of admixture among Armenians for at least 4000 years, concluding that: “Our tests suggest that Armenians had no significant mixture...
DNA from a 7 thousand year old tooth found in a Cave in Artsakh perfectly matches with modern Armenians
Scholars from Britain, US, Denmark and Armenia led by Prof. Levon Yepiskoposyan have been examining prehistoric caves near the village of Azokh in Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh) and found unique artifacts from different periods, among them a tooth from a human who lived 7000 years ago. Due to the cave’s climate DNA was preserved inside the...
Why Armenians are a “Living Fossil” to Geneticists?!
A number of genetic studies have recently investigated Armenian DNA from different perspectives revealing some fascinating and consistent results. For example in 2014 Hellenthal et. al. in a paper published in Science have investigated worldwide human admixture history over the past 4000 years and created a Genetic Atlas of human admixture. Oddly enough they could not identify the Armenian...
Armenians Have A High Genetic Affinity To Ancient Europeans – NEW STUDY REVEALS
A new study into Armenian genetics reveals that present day Armenians are a mixture of local Bronze Age people who have retained homogeneity for over three thousand years, and show great affinity to Neolithic Europeans. Armenians are an ethno-linguistic-religious group distinct from their surrounding neighbors. They have their own church, the Armenian Apostolic Church, which was founded...
New Study (BBC): Ancient Tribes From Armenian Highlands and North Eurasia Gave Birth To Modern Europeans
Findings based on analysis of genomes from ancient Europeans (Nature journal reports) revealed that modern European gene pool was formed when three ancient populations mixed within the last 7,000 years. Blue-eyed swarthy hunter-gatherers, mingled with brown-eyed pale skinned farmers as well as northern Eurasians have been instrumental in the emergence of modern Europeans (BBC reports). Two of the 3...
Lecture on the Armenian DNA – Library Of Congress
Library Of Congress has recently hosted a great lecture on the Armenian DNA titled: “DNA & the Origins of Peoples: The Armenians”. The lecture was given by two speakers: Hovann Simonian and Peter Hrechdakian. Bellow I have compiled a summery of the highlights with screenshots from the power-point presentation. The first speaker is Peter Hrechdakian who explains...
New DNA study shows Armenian genetic traces across the world
A new paper in Science by Hellenthal et al. (2014) reveals extensive admixture in humans over the last few thousand years. Admixture is the result of previously distant populations meeting and breeding, leaving a genetic signal within the descendants’ genomes. However, over time the signal decays and can be hard to trace. Hellenthal et al. (2014) describe a method, using a technique called...
Armenia the heir of Urartu
Art of Urartu Urartu was an Iron Age Armenian kingdom famed for one of the finest examples of ancient art. Urartu at its zenith had a profound cultural influence on its neighbors reaching as far as Asia and Europe. Supported by discoveries of Urartian artifacts inside Etruscan burials, it has been hypothesized that much of...
