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History of Armenia

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tigranes the Great's Empire

The history of Armenia and Armenians is very ancient and can go back at least 2000 BC. Archaeologists say the Shulaveri-Shomu culture of the central Transcaucasus region, and Armenia today, as the earliest known prehistoric culture in the area, carbon-dated to around 6000 - 4000 BC. But, a newer discovered tomb has been dated to 9000 BC. Another early culture in the Armenian Highlands and surrounding areas—the Kura-Araxes culture is in the period of ca. 4000 - 2200 BC, and is believed to have to go into the Trialeti culture (ca. 2200 - 1500 BC), and meaning Armenians are one of the oldest Indo-European subgroups.

Urartu

Urartu was an ancient kingdom in the Armenian Highlands.

Some experts say that the Armenians started as a mixture of the different peoples to move through the area in history: The Hurrians, Urarteans, Luvians and Mushki. This last group, also knowns as Phrygians may have brought their Indo-European language to Armenia. The Armenian language today is Indo-European, but shows a lot of influence from the earlier languages, especially Urartean. [1]

See also

References

  1. “Armenians” in Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture or EIEC, edited by J. P. Mallory and Douglas Q. Adams, published in 1997 by Fitzroy Dearborn.

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