The Pre-history of the Armenian People*
Predystoriia armianskogo naroda
[1]
Prior to a discussion of the first events in the history of the
Armenian Highland which are attested by written sources, it is advisable to investigate the most ancient ethnic situation in this territory as it is known to us.
Biological succession signifies a direct physical descent from one
certain group of forefathers, and is expressed in the transmission
of definite biological (racial) features, which usually allow us to
trace d1stinctive physical anthropological components in the formation of a given ethnic unit. It goes without saying that not a single contemporary nation can be anthropologically homogeneous. The racial type or types which dominate in any given ethnic unit are, to the investigator, important indirect indices of which ethnic groups participated, in the biological sense, in the formation of that unit in the past. However the racial type manifests
itself mostly in the external appearance of the men and women in
question and seldom plays a socio-historical role. Boundaries of
the spreading of anthropological types hardly ever coincide with
boundaries of ethnic cultural units or of language areas.
Linguistic succession points to a historical connection between
a given ethnic unit and the ethnic groups which were native speakers of this language (or its predecessor) at the earlier stages of [2] history. But this connection is not necessarily a direct one. The spreading of languages from one group to other groups which are ethnically, culturally, and anthropologically unrelated is historically a very common phenomenon. Moreover it can be said that the spreading of a language to a new territory only very rarely
attests a truly massive spreading there of that language's original
speakers themselves after they have supplanted the territory's former inhabitants. At least that was the case in antiquity. Usually such an expansion of a linguistic area indicates only that the mass of local inhabitants of mixed ethnic composition have adopted the
language of a newly arrived ethnic group, which for one of various
historical reasons has played a socially leading role at some specific stage. But this in no way always means that the first speakers of this language had numerical superiority as well. Just as often the reverse situation is encountered. Thus a contemporary ethnic
unit (nation) may in many instances continue primarily the culture of one group of forefathers, who constituted the majority, while in respect to its language it may be the successor of an ethnic
group which had constituted a minority among its biological forefathers. The situation with respect to biological succession is mostly the reverse, and contemporary anthropological types common among a given nation will on the whole continue the external features of the biological forefathers who constituted the majority, even if it was the minority which handed down their language to the later descendants. Thus [is the situation] unless the aborigines had been totally
ousted.
Finally, the most diffuse and indefinite concept is cultural
succession, including so-called national character. However when
some ethnic unit changes its language under the influence of certain historical factors, not only the features of biological succession, but also those of material and spiritual culture will usually
show that we have before us the same unit as before, even though
the unit has changed its language. It is true that the picture here
is in constant flux, owing to mutual influences and the borrowing
of cultural inventions, and even due to fashion, which passes across
ethnic frontiers. But taking the factors of cultural succession into
consideration will save us from the temptation of beginning the
socio-historical and cultural history of a nation anew merely because the nation has changed its language. If, for example, an ethnic unit has already achieved the level of class civilization, we may expect that its institutions, once developed, shall be preserved and
will develop further, in spite of a change in the language. It is
possible to consider the history of a country as beginning anew
[3] only when it is possible to prove that the replacing of the language
in a given instance is due to the resettling of a territory by a new
ethnic group. Moreover it is imperative that the new group should
be on another socio-economic level, and that it should completely,
or to a significant degree, supplant or annihilate the earlier
population.
Regarding the most ancient history of the Armenian Highland,
we actually know almost nothing about the spiritual culture of the
local population in the 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C., and extremely
little about it in the 1st millennium B.C. Archeological cultures,
d1stinguished primarily on the basis of changing types of pottery
and other artifacts, are conditioned in their composition by a great
number of concrete local factors, by no means always ethnic ones,
and cannot simply be equated with the units of ethnic classification.
These preliminary remarks are indispensable for a correct understanding of the problem which lies before us.
The archeological data about the material culture of the inhabitants of the Armenian Highland and of the territories in1mediately adjoining them in the 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C. have been elucidated earlier by other scholars; we will touch on them briefly below, but this book deals mainly with other aspects of the ethnogenetic problem.
The amount of available data is clearly insufficient to afford a
judgment, on the basis of physical anthropological materials alone,
about the history of ethnic groupings in the territory under study.
In that early period, as far as we mow, the tribes and peoples
in the mountain regions of central and eastern Asia Minor (including the Black Sea coastline), in the mountain regions of the Armenian Highland, and in Iranian Azerbaijan spoke languages of
at least three, and more likely, four language groups.
Apparently the Hatti inhabited central Anatolia (Cappadocia) to
the northeast of the bend of the Halys (modern Kizil-Irmak) in the
3rd millennium B.C. By the beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C.
they had already been, for the most part, absorbed by the Hittites,
whom we shall discuss below.
The research of G. A. Melikisvili (5) and G. G. Giorgadze (6) makes it
plausible that a close kinship might have existed between Hattic
and the language of the Kaska, a group of tribes which inhabited
northeastern Anatolia and the south coast of the Black Sea (Pontus) during the 2nd millennium B.C. Their territory stretched from the mouth of the Halys (Kizil-Irmak), or a point to the west of it, to the upper Euphrates west of present-day Erzincan, including the
valley of the rivers Iris (Yesil-Irmak) and Lycus (Wolf River, Gaylget, Kelkit). Unfortunately we have too few place and personal names to afford a trustworthy judgment about the language or languages of the Kaska.
Assyrian sources at the end of the 2nd millennium B.C. refer, in
connection with the Kaska, also to the tribes of the Apeshlaians and
the Urumeans. We shall discuss the Urumeans below. As far as the
Apeshlaians are concerned, their tribe name, just as that of the Kaska,
may be interpreted as belonging to the Abkhazo-Adyghian languages (7). Of course this still does not prove finally that the Kaska and the Apeshlaians really belonged to the Abkhazo-Adyghian language group. In the first place, the similarity of names may be a
purely accidental coincidence, and in the second place, the history
of languages shows that identical ethnic names are not infrequently applied by neighboring groups to tribes which are not even related by language, but which possess a similar culture (8).
The archaeology of Pontus and Colchis in the 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C. has still been insufficiently studied, with the exception of the findings in Ochamchire, which reveal a culture of the 3rd millennium B.C. quite different from the cultures prevailing in neighboring areas (*2).
It can be plausibly assumed that in the 3rd and probably 2nd millennia B.C. everywhere from the central and western part of the Northern Caucasus and Transcaucasia, across the eastern coast of
the Black Sea, Colchis, and the southern coast of the Black Sea (Pontus) to the Halys (Kizil-Irmak), tribes lived which either [6] belonged directly to the Northwestern Caucasian (Abkhazo-Adyghian) language group, or which spoke languages related to Abkhazo-Adyghian, and in some regions of the Caucasus and Transcaucasia
there probably were tribes which spoke Kartvelian.
It is more difficult to determine the northern and eastern
boundaries of the Hurrian-speaking population. Extant written
sources are too insufficient to elucidate the ethnic picture to the
north of the Armenian Taurus Mountains in the 2nd millennium
B.C. It is true that we have at our disposal place names and tribe
names from the territory to the south of a line which runs approximately through Erzincan to the point where today the [7] borders of Turkey, Iran, and Iraq meet, but a linguistic analysis of these names has not been made. Furthermore such place names (toponyms) and tribe names (ethnonyms) are very unreliable as criteria for determining a population's linguistic and ethnic affinity. The meaning of the names is unknown, and therefore there can
be no guarantee that any suggested etymologies from this or that
language are not based on irregular sound similarities. Cases often
occur in history when toponyms belong not to the language spoken in the locality in question at the time under study, but to some much earlier language (13). Some deductions about probable ethnic composition of the population of the Armenian Highland in the 3rd
and 2nd millennia B.C. can be made from the data of a later time
--the beginning of the 1st millennium B.C. In this period the Hurrian people no longer occupied a continuous area. They maintained only residential enclaves in the mountain valleys and in a
few other regions of the territory bordering on the Armenian
Highland in a half-circle from the west and south: in the valley of
the Upper Euphrates (14) and possibly the Choroh (15) in the Sasun
Mountains (16) probably in the valley of the Kentrites (modern
Bohtansu) (17), and possibly in the mountains to the west and southwest of Lake Urmia (18).
Within this half-circle, to the north of the Armenian Taurus
Mountains, was located, probably already in the 2nd millennium B.C.,
the ethnic area of the Urartians, a people which spoke a language
close to the Hurrian (19) and who possessed a culture in many respects close to that of the Hurrians (20). Therefore it is possible that these groups can be considered as belonging at that time to an ethnically homogeneous mass, even though they already constituted different tribes or groups of tribes. Those tribes of this ethnic mass which lived to the south of the Armenian Taurus Mountains and in the valley of the Upper Euphrates became Hurrians, while
those who lived further to the northeast, i.e., on the upper reaches
of the Upper Zab River, next to Lake Van, and further north in the
direction of the Araxes Valley, became Urartians.
Further still to the north, in central and eastern Transcaucasia,
we can assume the existence of a third group of tribes, possibly
related to both the Hurrians and to the Urartians, which we shall
conventionally designate as the "Etio" (21).
The tribes which left us the remarkable burials of Trialeti, Kirovakan, and Lchashen, dating from the 2nd millennium B.C., which point to strong cultural ties with the Hurrian world, belonged most probably to this group (22). However, the term Etio (Etiuni) appears
for the first time only in Urartian texts dating from the 8th century
B.C.
[8] The probability that in the 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C. the Hurro-
Urartian ethnic mass occupied all of the territory from the hilly
plains of Northern Mesopotamia to central Transcaucasia is even
more strengthened because in recent years it has been shown that
linguistic ties can be traced between the Hurro-Urartian languages
and the Northeastern Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestan) group, particularly, in vocabulary, with their Nakhian subgroup, whose representatives live today in the central regions of the Greater Caucasus, principally on its northern slopes (the Chechens, the Ingush, and,
on the southern slopes, the Batsbians), as well as with their Lezghian subgroup in its southeast; and in grammar, with the Ando-Avarian subgroup in the northeast of the Caucasus. Thus, Hurro-Urartian also constitutes a subgroup of Nakh-Daghestan (23).
The "Kur-Araxes Early Bronze" culture, which was first discovered by E. A. Bayburtyan at the site of Shengavit near Erevan and defined as a particular culture by B. A. Kuftin, has, in recent years, attracted great attention in the USSR and abroad (27). At present the
limits of its area of expansion have been defined as running in the
northeast beynnd the Greater Caucasus, into Chechnya and north
Daghestan (here the Kur-Araxes sites seem to be later than some
of those found in Transcaucasia). The eastern border of the area
is for the time being considered as running along a line from central Daghestan (Kayakent) across the Nakhichevan Autonomous S.S.R
(Kultepe) to the western bank of Lake Urmia (Goytepe). In addition, the area of the Kur-Araxes Early Bronze culture encompasses all of central Transcaucasia as well as the regions of Lake
Van and the upper reaches of the Tigris (according to the data of
C. Burney). The westernmost sites of this culture are apparently
Karaz, near Karin-Erzurum on the Upper Euphrates, and some sites
on the upper reaches of the Halys (Kizil-Irmak). It seems that the
Kur-Araxes culture did not penetrate to Pontus and Colchis, but
its area includes southwestern and eastern Georgia (Inner Kartli) (28)
and Southern Ossetia, and perhaps even Northern Ossetia. Objects
of this culture are also found in Asia Minor to the west of the
Euphrates and the upper reaches of the Halys River.
[10 ]But it is of the greatest interest that a similar culture, called here
Khirbet-Kerak, suddenly appears in the middle of the 3rd millennium B.C. in Syria (Amuq II and I, Hamath) and Palestine (Beth-Shean, Khirbet-Kerak, et al.) (*6). In Transcaucasia the Kur-Araxes culture, according to estimates based, inter alia, on radiocarbon
analysis, dates from the 29th to the 21st centuries B.C.; we may
consider Transcaucasia as the probable center of its expansion (29).
Thus the area of the Kur-Araxes culture closely corresponds to
the area of the Hurro-Urartian language group as defined according
to historico-linguistic data. At the same time it would be a simplification to merely identify these two areas. The Hurrian settlements of Northern Mesopotamia and the areas beyond the Tigris have not to date yielded any relics of the Kur-Araxes culture. On
the other hand we have no grounds to assume that, for example,
the forefathers of the Chechens or the northern Daghestanis were
speakers of the Hurro-Urartian languages (in spite of the probable
kinship between their languages and Hurro-Urartian), even though
their territory was included into the Kur-Araxes area (in the broadest
sense of the concept).
The question of the character, degree, and even of the very presence of kinship between the three groups of Caucasian languages (Abkhazo-Adyghian, Kartvelian, and Nakh-Daghestan) has not yet been solved, and scholars differ in opinion as to whether these
three groups should be considered as separate families or as branches
of a single family (*7). Of the Ancient Oriental languages, as we have
seen, Hattic may belong to the Abkhazo-Adyghian group, while
Hurro-Urartian is probably a part of the Nakh-Daghestan group.
Both of these language groups have very little in common with
the Kartvelian group except for borrowings, and also a few purely [11] structural or areal features. The existence of a Common Caucasian
language, if any, must be dated to a time extremely far back in
time: as early as in the 3d millennium B.C. Hurro-Urartian, Hattic,
and the Proto-Kartvelian language (31), as well as several Nakh-Daghestan proto-languages (32), must not only have existed as completely
separate linguistic entities, but they must have already borne very
little similarity to each other, and must have even disintegrated.
The former idea that the culture of the Kur-Araxes Early Bronze
might be identified with the culture of a common Caucasian proto-
nation seems to be a gross simplification. However there is no
doubt that (at least in the northern parts of the area) the Kur-
Araxes culture extended beyond the confines of the Hurro-Urartian linguistic area to include areas inhabited by speakers of other
Caucasian languages, or at any rate, of some of these. Meanwhile
the question of precisely which archeological cultures (or their
subdivisions) are directly connected with tribes that spoke the Proto-
Georgian language remains completely unclear.
The ethnic affiliation of the Maikop culture of the Northern Caucasus also remains unclear (*8).
The southern (38) (and presumably also the western) part of the
peninsula and the Taurus Mountains were occupied by the tribes
of the Luwians, whose dialects belonged to one subgroup of the
Anatolian languages. To the same subgroup belonged the language
of the Palaians, who dwelt in the central northern part of Asia Minor (later Paphlagonia) (39) .
To the other subgroup belonged first and foremost the Hittites.
The term Hittite came into use among scholars at a period when
the ethnic situation in Asia Minor in the 2nd millennium B.C. was
still unknown. At present it is clear that the kingdom in which the
Hittites ruled was called after its capital (the city Hatti or, in [13] Hittite, Hattusas; in the scholarly literature this kingdom is called "the
Hittite Empire"). However this was not the name of its official
language (apparently it was called "Nesite"); the term "Hittite" was
originally the Biblical form of the terms "Hatti" and "Hattic," a
name of the non-Indo-European language of the indigenous population of the city of Hatti. But the terms "Hittites" and "the Hittite language" as applied to the "Nesites" and the "Nesite language" have entered into scholarly usage too firmly to change them now.
Therefore in order to distinguish the indigenous inhabitants of Hatti,
who spoke a Caucasian language, from the people that ruled the
Hittite Empire and spoke a northwestern Anatolian, Indo-European
language, we call the first "Hatti" and the second "Hittites."
In order to understand what follows, it is important to bear in
mind that what the neighboring peoples subsequently designated
as "Hittites" (Hatti, Hate) are not a single specific ethnic unit, but
the entire population of the former Hittite Empire, and, even more
broadly, of all the regions between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean, including Asia Minor, Syria, and even Palestine.
Biologically and culturally we cannot consider the Hittites simply as Indo-European newcomers. There is no doubt that the main mass of the people consisted of the Hatti (and other aborigines?), who had lost their former languages and who had begun to speak
"Hittite" (Nesite) (40). The territory within the bend of the Halys (Kizil-Irmak) in the central part of Asia Minor, and directly to the south of the Halys to present day Kayseri (Caesarea Mazaca), should be considered as the habitat of the Hittites.
The dialects of the Anatolian tribes who dwelt to the west of
the Hittites and Luwians in the 2nd millennium B.C. are unknown
to us. However when the Anatolian languages were forced out of
central Asia Minor late in the 2nd or early in the 1st millennium
by the subsequent Phrygian wave of newcomers, they were preserved in the west, southwest, and in the south of the peninsula.
The preserved languages, for which alphabetic writing systems were
used, belong to the Luwian subgroup (except for the central western language, Lydian, which stands nearer to Hittite) (41).
These links open in separate windows:
1.1 Basic Principles of the Study of Ethnic Succession
In establishing the origin, and ancestry of an ethnic unit
(its ethnogenesis), one must bear in mind that succession here may be
threefold: biological, linguistic, and cultural.
1.2. Physical Anthropological Composition
As far as physical anthropological types are concerned, two minor races of the so-called major Europeoid race have been widespread in the highland regions of Western Asia from time immemorial: 1) the Mediterranean race, characterized by a swarthy color
of the skin, dark, wavy hair, an elongated nose, a narrow face, and
a dolichocephalic skull; and (2) the Balkano-Caucasian race, characterized by dark hair, a prominent nose, a broad face, abundant facial and body hair, and a brachycephalic skull. In the course of time (especially after the beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C.),
judging from the rather scant findings of human remains and from
ancient figurative art, the Balkano-Caucasian race begins to predominate more and more (1). From the 1st millennium B.C., and perhaps earlier, the Assyroid (Armenoid) variant of this race appears to have been the most widespread in the Armenian Highland, in
Northern Mesopotamia, and in parts of Asia Minor. Also today the
majority of the Armenian nation belong to this race.
[4] 1.3. The Linguistic Situation in the 3rd and 2nd Millennia B.C.
It is now our task to depict the linguistic situation which existed
in the Armenian Highland (Eastern Anatolia) and in its neighboring
territories in the 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C.
1.3.1. The Hatti, the Kaska, the Apeshlaians
To the first of these belonged the so-called Hattic (2) people (not
to be confused with the Hittites). Their language is known to us
from certain passages in the texts of religious rituals found in the
palace archives in the capital of the Hittite Kingdom at the site of
modern Bogazkoy. Unfortunately the Hittite scribes who recorded
these passages (often with their Hittite translations) did not quite
understand this language themselves, and their records are apparently inaccurate. Moreover the system of Akkadian cuneiform, adapted in its Hittite variety for the recording of Hattic texts, was completely unsuitable for the transcription of the Hattic phonological system. Thus it has so far been impossible to establish the phonology of Hattic, and this renders any trustworthy decision on assigning it to any definite language family most difficult because
regular phonetic correspondences between Hattic and any other
languages cannot be ascertained. Where simple external similarity
of the sound of words or proper names is not corroborated by
definite rules of phonetic reflexes, there is no scientific basis for
the establishment of linguistic kinship, since the similarity may be
due to coincidental homonymy. Such "similarities" are quite frequently observed between any two languages of the world. The grammatical structure of Hattic has only begun to be revealed, thanks to the efforts of E. Forrer, E. Laroche, I. M. Dunajevskaja, A. Kammenhuber, and H. S. Schuster (3). It displays features which structurally are strikingly similar to the Northwestern Caucasian languages (Abkhazo-Adyghian), which in itself does not prove kinship
between them and Hattic (since similar grammatical structure may
appear even in unrelated languages), but does make a hypothesis
of such kinship not implausible. It seems that there is nothing in
the phonetic material used for the grammatical markers of Hattic
which might speak against the kinship between this language and
the Abkhazo-Adyghian language group, and there are some data,
albeit very meager and debatable, pointing also to a possible [5] proximity of Hattic to the Southern Caucasian languages (Kartvelian, or Ibero-Georgian). Presumably, but without any sort of guarentee as to the trustworthiness of such a supposition, it is possible
view the Hattic language either as a very ancient branch of the
Abkhazo-Adyghian group, or as an intermediary link between these
languages and the languages of the Georgian group (*1).
1.3.2. The Hurrians and Urartians
First and foremost among the second group of ancient peoples
on the territory under study are the speakers of Hurrian. A cuneiform inscription of Tishari or Tishadal; a priest(ess) of Urkesh in Northern Mesopotamia, dating from the second half of the 3rd millennium B.C., is considered to be the most ancient relic of Hurrian (9). Actually the language of this inscription may equally well be considered either as Old Hurrian or as Old Urartian, since it is almost just as close to the Urartian of the 1st millennium B.C. as
it is to the Hurrian of the 2nd millennium B.C. Other relics of the
Hurrian language and references to the Hurrian people date from
the 2nd millennium B.C. They are found from Ugarit on the Mediterranean coast of Syria in the west to Arrapkhe (modern Kirkuk in Iraqi Kurdistan) in the east 10. Apparently the farthest region which the Hurrian population reached in the southwest was the valley
of the Diyala River in present-day Iraq (11). Isolated groups of Hurrians apparently also lived further south, and not only those who were brought to this area as slaves (as, for example, to Babylonia): Egyptian and ancient Hebrew sources refer to a population of Hurrians even in southern Palestine (12). However the southern border
of mass Hurrian settlement in the 2nd millennium B.C. seems to
have run approximately through present-day Hamah in Syria to the
region of present-day Khanikin near the boundary between Iraq
and Iran. But also north of this borderline there simultaneously
existed either a predominant or at least very significant Semitic
population, not only in all the cattle-breeding regions of the steppe
but also in many of the agricultural regions with an urban population (in Phoenicia, Syria, Assyria, etc.). The spreading of the Hurrians to the northwest was restricted by the Cilician Taurus mountain range, on the far side of which the Hittites were already living (*3).
In this corner of their area the Hurrians coexisted with the Luwians.
1.3.3. The Qutians and Others
The languages of the peoples and tribes which dwelt to the east
of the Armenian Highland, from the region south of Lake Urmia to
the Greater Caucasus, are known to us only from isolated proper
names and toponyms of the 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C. (for the
southernmost part of the territory), and also from the 1st millennium B.C. (for the entire territory). There are also a few borrowings into Sumerian apparently from Qutian. This was a linguistic area different from the Hurro-Urartian, although certain Hurrian
groups may also have lived here. The southernmost of the non-Hurrian local tribes were known to the Babylonians and Assyrians under the name Qutians--inexactly called the Guti or Gutium.
They may have belonged to the Lezghian subgroup of the Northeastern Caucasian languages, to which pretty certainly the Caucasian Albani also belonged. The latter dwelt in the 1st millennium B.C. in Northern (now Soviet) Azerbaijan, and the remnant of their
language has apparently been preserved by the small ethnic group
of the Udi (<*Quti?), who now inhabit three villages in Azerbaijan
and Georgia (24).
1.3.4. The Kur-Araxes Archeological Culture
As is clear from the above, deductions regarding the probable
extent of the Hurrian ethnos to the north of the Armenian Taurus
in the 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C., and regarding the existence there,
at the same time, of Urartian and "Etio" tribes related to the Hurrians, are based on circumstantial evidence. Archeological sources
could be of some help if it were possible to tie, with any certainty,
an archeological culture to a definite people. However the Hurrians who lived in Mesopotamia and Syria in historical times [9] (2nd millennium B.C.) shared a common civilization with the neighboring Semitic population, and it is very difficult to say precisely
which archeological culture should be considered as originally
connected specifically with the Hurrians. Several particulars of
clothing (pointed caps, bell-shaped skirts as the basic part of men's
clothing, shoes with pointed, upturned toes) and of inventive art
(fantastic animals, ornament in the form of wicker) can with some
certainty be regarded as Hurrian, although in this also there was
a great deal of cultural interpenetration between the peoples who
lived there. As far as the earlier periods are concerned, there is
no complete agreement among scholars with respect to whether
the Hurrians of the 2nd millennium B.C. were newcomers to Mesopotamia and Syria from the north (or northeast) or whether they were aborigines to whom we can trace the neolithic and chalco-lithic cultures of the region, such as the cultures of Tell-Ralaf or
Samarra (25). At the present time it seems more likely that the Hurrians were newcomers who came down to Syria, Mesopotamia, and the valleys of the tributaries of the Tigris during the course of the 3rd millennium B.C. (*4). B. B. Piotrovsky has suggested a possible
connection of the Chalcolithic or Early Bronze burnished pottery
of the so-called Kur-Araxes culture (or "Eastern Anatolian Early
Bronze") (*5) with the Hurro-Urartian ethnos (26).
1.3.5. The Proto-Georgian Tribes and the Problem of
Caucasian Linguistic Unity
There is still another important linguistic group known to us,
which undoubtedly must have already existed in the 3rd and 2nd
millennia B.C. in the territory under study, although there seems
to be no written documentation for it. The speakers of the Southern Caucasian languages (otherwise known as Kartvelian or Ibero-Georgian) may have had certain linguistic connections with the Hatti and with such tribes related to them that may have lived to
the east of the Hatti. According to linguistic (glottochronological)
data, the existence of a common Kartvelian language might be dated
to the 3rd millennium B.C., or earlier, and the Proto-Kartvelian vocabulary points to the speakers of this language inhabiting a compact and apparently mountainous territory (30).
1.3.6. The Indo-Europeans
The above-mentioned ethnic masses--speaking Hattic (probably Northwestern Caucasian), Kartvelian, Hurro-Urartian (related
to Northeastern Caucasian), and Qutian (possibly Northeastern
Caucasian)--were either aborigines or entered the territory under study certainly no later--probably much earlier--than the
3rd millennium B.C. But in Ancient Western Asia there were speakers of languages of another family which also advanced into this
area in very ancient times, although somewhat after the others.
The family of languages in question is the Indo-European, which
was represented in Ancient Western Asia by languages of three
branches: Anatolian, Indo-Iranian, and Thraco-Phrygian. About the
latter we shall speak in more detail in chapters II and III; here we
will touch on the first two.
1.3.6.1. The Ancient Anatolians (The Hittites and the
Luwians)
Speakers of the languages of the Anatolian (Hittito-Luwian) branch
appeared in the Near East earlier than the other Indo-Europeans (33).
There is no doubt that the ancient Anatolian languages of Asia Minor were, historico-linguistically, a later stratum than, for example,
Hattic (*9). Doubt can be raised only about the time of their appearance and the route of their penetration into Asia Minor. At [12] present it is indisputable that at the very beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C. the Anatolian languages were already widespread in
the peninsula. From what is known about the history of the Indo-
European family of languages, it follows tHatthey could hardly have
appeared here earlier than the 3rd millennium B.C. (34). With respect
to the route of their penetration there are two hypotheses: according to one, the Anatolian languages were brought to Asia Minor from the Balkan peninsula; according to the other, they were brought from the northern coastal area of the Black Sea across the
Caucasus. Arguments in favor of the eastern approach route of the
ancient Anatolians seem to me rather unreliable (35). Also it is difficult to point out any archeological culture which the present data would allow us to connect with the ancient Anatolians on the supposition tHatthey came to Asia Minor from the northeast. But essential changes certainly appeared in archeological cultures of
western Asia Minor in the last quarter of the 3rd millennium B.C.
An important cultural center arose near the straits of the Dardanelles--Troy VI--on the ruins of less important settlements which existed there after the period when Troy II flourished at
the beginning of the 3rd millennium B.C. Troy had ties, on the one
hand, with the area of the black burnished pottery in the east and,
on the other hand, with the Aegean world and the Balkans. The
settlements at the sites of Alaca-Huyuk III and Alisar I in the center
of Asia Minor were destroyed and there arose a new culture of
"Cappadocian" pottery (36). These changes may speak of the appearance of new ethnic elements which we could identify with the ancient Anatolians, but they favor the idea of an appearance from the west rather than one from the east (37). The question of whether
the ancient Anatolians penetrated from the west or from the east
must remain unresolved for the time being (*10). In any event in the
2nd millennium B.C. they were settled over the greater part of the
peninsula of Asia Minor, dividing themselves, with respect to linguistic afflliation, into two markedly differing subgroups.
1.3.6.2. The Speakers of a Language of the Indo-lranian Branch
There is another language, which belongs to a completely different branch of the Indo-European linguistic family, quite distinct from Anatolian and having only indirect relationship to it. It is attested in Western Asia in the second and third quarters of the 2nd
millennium B.C. (42) by a small number of proper names of men and
[14] gods (including the names of the rulers of the Hurrian empire of
Mitanni, about which we will speak below). The area of such names
coincides with the area of the spreading of the Mitannian influence
(Northern Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine). A few words of this
language have also come down to us from the Hittite Empire in a
treatise of Hurrian derivation on horse breeding (43). The name of
this language is unknown (44). The language itself belonged to the
Aryan (Indo-lranian) branch of the Indo-European languages (45). It
has been suggested that the art of massive application of war chariots was brought into Western Asia precisely with the speakers of this "Western Indo-Iranian language." However there is reason to believe that the Indo-Iranian tribes which came to Western Asia
and which had developed horse breeding on a grand scale, harnessed their horses to light chariots invented in Western Asia itself. This would mean that the new military tactics based on the chariot were introduced after the arrival of the Indo-lranians in
the areas to the south and southeast of the Caucasus. They left no
other perceptible traces either in the culture of Western Asia or
in the ethnic picture formed here in the 2nd millennium B.C. The
question of the route of their penetration into this area is still an
open matter (46).
1.3.7. The Akkadians and the Western Semites
In order to complete the ethnic picture for the 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C. it is necessary to make reference to the southern neighbors of the Armenian Highland. During the 2nd and 3rd millennia
(as well as long before), Semitic tribes lived in the agricultural
territories of the so-called "Fertile Crescent", on the Phoenician
coast (in modern Lebanon), in the valleys of Syria, in the plains of
Northern Mesopotamia (today they are also part of the Republic
of Syria), and along the great rivers of the Euphrates and the Tigris,
as well as in the steppes between these regions. To be more precise, the Western Semites (Canaanites and Amorites) (*11) lived in
Phoenicia, Syria, in parts of Northern Mesopotamia, and everywhere in the steppe regions, while along the Euphrates and the Tigris lived the Eastern Semites, or Akkadians, whom we know better under the name of Assyrians and Babylonians, but who were
not yet called by those names at that time (47). The southern part of
the area of the Hurrians and the northern part of the area of the
Semites overlapped; the groups lived side by side.
These were the ethnic factors in the Armenian Highland and
neighboring areas which were active in the historical events preceding the formation of the Armenian people.