Origin of the Armenians

The origin of the Armenians is a topic concerned with the emergence of the Armenian people and the country called Armenia. The earliest universally accepted reference to the people and the country dates back to the 6th century BC Behistun Inscription, followed by several Greek fragments and books.^[1] The earliest known reference to a geopolitical entity where Armenians originated from is dated to the 13th century BC as Uruatri in Old Assyrian.^[2] Historians and Armenologists have speculated about the earlier origin of the Armenian people, but no consensus has been achieved as of yet. Genetic studies show that Armenian people are indigenous to historical Armenia,^[3] showing little to no signs of admixture since around the 13th century BC.^[4]

^ Chahin, M. (2001). The Kingdom of Armenia: A History (2nd ed.). Richmond, Surrey: Curzon. p. 177. ISBN 0-7007-1452-9. OCLC 46908690. The earliest references to Armenia were made by Hecataus of Miletus (c. 525 BC), Darius the Great in his celebrated inscriptions at Behistun (c. 520 BC), Herodotus (c. 450 BC), Xenophone (c. 400 BC), Strabo (c. 45 BC) and later classical writers.
^ Borisovich Piotrovskiĭ, Boris (1969). Urartu, Ancient civilizations, Archaeologia mundi. the University of Michigan: Cresset Press. Uruatri and Nairi in the Second Millennium B.C. And it is in fact from Assyrian documents of the 13th century B.C. that we gain our first definite information about the peoples of the Armenian highlands.
^ "Armenian Rarities Collection". www.loc.gov. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress. 2020. Archived from the original on 7 March 2023. Retrieved 27 March 2023. The lands of the Armenians were for millennia located in Eastern Anatolia, on the Armenian Highlands, and into the Caucasus Mountain range. First mentioned almost contemporaneously by a Greek and Persian source in the 6th century BC, modern DNA studies have shown that the people themselves had already been in place for many millennia. Those people the world know as Armenians call themselves Hay and their country Hayots' ashkharh–the land of the Armenians, today known as Hayastan. Their language, Hayeren (Armenian) constitutes a separate and unique branch of the Indo-European linguistic family tree. A spoken language until Christianity became the state religion in 314 AD, a unique alphabet was created for it in 407, both for the propagation of the new faith and to avoid assimilation into the Persian literary world.
^ Haber M, Mezzavilla M, Xue Y, Comas D, Gasparini P, Zalloua P; et al. (2016). "Genetic evidence for an origin of the Armenians from Bronze Age mixing of multiple populations". Eur J Hum Genet. 24 (6): 931–6. doi:10.1038/ejhg.2015.206. PMC 4820045. PMID 26486470.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

[:2-1] Chahin, M. (2001). The Kingdom of Armenia: A History (2nd ed.). Richmond, Surrey: Curzon. p. 177. ISBN 0-7007-1452-9. OCLC 46908690. The earliest references to Armenia were made by Hecataus of Miletus (c. 525 BC), Darius the Great in his celebrated inscriptions at Behistun (c. 520 BC), Herodotus (c. 450 BC), Xenophone (c. 400 BC), Strabo (c. 45 BC) and later classical writers.

[2] Borisovich Piotrovskiĭ, Boris (1969). Urartu, Ancient civilizations, Archaeologia mundi. the University of Michigan: Cresset Press. Uruatri and Nairi in the Second Millennium B.C. And it is in fact from Assyrian documents of the 13th century B.C. that we gain our first definite information about the peoples of the Armenian highlands.

[loc.gov-3] "Armenian Rarities Collection". www.loc.gov. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress. 2020. Archived from the original on 7 March 2023. Retrieved 27 March 2023. The lands of the Armenians were for millennia located in Eastern Anatolia, on the Armenian Highlands, and into the Caucasus Mountain range. First mentioned almost contemporaneously by a Greek and Persian source in the 6th century BC, modern DNA studies have shown that the people themselves had already been in place for many millennia. Those people the world know as Armenians call themselves Hay and their country Hayots' ashkharh–the land of the Armenians, today known as Hayastan. Their language, Hayeren (Armenian) constitutes a separate and unique branch of the Indo-European linguistic family tree. A spoken language until Christianity became the state religion in 314 AD, a unique alphabet was created for it in 407, both for the propagation of the new faith and to avoid assimilation into the Persian literary world.

[pmid26486470-4] Haber M, Mezzavilla M, Xue Y, Comas D, Gasparini P, Zalloua P; et al. (2016). "Genetic evidence for an origin of the Armenians from Bronze Age mixing of multiple populations". Eur J Hum Genet. 24 (6): 931–6. doi:10.1038/ejhg.2015.206. PMC 4820045. PMID 26486470.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

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