But I think you have misinterpreted what I wrote, particularly on the 600 BC. I realise that an ethnic group does not just appear like this out of nowhere. Ethnic formation takes time and is continuous, but it wasn't until Orontid dynasty where there was some defined nation. We can even argue that it was still not defined or that they were significantly prior even for some a millenium or two prior. Those are speculations, unless you have a time machine we will never know for sure. I know this does not satisfy you as reply. But I'll put it this way, how such specullations are in anyway different than the modern Azeri association or attempt at association with the Caucasian Albanians? About which date you place the existance of the Azeri ethnogenesis?
As far as when to date the start of a coherent beginning of an Armenian nation, you must know that there was a very scientific study (Gray & Atkinson) that, among other things, assigned the "split" of Armenian from the Indo-European tree at about 5000 years ago. If a coherent Armenian "nation" (group, tribe, whatever) was forged from a soup of diverse peoples at 600 BC, it would have left a profound linguistic signal that would have been screaming the date at us. Guess what? There isn't such a signal. The only "signal" we have is the split 5000 years ago. On the other hand, to me, the oldest "written" record of Armenian presence is Hayasa-Azzi (circa 1400 BC, and it's not surprising that they would take many centuries to become a distinct and serious contender to the Hittites, the more dominant fellow Indo-Europeans living on adjacent lands, and Hagop would say they were one and the same, and I am open to the possibility). Any serious doubt about the full Armenianness of Hayasa-Azzi is indicative of extreme bias, innocent or otherwise.
As far as I know, Phrygian is a poorly attested language. There is simply not enough of it on record to make any specific inferences. That was also why it wasn't included in the Gray & Atkinson study. There simply isn't enough of it there to support an unbiased, scientific analysis. Whatever the case may be, a similarity, borrowed or otherwise, between two indo-european languages spoken by two nations living in the same vicinity for a while is not particularly shocking and does not necessiate cooking up stories of Armenians being Phrygian colonists and an Armenian nation beamed into existence and utter dominance in eastern Asia Minor, completely displacing the "urartu" with no record of their "arrival" from the west at anywhere near the time in question. And complete eradication of an earlier culture so completely in a few decades is a feat that few if any of the "aggressive" nations have ever accomplished, and is completely out of character for Armenians as attested by their entire history whether you start it from 3000 BC, 1400 BC, or 550 BC. It's laughable if it weren't regarded as the "orthodox" view by lousy academics that live in industrialized and powerful countries.
All of this were discussed in this forum before for the benefit of those readers with ability to reason. To no avail it seems.
Revise your thinking.
Edited by DominO, 16 March 2008 - 04:12 PM.