QUOTE(Shahan Araradian @ Jun 20 2007, 12:10 AM)
Not really. It might mean that the two peoples shared a common Indo-European language while they were ONE and the SAME people in the part of Europe they were living. Over thousands of years, those people migrated to distant lands: some to Ireland, some to what is known today as the Armenian Highland.
Your confidence on the matter far surpasses that of the entire field of linguistics and all of its most avid students. There are many migration theories, each of them having their own set of scholars and institutions endorsing them. Some, such as the discredited Thrace migration theory, is still entrenched in the American ("western") Armenology circles. The Armenia origins theory is taking steps forward in the international arena more as time passes. The Hittite punch was simply too hard a punch for the Herodotan theory. Hittites were concluded to be Armenian speakers by the first (and still the most highly credited) Hittitologist, and those very Hittites were an older presence than Herodotus' Phrygians.
The assumption above is based on the Europe origin theory, which is one of the entrenched ones, but one that is less accepted as years pass. The Ukrainian/South Ural origin theory is more believable, but this too is getting slowly discredited. The most academically sound one is the Armenia origin theory due to the simple fact that the oldest known and deciphered Indo-European family languages have been found in the regions in and surrounding the Armenian Plateau. This is the conclusion that filled a 1500 page study by V. Ivanon and T. Gamkrelidze cited below, among other studies in multiple fields.
There are a few non-Armenian sources that talk about the Armenia origin theory, which is supported by multiple principles. The most important of these is the newly emerging science of genetic migration which is making some important strides.
As to the actual relationships between the languages, the oldest series of articles (not hindered by academic politics or political influences) that challenges the orthodox perceptions between these languages is written by Nikolai Marr, a very competent linguist of Georgian nationality who was very close with Hrachya Ajarian and was knowledgeable of the languages of the region. The most comprehensible and palatable critique that I have read (since Marr's "Japhetian" theory and its text are extremely technical in nature) was an Armenian linguist named Nigoghos Boyadjian who published his very good essay (I forgot the title, but I have a copy here somewhere) which he published in the Armenian Quarterly, a prestigious academic publication that was edited by Richard Hovanissian at the time (in the 1960s).
In short, Mr. Boyadjian questions the very idea of there being a family to which Armenian is a full member. The main objection is the minority of root words that have been found to be common in the main stock of IE roots and Armenian. Only 10% or less of Armenian roots are in the IE grouping. He didn't draw any further conclusions, but he did make the following remark: Armenians are inheritors of a nostratic language, with single letter word roots in the common verbs, which to him was indicator of Armenian as being a very ancient language, in many ways predating the IE family. None of the older roots have any parallels in other languages except in developed form. he verb "to go" for example is one he mentions as one that is a single sound in Armenia as the root, the sound 'g' is the verb root. The closest parallel is the English verb 'go.' This was echoed by Jahukian years later, and Marr had hinted at this as well.
The history of Celtic migration is much newer than the fall of the Hittites and the earliest known Armenian reference in the region. Martiros Gavoukjian's thoughts were that the Celts were of the same language family. He dwelled on the commonalities and assumed common ethnic roots, but the above scholars did not see the commonalities to be absolute evidence of common ethnicity, but they accepted that it could rather be influence. That's belief as well so far.
In essence, I started believing the line about Herodotus' migration, then went tot he Ukrainian origins theory, and then found that the Hittites were older than all the supposed Armenian precursor cultures. then I found the works of Peter Jensen, and this blew the entire thing into a different stage altogether.
I'm still looking, but my conclusion so far is that they were probably not
entirely the same ethnicities, the Armenians, Celts, Latins, Etruscans, Greeks, and so on, but rather cultures that interacted closely with the Indo-European speakers. Interestingly enough, Greek and Phrygian are considered to be the closest relatives, but there are far too many differences to consider them automatically as ethnic cousins.
In any case, the thread deals with the Stonehenges and Karahunj, and their relationships. My belief is that there had always been a contingent of Armenians (believe it what you wish as to what they were ethnically, but they were from Armenia) migrating to other lands, taking with them to those other lands and indigenous peoples their culture and knowledge, part of their language, and so on, the degree of influence depending on the political relationships and perhaps even demographic ratio/relationship. There is also the possibility that they are not related to each other at all, or perhaps their common ancestors predated any of the known ethnic divisions.
- L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, Alberto Piazza, _
The History and Geography of Human Genes_ (Princeton University Press, 1996),
- V. Ivanov/T. Gamkrelidze,
The Indo-European Language and Indoeuropeans - Colin Renfrew, _
Archeology and Language: the Puzzle of Indo-European Origins_ London: Jonathan Cape, 1987)
- Colin Renfrew, ”The Origins of Indo-European Languages_, _
Scientific American_ 261(4), pp 106-114
- A. B. Dolgopolski, “The Indo-European homeland and lexical contacts of Proto-Indo-European with other languages,” _
Mediterranean Language Review (Harassowitz) 3:7-31
- Merrit Ruhlen,
The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue (Toronto: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1994), pp 186-188.
- There is also a very interesting article by Anchor Bble author Ephraim Spazier that talks about the possibility of the Armenain Plateau and the Nothern Zagros as a possible source of the indo-european language family in BAR (Biblical Archeologial Review).
- Peter Jensen -
Hittiter und Armenier (Strasburg 1898).
Edited by hagopn, 23 June 2007 - 03:23 AM.