Who are our closest relatives?

Which group of people is closest related to that of Armenians, does anybody know?

The Turks! LOL! But seriously, the so called Turks of Turkey are genetically Armenian, Kurdish, Persian, Greek and other Indo Europeans. Also there is a heavy Armenian genetic presence in the so-called Azeri population.

I think culturally, genetically and emotionally Iranians are the closest to Armenians. That seems to be the consensus of many here. Iran continues, despite its being an Islamic republic, to support Armenia and Armenians. The government has done a great job in preserving Armenian historical sites in Iran, including Churches! This would be unheard of in Turkey, Iraq or even I think semi-Christian Lebanon. Iran unofficially supported Christian Armenians in their war against their fellow Moslems the Azeris.

Iranians and Armenians look very similar, though of course I can usually tell them apart. But not always! I run into numerous Iranians that look more Armenian and vice versa.

I recall reading something also about Armenians and Gypsies being very close genetically, in fact that was one of the first posts I did here, and I ruffled a few feathers. I don't see the problem here. I think Gypsies are often misunderstood and stereotyped, plus they are an Indo-Aryan group similar to Panjabis,Pamirs, Pashtus,Kurds, Baluchi etc.

I think Armenians and Greeks also have a certain cultural connection, common hatred of the Turks!

I heard that only 4 groups of people exhibit the genetic Mediterranean fever: "Turks(of Turkey), Armenians, Arabs and Jews."

In Turkey, only the northeastern parts--people resemble the Armenian physical types to a great extent. In other parts of Turkey, you find more Greek-looking, Arabic looking or even Slavic looking.

Kurds of Turkey also look Armenian.

Azeris look midway between Armenian, Farsi and Turkmen.

Eastern Georgians look Armenian.

Many Ashkenazi Jews have a slight Armenoid appearance.

Many Syrians look Armenian.

Bulgarians also.

Having good neighborly relations doesn't necessarily mean being close culturally. We have very good relations with China too. Half-breed is right that some Armenians resemble Turks and this is evident even in this forum. Armenian customs and family traditions are close(almost 100%) to those of Orthodox Christians and this can be easily explained.

Even among Armenians, I can detect slight physical differences. Armenians from Iran look Iranian to some extent, and Armenians from Arab nations look Arab to some extent. And, then there is a slight Russian influence among Armenians from Hayastan. Mixing does take place outside of marriage however much we hate to admit it.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Hakob:
[B]I heard that only 4 groups of people exhibit the genetic Mediterranean fever: "Turks(of Turkey), Armenians, Arabs and Jews."

+ Greeks and Bulgarians
Armenoid type is widespread in both sides of the Black Sea.

Yeah, I too have noticed that many Ashkhenazic Jews( not Sephardic at all!) have an Armenian look(My mom's favorite Neil Diamond for instance!). But could it be the other way around? Don't even give me fuel to start my own totally (at this point) baseless suspicion that I have always had: that Armenians are nothing but descendants of one of the lost Tribes of Israel. Semi nervous LOL! Lets not go there!

You know during Tigran the Great's reign, many Jews were forcibly resettled and transplanted to historic Armenia. It is said that by the 4th cent. A.D., most of Armenia's cities were at least half-half Jewish. And, the infamous Bagratuni family was Jewish originated. It was probably Jews who converted us to Christianity. Yes, we absorbed a lot of Jewish blood.

God save ARMENIA!

Ashkenazi Jews are actually not semitic at all, they were inhabitants of the Xazar empire in the northern empire. Ashkenaz is the caucasian designation which seems to be "Scythian" compare this to Ishkuz the Assyrian designation of the Scythians, plus there is a people in Pamir called Ishkeshemi. The native name of the Scythians is Saka. The Scythians were an East-Iranian spaeking people, they are now distinct, they have become Ukrainians, Russians or mixed with the Turkic tribes. The Ossetians in caucasus are believed to be relative of the Scythians.

Note two, my impression is that in Iran, you can't be sure 100% the ethnic background out of look. So there are very fairskinned Balucis too and there are darkskinned Xorasanis and Gilakis too (which you may not expect) But generally the Armenians of Iran look more like the Kurds and Azeri's of Iran. The Georgians, and Kashkai's and some highlander Lor tribes look very similar in Iran. In Ferydan region in West of Esfahan, you can't easily distinguish between the Georgian, Persian and Turkicspeaking people (which are all of Georgian and Persian highlander Lori) origins, but the Armenians look somehow different, the reason is that the Armenians marry only with the Armenians, so the genetical variety is not big. But Georgians of Iran and Persians are ethnically more exagamous, so more genetical variety.

I know who, check "lost armenians"

Why??

I think guys to find relatives of Armenians you should focus on language spoken, but not looks. In my opinion closest to Armenians are the ancient nations of Middle East and Anatolia. Those I think are Assyrians, Greek, and Persians.

Turks and Arabs came to Middle East way after Armenians as a nations were established. Arabs came into play in 7th century with introduction of Islam, by that time Armenians were Christians for 400 years, had their own alphabet for 300 years, and Movses Chorenatsi had already written the History of Armenia in 5th century. First Turkic tribes reached Armenian even later in 10ths century.



[This message has been edited by surorus (edited December 12, 2000).]

According to linguistics, Armenian is an Indo-European language belongs to the Satem group, like the Iranian, Slavic, Indic and Baltic languages. Armenian is believed to be an ancient mixture of some caucasian native and Iranian languages. There are caucasian elements from Urartaian and Khalkidian (sp.) languges in Armenian, but the classical Armenian has been for 70% similar to Pahlevi a West Iranian language spoken in the time of Arshakuni and sassanides. However the remaining Indo-European elements of Armenian doesn't resemble Pahlevi and in any wa is not Western Iranian.
Greek is Indo-European too, but belongs to the Centum group. So they are far relatives of Armenians.

Assyrian is not related to Armenian at all. Assyrian is a semitic language related to Arabic and Hebrew.

I would take your words about Assyrians. But, also would like to add that as much as I remember there were some other ancient nations related to Armenians that later disappeared.

Also, according to Movses Chorenatsi Armenian nation was formed mainly from 3 tribes. Urartians were natives of the Historic Armenia, but there also lived a tribe called Hye that came from South. And around 7th century B.C. another unknown tribe came to that region from Europe. This tribe from Europe became dominant over Urartians and Hyes and brought to the end the Urartu kingdom. After this Armenian nation was born, and for the fist time the word Armenia was mentioned by Greek historians of that time.

This story is supported by many historians, linguists, as well as church. According to church Haig was the father of Armenian nation, and he went to north from Babylon and found Hayastan and nation Hye. That is why we call ourselves Hye.
The European flavor in Armenians as well as the language is believed to be brought by the tribe that came in 7th century. After that the whole world started calling us Armenians. It is kind of interesting that the whole world calls as Armenians but we call as Hye.
This story also explains the sudden disappearance of Urartu as a nation, they simply lost influence and eventually mixed with powerful newcomers and Hyes.




[This message has been edited by surorus (edited December 13, 2000).]

Iranyar,


I have been searching on the net and found something that you might be interested.

LINGUISTIC AFFILIATION

"Armenian forms an independent branch of the Indo-European language family (Comrie, 1981). Armenian is most closely related to Greek, but has many borrowed words from such Indo-Iranian languages as Pushto and Persian. In fact, during the very early periods of its classification, Armenian was erroneously considered an Iranian language because of its large number of Iranian loan words."

UCLA Language Materials: http://www.lmp.ucla....les/profile.htm
Language Trees: http://www.armenianh...stration122.jpg http://www.georgetow...l/oe/oe-ie.html


[This message has been edited by surorus (edited December 13, 2000).]

WOW! See, I knew it was connected to greek! And there are the very prominent russian and greek lettering!

But, racially we are closer to Iranians. The Iranian presence in our blood and genes is undeniable. Many of our elites were of direct Iranian descent. Many of my own ancestors were Parthian or Sassanian on the maternal side.

Dear Suros,

Still your history doesn't connect the Armenians whith the Assyrians.

The Urartaians were not Indo-Europeans, about the Hyes we don't know I relate them to the proto-Aryans, but it is a long history.
Also it is true about the tribe who came into Armenia from the north, the main theorician of it was an Armenian man, from France (he had not a typical Armenian name I have forget it), these were people who generally were called Scythians.

Abouth the Armenian language, read BEEKES /COMPARATIVE INDO_EUROPEAN LINGUISTICS

Armenian is a real Satem language, while Greek is a Centum language, the formulation of that UCLA message was wrong, Armenian Grammar and structure is close to Persian and other Iranian languages (I'm not linguist by profession, but I can clearly recognize also Caucasian influences in the Armenian language, for example suffixes instead of prepositions, like Georgian)
Armenian has a loat of barrowed words from Greek, they are mostly biblical terms, Armenian has also barrowed words from Persian, and Kurdish and Pahlevi Azeri (all of them west Iranian languages) but I really doubt if Armenian has barrowed words fom Pashru, Pashtu is native language of Afghanistan so I doubt if Pashtu and Armenian have influenced each other.
But I have to say that at some grammatical forms, armenian and ossetian (an east Iranin language in caucasus) rae similar, especoally the past tense of the verbs, but it is easy to explain because the Ossetians are decendants of Alans, a Scythian people.

So that info of UCLA, is totally wrong, I don't know for sure but it looks like Turkish/ Israeli propaganda who try to depct Armenians not native to Armenia, they have a lot of B.S theories which says that Armenian is an West Anatolian language, this is pure nonsense because the Anatolian languages were centum languages, while Armenian is a satem language.

Some theories believe that Armenian was related to phrygian a laguage who is now disapperead and we don't know much of it, but even frygian was not a centum language. It was Satem.

I don't know if you can read Armenian or Russian but I suggest you read the books of Parikhanian about the Armenian language.

The first mentioning of Armenia, is in Darius's Behiston inscription, which calls it Armina, also Herodotos has called Armenia Armina after this inscription.
If you want to know why it is called Armenia, read the section in this page, about "The forefathers of the Armenians" if you click in the main page on Armenians.com, you can find it it is the last article. And yaes as I thaught before the therm Ar-men and Ar-ian are related terms.

Well all I can sy is that the message of UCLA is not scientificly well founded. I don't know who owns the UCLA, but remember that Turkey is ally of USA and Israel, and USA politics is the bigbrother of Israel, and these guys want the caspian sea oil, and Turkey is their dog, and therefore they want to defame and get rid of armenia, So I'm suspicious about their propagand on internet, but as we say in Georgian shenistavi itsi =you you know it yourself

[This message has been edited by Iranyar (edited December 15, 2000).]

May be Iranians are closer to us.

Now, Armenia has good relations with Iran, but in past Armenians had suffered from Iran a lot too. In 17-19 centuries Armenian and other Caucasian girls were hot selling items in humane markets throughout Persia and Arabia. In have read and heard from grandparents that Turks, Kurds, and Persians used to systematically invade Armenian villages and town to rob people and capture young girls to sell to sultans and sheikhs later.