10 World’s Oldest Things From Armenia
admin December 17, 2014 ancient sky observatory, ancient wagons,
Armenia ancient war horse,Armenia petroglyphs, Armenian archaeology,
Armenian Cataphract, Innovative Stone Age tools,oldest human brain,
oldest leather shoe, oldest Metal Smelting Foundry, Wine making
Armenia,world’s oldest skirt 1 Comment 30 Views
Leather Shoe – 5,500 years old
A perfectly preserved shoe, 1,000 years older than the Great Pyramid
of Giza in Egypt and 400 years older than Stonehenge in the UK, has
been found in a cave in Armenia. The 5,500 year old shoe, the oldest
leather shoe in the world, is made from a single piece of cowhide, cut
into two layers, tanned and laced. It contained grass, although the
archaeologists were uncertain as to whether this was to keep the foot
warm or to maintain the shape of the shoe. “It is not known whether
the shoe belonged to a man or woman,” said lead author of the research
“We thought initially that the shoe and other objects were about
600-700 years old because they were in such good condition,” said Dr
Pinhasi. “It was only when the material was dated by the two
radiocarbon laboratories in Oxford, UK, and in California, US that we
realised that the shoe was older by a few hundred years than the shoes
worn by Ötzi, the Iceman.” Three samples were taken in order to
determine the absolute age of the shoe and all three tests produced
the same results. Interestingly enough the shoe very much resembles a
traditional Armenian shoe known as “charokh” a type of moccasin, still
in popular use in Armenia.
Source:
Sky Observatory – 7,500 years old
“Carahunge” or “Zorats Karer” (also known as the Armenian Stonehenge)
is a megalithic stone circle located some 200km from the Armenian
capital Yerevan, not far from the town of Sisian. The name derives
from “Car” for “stone” and “hunge” for “sound” or “voice”, meaning
“singing stones”. The structure is believed to be a sky observatory
due to the enigmatic holes drilled in the stone pointing at the cosmic
bodies like the sun, the moon and the stars. It is specifically
aligned with the Cygnus constellation and its brightest star Deneb.
Being over 2000 years older than the Stonehenge it is believed to be
the oldest known sky observatory. However, only since the middle of
the 80ies, Carahunge was first interpreted as an archaeoastronomical
monument and was studied by Prof. E.S. Parsamian (1999) and Prof. P.M.
Herouni (1998) who have dated the structure to around 5,500 BCE. There
are 222 stones with a total extent exceeding 250 metres, including 84
with holes (with 4-5 cm diameters).
Source:
Human Brain – 6,000 years old
In a cave overlooking southeastern Armenia’s Arpa River a team of
international scientists have uncovered three Copper Age human skulls,
each buried in a separate chamber. The skulls belonged to 12- to
14-year-old girls. The team in Armenia, comprised of 26 specialists
from Ireland, the United States and Armenia, had been excavating the
three-chamber cave where the brain was found since 2007. “The
preliminary results of the laboratory analysis prove this is the
oldest of the human brains so far discovered in the world,” said Dr.
Boris Gasparian, one of the excavation’s leaders and an archeologist
from the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Archaeology and
Ethnology in Yerevan. “Of course, the mummies of Pharaonic Egypt did
contain brains, but this one is older than the Egyptian ones by about
1,000 to 1,200 years.” The cave’s damp climate helped preserve red and
white blood cells in the brain remains. Genetic research is underway.
Source:
Wagons – 4,000 years old
Over a dozen rich burials have been excavated in Armenia. The most
spectacular were those excavated at Lchashen on the borders of Lake
Sevan where a more than a dozen almost complete four-wheeled and two
wheeled wagons, as well as two wheeled chariots with spoked wheels
were uncovered. Two of these wagons form a spectacular display in the
National Museum in Armenia. The four solid wheels are made from three
planks of oak, while the interior is covered by a covering of withies.
In his chronology (Timeline of the Development of the Horse, 2007)
Beverley Davis describes these wagons as follows: “Primitive wagons
dating from this time (2000 BCE) have been found in excellent
condition in Armenia. These are the oldest known wagons in the world.”
The wagons have also been included in Prof Stuart Piggott’s classic
book “The Earliest Wheeled Transport”.
Source: 1) 2)
Skirt – 5,900 years old
Fragment of a skirt made of reed was found during excavations in the
Areni-1 cave in southern Armenia. Pavel Avetisian, the head of the
Institute of Archeology and Ethnography in Yerevan, informed that this
artifact was discovered in 2010 and, even though they had informed
about this precious item at the time, interest toward it grew further
only recently. “The women’s clothing dates back to 39th century BC. So
far we have discovered the skirt’s parts, which were superbly
preserved. It is an amazing material with rhythmic color hues, and
other remnants of the straw-woven material were also discovered. Such
thing is recorded in Armenia for the first time,” Avetisyan noted.
It’s considered the world’s oldest piece of reed clothing.
Source:
Wine-Making Facility – 6,100 years old
In a cave in southern Armenia a team of international archaeologists
have unearthed a wine press for stomping grapes. Fermentation and
storage vessels, drinking cups, and withered grape vines, skins, and
seeds have also been discovered at the site. The installation suggests
the Copper Age vintners pressed their wine the old-fashioned way,
using their feet. Juice from the trampled grapes drained into the vat,
where it was left to ferment. The wine was then stored in jars–the
cool, dry conditions of the cave would have made a perfect wine
cellar. Ancient-wine expert Patrick E. McGovern, a biomolecular
archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in
Philadelphia, called the discovery “important and unique, because it
indicates large-scale wine production, which would imply, I think,
that the grape had already been domesticated.” The apparent discovery
that winemaking using domesticated grapevines emerged in what’s now
Armenia appears to dovetail with previous DNA studies of cultivated
grape varieties, McGovern said. Armenian Highlands are considered the
birthplace of viticulture. It is believed the wine has been used for
religious or ritualistic purposes. The discovery is important, the
study team says, because winemaking is seen as a significant social
and technological innovation among prehistoric societies. Vine
growing, for instance, heralded the emergence of new, sophisticated
forms of agriculture. They had to learn and understand the cycles of
growth of the plant. They had to understand how much water was needed,
how to prevent fungi from damaging the harvest, and how to deal with
flies that live on the grapes. Chemical analysis of the residue has
dated the winery to 4,100 BCE. “This is the earliest, most reliable
evidence of wine production,” said archaeologist Gregory Areshian of
the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Source: 1)
2)
Metal Smelting Foundry – 6,000 years old
Excavation of the ruins at a Bronze Age archaeological settlement of
Metsamor in central Armenia has revealed a very large metal industry
including a foundry with 2 kinds of blast furnaces. The foundry is
known to have extracted and processed gold, copper, and several types
of manganese, zinc, strychnine, mercury, and iron. Several huge
underground caves were uncovered that are thought to have been
storehouses for base metal. The first iron in the ancient world was
probably forged here, though it was not as commonly forged as bronze.
Metal from the foundries of Metsamor found their way to Egypt, Central
Asia and China.
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Innovative Stone Age Tools – 325,000 years old
Team of archaeologists and anthropologists from the United States and
Europe led by Dr Daniel Adler of the University of Connecticut have
discovered thousands of Levallois stone tools at the Armenian
archaeological site of Nor Geghi dating from between 325,000 and
335,000 years ago. Suggesting that local populations developed them
out of biface technique, which was also found at the site. Named after
flint tools discovered in the 19th century in the Levallois-Perret
suburb of Paris in France, Levallois technique is a distinctive style
of flint knapping developed by early humans during the Paleolithic.
The co-existence of the two techniques provides the first clear
evidence that local populations developed Levallois technique out of
existing biface technique. The discovery was published in the Science
Journal and challenges the commonly held out of Africa theory of human
innovation. These tools are the oldest outside of Africa, according to
the published work: “Our data from Nor Geghi 1, Armenia, record the
earliest synchronic use of bifacial and Levallois technology outside
Africa”
Source: 1) 2)
Depictions of Agriculture – 7,500 years old
Armenia is home to numerous sites containing ancient petroglyphs with
images of scenes of agriculture and domestication of animals. On the
slopes of volcanic massifs of Armenia, 3000 meters above sea level,
one can find whole galleries of rock drawings of agricultural motives.
Some of these petroglyphs are dated as far as the 12th -11th
millennium BC. People from later eras (Chalcolithic and Bronze Age)
continued to record their prowess and beliefs on the stones. The
largest variety and number of carvings date to this period and the
early Iron Age. The first farmers depicted the great history of
agronomics in these petroglyphic drawings. The symmetric arrangement
of predominantly zoomorphic heroes was an indispensable attribute of
the new times. These petroglyphs are carved onto dark brownish-black
volcanic stones left behind by an extinct volcano. Although the site
was discovered in the early 20th century, it was not really studied
until the 1920s and again in the late 1960s; it is still not fully
understood today. In his chronology (Timeline of the Development of
the Horse, 2007) Beverley Davis describes: “Petroglyphs found in
Armenia (one of the possible sites for the Indo-European homeland)
show the oldest pictures of men driving chariots, wagons, and plows,
with horses doing the pulling.”
Source: 1)
2)
War Horses – 4,500 years old
Armenian archaeologists discovered an ancient burial site containing a
large amount of sacrificed animal remains, among them war horses. The
head of the Cultural Inheritance Research Center of Armenia Hakob
Simonyan explained that the horse bones found at “Nerkin Naver” are
the oldest yet uncovered belong to a domesticated horse used for
military purposes. “This find dates back to the 26-25th centuries BC,
and it’s the oldest burial place of a horse discovered to this day. It
has an all-important significance not only for Armenia, but for the
whole Western Asia as well,” Simonian said. Horse domestication and
breading has for long been associated with ancient Armenia. Classical
writers would often refer to Armenia as a land of excellence horse
mastery. The ancient Greek historian Strabo describes Armenian war
horses in several of his passages [11. 14. 9]: “Artavasdes (king of
the Armenians), at the time when he invaded Media, showed, apart from
the rest of the cavalry, six thousand horses drawn up in battle array
covered with complete armor.” Horses have been considered sacred
animals to the ancient Armenians and have been associated with the
solar deity. Ancient Greek writers have equally recorded horse
sacrifice in Armenia, Xenophon Anabasis [4. 5. 35] (430 – 354 BC)
recounts: “Then Xenophon took the village chief back for the time to
his own household, and gave him a horse that he had got when it was
rather old, to fatten up and sacrifice, for he understood that it was
sacred to the Sun-god. He did this out of fear that the horse might
die, for it had been injured by the journey”. In almost all regions of
the Republic of Armenia bronze horse bridles have been found, dating
to the middle of the II millennium BC, and providing sound evidence of
the existence of the numerous cavalry in the late Bronze Age. One of
the most important was the bronze chariot model discovered in Loriberd
near the town of Stepanavan. It shows battle scenes, where the warring
armies consist of cavalry, heavy and light armed infantry, and units
of transport. The image on the right is showing an iron horse-bit from
the burial, which was prepared by forging technologies; which is the
earliest example of an iron curb known to us.
Source : 1)
2)
See more on ancient Armenian horse culture : Armenia the land of the
horse or read the followig two articles: Land of the Horse and
Historic quotes about horse-breeding in Armenia
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So this concludes my list of 10 World’s oldest things from Armenia. I
would very much like to know which is/are your favorite and why? Also
let me know in the comment section if it’s missing a “world’s oldest
thing from Armenia” you think should’ve made the list. The following
5 discoveries didn’t make my list due to limited information and
because I only needed 10 (maybe in the next list):
1) “World’s oldest use of Water Dams” at Mokhrablur,
2) “Earliest traces of animal pigment” Vordan Karmir
3) “World’s oldest known carpet” Pazyryk carpet
4) “World’s oldest evidence of cultivating almonds”
5) “World’s oldest cathedral” Etchmiadzin Cathedral
I am planning a video about the oldest things from Armenia (not
limited to 10 items) so all suggestions are off course welcome, let me
know your thoughts. Bellow an info-graphic for sharing on social
media, enjoy!
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http://www.aras.am/Archaeoastronomy/astronomyancientarmenia.html
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-01/archeologists-unearth-oldest-old-world-brain
http://www.armeniapast.com/discovering-armenia/
http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp177_horses.pdf
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/26/5900yearold-skirt-found-i_n_774429.html
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/science/YJASC_2685.pdf
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/01/110111-oldest-wine-press-making-winery-armenia-science-ucla/
http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/turkeymetsamor.htm
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6204/1609
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140925141224.htm
http://ayfwest.org/news/ughtasar-the-petroglyphs-of-armenia/
http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp177_horses.pdf
http://hetq.am/eng/news/37962/%E2%80%9Cnerkin-naver%E2%80%9Dashtarak-burial-site-reveals-its-ancient-treasures.html
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Xen.%20Anab.%204.5.35&lang=original
http://www.peopleofar.com/2014/12/17/10-worlds-oldest-things-from-armenia/