The surprising story of the Basque language

Justin Calderon

  

A few steps from the entrance to the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd, one of San Sebastian’s most visible landmarks with its sky-piercing gothic spire, lies a simple, two-faced earthen slab. In this corner of Spain’s Basque Country, it seems out of place: carved on one side with an Apostolic cross and on the other with a mysterious-looking, non-Latin alphabet.

The letters are certainly not Euskara, also known as Basque, an enigmatic European language famous for the absence of any clear links to living linguistic relatives. Rather, this Armenian khachkar (a cross-bearing memorial stele) was placed in central San Sebastian in 2017 by the city’s modern Armenian community to commemorate the centennial of the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks, which the Basque Country parliament is one of five parliaments in Spain to officially recognise.

7000 Year Old DNA Found in Artsakh Cave Matches Genes of Modern Armenians

Scholars from Britain, US, Denmark and Armenia led by Professor Levon Yepiskoposyan have been examining prehistoric caves near the village of Azokh in Artsakh (Mountainous Karabagh) and found unique artifacts from different periods, among them a tooth from a human who lived 7000 years ago. Due to the cave’s climate, DNA was preserved inside the tooth and was send to Copenhagen University’s (Denmark) genetics department for examination. The results of this inquiry have revealed that the genetic makeup of the tooth belonging to an individual 7000 years ago perfectly matches with the genetic makeup of modern Armenians.

Study Backs 5th-Century Historian’s Date for Founding of Armenia

Nicholas Wade

 

Movses Khorenatsi, a historian in the fifth century, wrote that his native Armenia had been established in 2492 B.C., a date usually regarded as legendary though he claimed to have traveled to Babylon and consulted ancient records. (*) But either he made a lucky guess or he really did gain access to useful data, because a new genomic analysis suggests that his date is entirely plausible.

Geneticists have scanned the genomes of 173 Armenians from Armenia and Lebanon and compared them with those of 78 other populations from around the world. They found that the Armenians are a mix of ancient populations whose descendants now live in Sardinia, Central Asia and several other regions. This formative mixture occurred from 3000 to 2000 B.C., the geneticists calculated, coincident with Movses Khorenatsi’s date for the founding of Armenia.

The Armenian DNA Project

The Azad-Hye Middle East Armenian portal (http://www.azad-hye.net/) published an interview with Peter Hrechdakian, Administrator of the Armenian DNA Project at Family Tree DNA, on September 25, 2010. This project is aimed at studying Armenian deep ancestry. Below is the text of the interview: