ON THE ORIGIN OF THE ARMENIANS (IN THE LIGHT OF NON-METRIC CRANIAL TRAITS DATA)
ALLA MOVSESIAN
Lomonosov State University, Moscow
NVARD KOCHAR
Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Armenian Academy of Sciences, Yerevan
The problem of the origin of the Armenian ethnicity has been high- lighted in numerous scholarly publications. Many archaeological data corroborate the cultural continuity between the current and ancient populations of Armenia extending at least down to the period of early Iron Age.1 In effect, the formation of the physical type of Armenians had been deeply rooted in a grey antiquity and is closely associated with the formation of the Armenoid anthropological type embracing many populations of the Near East and the Caucasus, as well as the majority of the Armenian nation. The Armenoid type is characterised by a slightly wavy hair, a developed tertiary integument, with abundant fa- cial hair, dark complexion, dark eyes and hair, a peculiarly shaped nose with a dropped tip, wide and elevated nose wings, moderately thick lips, narrowly cut eyes, medium-size rather elevated face, brachycranial, very elevated skull, often with a very inclined forehead and a flat back of the head. The origin of the Armenoid type is very interesting with regard to complicated ethno-genetic processes within the Near East and the Caucasus, as well as to the historical antiquity of the peoples of these regions and their proximity to the centres of the world civilisation. Ac- cording to Debec: “... there can be no serious ethno-genetic study of the European and Near Eastern peoples that would skip references to the peoples of the Caucasus”.2
1 B. B. Piotrovskij, Arxeologiya Zakavkaz’ya, Leningrad, 1949. 2 G. F. Debec, “Paleoantropologiya SSSR”, Trudy Instituta Etnografii, n.s.t. IV, Moscow-Lenin- grad, 1948.
Brill, Leiden, 2004 Iran and the Caucasus, 8.2 184 ALLA MOVSESIAN, NVARD KOCHAR Bunak who had made an inestimable contribution into the anthro- pology of Armenians indicated the very early origin and extensive dis- tribution of the Armenoid type as far back as 1927. Examining the iconographic material and comparing it with the craniological data, he wrote that “the formation of this type had been completed prior to the emergence in the Near Eastern region of the European and Asiatic tribes (Phrygians, Greeks, Iranians, Turks, etc.), which had been dis- solved in the already crystallised Armenoid race rather than apprecia- bly affected the anthropological type of the population”.3 The morphological characteristics of the contemporary Armenian groups have been studied in detail by Abdushelishvili.4 Examining the dental material, he concluded on the undoubted resemblance and in- ternal unity of the Armenian sub-ethnic groups. This type of unity has also been detected while studying the population genetics of the der- matological indications showing, as in case of the dental and crani- ological analyses, a distinct Europeoidal Near-Eastern (Armenoid) ra- cial diagnostic complex.5 The dermatoglyphics and family structure studies have also yielded the differentiation time of the Armenian sub- populations from the initial proto-population amounting to 8-9 thou- sand years. This enables an assumption to be made that it was already in the Neolithic time that the initial type was formed giving rise to the Armenian gene pool. However, neither archaeological, nor linguistic, nor population-ge- netic reconstructions of the ethno-genetic processes can be regarded as completed without the paleoanthropological data being considered as historical sources. Unfortunately, it is exactly the lack of paleoanthro- poligical materials that explains the annoying blanks in the study of the ancient population of Armenia. Substantial contributions to the paleoanthropology of Armenia were the works by Abdushelishvili6 and Alexeev.7 A basic research
3 V. V. Bunak, “Crania Armenica”, Trudy NII antropologii pri MGU, vol. II, Moscow, 1927. 4 M. G. Abdu•eli•vili, “Ob antropologi¢eskom sostave sovremennogo naseleniya Armenii”, Antropologi¢eskij sbornik IV, Trudy Instituta etnografii AN SSSR, vol. 82, Moscow, 1963. 5 N. R. Ko¢ar, Antropologiya armyan. Dermatoglifika i populyacionnaya struktura, Erevan, 1989; N. R. Ko¢ar, V. A. ¶eremet’eva, Yu. G. Ry¢kov, “Dermatoglifika v izu¢enii geneti¢eskix processov po- pulyacii ¢eloveka (na primere naseleniya Armenii)”, Genetika, vol. XVII, N 8, 1981. 6 M. G. Abdu•eli•vili, op. cit.; idem, “Materialy k kraniologii Kavkaza”, Trudy Instituta eksperi- mental’noj morfologii AN GSSR, vol. V, Tbilisi, 1955; idem, “Ob antropologi¢eskom sostave sovre- mennogo naseleniya Armenii”, Antropologi¢eskij sbornik IV, Trudy Instituta etnografii AN SSSR, vol. 82, Moscow, 1963; idem, K kraniologii sovremennogo i drevnego naseleniya Kavkaza, Tbilisi, 1966. 7 V. P. Alexeev, Proisxo¿denie narodov Kavkaza, Moscow, 1974; V. P. Alexeev, I. I. Goxman, An- tropologiya aziatskoj ¢asti SSSR, Moscow, 1984.