The history of world civilizations: The most ancient of the existing states.
25 JUNE 2019 – CULTURE – civilization.
Armenian civilization – About 10 thousand years ago, cattle breeding and agriculture replaced hunting and gathering.
Armenian civilization
About 10 thousand years ago, cattle breeding and agriculture replaced hunting and gathering. The first agricultural and cattle-breeding settlements emerged in the Ararat valley, Shirak, etc.
The inhabitants of the Armenian highlands, even in ancient times, had mastered many crafts; so, it is known that in the 4th-5th millennium BC they knew how to melt copper, and in the II millennium BC – iron.
Civilization began to disintegrate from the moment of its subordination to the state of Alexander the Great. Some kind of spring of civilization was broken. After the collapse of the Macedonian empire, Armenians failed to restore their civilization uniqueness, allowed to create satrapies, princedoms, kingdoms of a state with foreign sociocultures on their territory.
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Volodikhin included the Armenian civilization in his catalog of civilizations.
The roots of the Armenian people go to deep antiquity. The homeland of Armenians is the Armenian Highland. They lived next door to the Sumerians, Hitits, Assyrians, Persians and Greeks. Armenia became the first Christian state in 301 and has survived to this day, despite the pressure of Mazdaism, Islam and communism.
There is evidence of the residence of the most ancient person on the territory of the Armenian Highlands: parking with stone tools in Arzni, Nurnus and other places, cave dwellings of Hrazdan Gorge, Lusakert, etc. The age of the most ancient stone Paleolithic tools is 800 thousand years. The sites of the Neolithic primitive people were also found. Cyclopean fortresses, religious buildings, dwellings dating from I-III millennia BC were found.
Numerous cave paintings with hunting scenes were discovered in the mountains. About 10 thousand years ago, cattle breeding and agriculture replaced hunting and gathering. The first agricultural and cattle-breeding settlements emerged in the Ararat valley, Shirak, etc. Archaeological excavations confirm the fact that the inhabitants of the Armenian Highland still in ancient times mastered many crafts; so, it is known that in the 4th-5th millennium BC they knew how to melt copper, and in the II millennium BC – iron.
The Armenian language, of Indo-European origin, has passed a special path of development, where various dialects bear the imprint of their historical past. Today, more than seven million Armenians speak Armenian.
The alphabet of the Armenian language, created 1600 years ago, gives access to the culture and literature of the Armenian people. Today, Armenia is a mountainous country located in the south of Transcaucasia. It occupies an area of 29,800 square kilometers, has about 3 000 000 population. 1.2 million people live in Yerevan. The religion of Armenia is Christianity, the church is Armenian-Apostolic. 97% of the population is Armenian, 3% are Yezidis, Kurds, Russians and other nationalities.
In Armenian, the name of the country “Armenia” is “Ike”. In the Middle Ages, the Iranian suffix “camp” (land) was added to the name, and the country became known as “Hayastan”. The name of the country comes from the legendary leader of the Armenians – Hayk, who according to legend in 2492 BC defeated the army of the Assyrian king Bela in battle, and later formed the first Armenian state. This year is considered the first in the traditional Armenian calendar.
Historically, since antiquity and up to the beginning of the 20th century, Armenia was called the region inhabited by Armenians at least from the 7th century. BC er and stretched from the Kura to the headwaters of the Tigris, the Euphrates, and Lake Urmia, a territory of 357,900 km2.
The name is known from the end of VI. BC er (on the maps of the largest historians and geographers of antiquity, Armenia is marked along with Persia, Syria and other ancient states; maps of Homer, Hecatey of Miletus, Ptolemy and many others are indicative) when Armenia is marked as a satrapy of the Persian Empire.
After the collapse of the empire of Alexander the Great, the Armenian kingdoms arose: the Ayrarat kingdom and Sophen, then conquered by the Seleucids; after the defeat of the last Romans in the beginning of II. BC er there were three Armenian kingdoms: Great Armenia, Small Armenia and Sofen.
Under Tigran II, Great Armenia became a huge empire stretching from Palestine to the Caspian Sea; however, Tigran was defeated by the Romans and lost all conquests, except for actually Great Armenia (Armenian Highland between the Euphrates, Kura and Urmia) and Sofeny, a territory of about 220,000 km2. Afterwards
Great Armenia became a buffer state between Parthia and Rome. In 387, the Great Armenia was divided: the main part went to Persia, the smaller part went to Rome, then the Great Armenia was conquered by the Arabs.
In 885, Armenian statehood was restored in the face of the kingdom of Ani. The Armenian kingdoms and principalities of Syunik, Vaspurakan and Khachen were in vassal subordination from the latter.
In the XI century, conquered by Seljuk Turks. In Cilicia, however, Armenian statehood remained until 1375. After the Türkic-Seljuk conquest, and especially after the invasions of the Mongols and Tamerlane, Turkic nomadic tribes settled in large numbers on the lands of Armenia, as a result of which in 1375 the Armenian state was almost destroyed
n order to claim completeness and systematization, Armenians must comply with the following parameters inherent in civilizations:
1. – recognition by other civilizations as an independent subject, which went beyond the framework of the nation, state and territory, by correlation with this civilization;
2. – original, unique potential of the nation, aimed at the future;
3. – the ability to maintain historical heritage, the presence of its own history and a sense of one destiny;
4. – critical mass of carriers of value criteria;
5. – the presence of an elite that is able to reproduce the norms of behavior and value criteria; -the ability to assimilate other people’s standards of behavior.
With the acquisition of statehood in recent history, Armenia has returned to history in the context of the old concept of civilization.
Civilization as a culturological self-identification entity is a dynamically changing system, which means that any civilization is in the process of development or degradation. As we have said above, the essence of civilization is the ability to self-identify, the selection of a constant nucleus, which determines the potential of this civilization.
Armenia is a representative of a once unique civilization, but, today, far from being a civilized nation.
Thus, strong nations are able to assimilate the influences and norms that come from outside, either by transforming and adapting them to their own civilizational essence (core), thereby strengthening, or pushing away alien and capable of destroying it.
The average resident population for 2009 is 3 million 083 thousand people. In terms of population, Armenia ranks 134th. The country has a negative population growth and a very homogeneous national composition, it is the only country of the former USSR with a practically mono-ethnic population (97.9% of Armenians). The largest ethnic minorities of Armenia are Yezidis, Russians, Assyrians, Ukrainians, Kurds, Greeks, Georgians, Belorussians.
In religious terms, the majority (90%) of the population of Armenia are Christians belonging to the Armenian Apostolic Church. An important factor influencing the change in the population of the country is emigration, primarily to Russia.
For weak nations, under the influence of alien norms, a change of core takes place, thereby losing self-identity and assimilating with other civilizations.
Through science and technological progress, we become participants in a powerful globalization process that erases civilization borders, or becomes a lever of control over other civilizations in the hands of one civilization. Today we are witnessing the process of Americanization, mainly through science, the achievements of scientific and technological progress.
Art at a certain historical stage was influenced by major world trends. Today, Armenian art develops under the influence of east and west.
But art acquires significance as a civilization translator, when world masterpieces are born under the influence of civilizational cultural entities. The elite today is divided and unable to develop an integrated system of value criteria and norms of behavior. As a result, mutually exclusive norms of behavior are manifested in a divided society.
By and large, the elite is the main translator of norms and values that are projected into our civilization, and it must ensure their adaptation and act as a definite limiter. The absence of this function among the elites leads to the fact that different standards, often alien to us, are implanted in our life directly, bypassing any restraints, turning Armenia into a province (now we can talk about the trend of becoming a European province).
The Church is the only institution that preserves and can ensure the transmission of a unique, holistic spiritual picture of the world of the Armenians, which has preserved the basic tenets intact for centuries. Historically, the role of the elite in Armenian society has always been performed by representatives of the Armenian church.
Two forces, two opposite beginnings, interbing, intertwining and merging into something new, one, directed the life of Armenia and created the character of its people for thousands of years: the beginning of the West and the beginning of the East, the spirit of Europe and the spirit of Asia.
Putting at the frontier of two worlds, constantly being the arena for the collision of nations, involving the course of events in the greatest historical upheavals, Armenia, by destiny itself, was intended to serve as a conciliator of two different cultures: the one on which the entire Christian West grew Today is represented by the Muslim East.
Armenia is the vanguard of Europe and Asia, this long-proposed formula correctly defines the position of the Armenian people in our world. The historical mission of the Armenian people, prompted by the whole course of its development: to seek and find a synthesis of East and West. And this desire was fully expressed in the artistic creativity of Armenia, in its literature, in its poetry.
Each civilization as a special form of socio-historical development has its own, cultural, value orientations and ideas about truth. What is true for one civilization may be wrong for another, i.e. the criterion of truth is the socio-historical practice, which distinguishes civilizations. The concepts of justice, freedom have different content, and the moral and ethical norms of behavior are completely different, moreover, mutually exclusive.
Demonstrating to the world its own doctrine of the coexistence of civilizations will be the main mission of the Armenian people in the 21st century. The key to the development of this coexistence doctrine is in the famous formula of Blessed Augustine “Unity in the main, freedom in the subordinate and love in everything”.
This is most clearly seen when studying the history of the Armenian church. The church has provided continuity over many centuries, but over the past 100 years, due to historical circumstances, it has been cut off from the general public.
The essence of the history of the Armenian Church comes down to the fact that it has preserved unchanged the basic Gospel doctrines, being saturated with the purest Christian liberalism. In the Armenian Apostolic Church, unlike other Christian movements, there is a minimum of dogma and maximum possibilities for the development of teachings. Due to this, the Armenian church has always been imbued with the spirit of tolerance both for its members and for representatives of other faiths.
Despite the fact that such openness of the church caused her damage and facilitated the propaganda of other churches in the circles of her sons, she “was aware of the disastrous consequences of her tolerance, however, despite this bitter experience, she remained faithful to her sacred rules of theological and church liberalism.
She kept them and keep them intact in the future. And if the Armenian Church succeeds in accomplishing the task of reconciling the churches, which is possible and probable in itself, then it will have the right to be proud of it as deserved glory ”(Archbishop Magakia Ormanyan). The uniqueness of our identity lies in the fact that we went through the tests and left them more viable.
Ultimately, the essence of the test has always been reduced to the unwillingness of Armenians to abandon their basic dogmas, lifestyle and, in general, world view. Paradoxically, the essence of Armenians is that we are thoroughly imbued with an indestructible subtle sense of freedom and justice. There are many myths that do not allow Armenians to understand the essence of our historical mission.
We are trying to prove ourselves that we have outstanding scientists who set the vector in science, that our art formed new directions, that Armenians were at the root of many innovations. Such a mythology is necessary for a nation that is in a survival mode, when it is necessary to find strength, energy, and incentives to fight for the preservation of its identity.
But when it comes to development, such myths can drive us into a mental trap and not allow us to reveal the main essence of the Armenian nation.
A nation that is aware of its historical mission can be considered a civilization, and from this point of view, revealing the historical essence of the Armenian nation reveals its mission before us and answers the question: Why do we still exist and what should we say to the world?
ORIGINE SOURSES- nashaarmenia.info/2019/06/25/история-мировых-цивилизаций-армянск/?
