An article in the New York Times this week quoted the latest genome analysis proving the date of birth of Armenia claimed by a former Armenian historian.

“Moses of Khoren, historian of the fifth century, wrote that his native Armenia was established in 2492 BC, a date usually considered legendary although he claimed to have traveled to Babylon and consulted old documents. But is he lucky or he really had access to useful data because a new genome analysis suggests that this date is entirely plausible, “wrote Nocholas Wade in the New York Times on March 10.

According to the article, geneticists have scanned the genomes of 173 Armenians from Armenia and Lebanon and compared them with those of 78 other people around the world.

“They found that the Armenians are a mixture of ancient populations whose descendants now live in Sardinia, Central Asia and many other regions. This mixture occurred from 3000 to 2000 BC have calculated geneticists which coincides with the date proposed by Moses of Khoren for the foundation of Armenia, “says the article.

“This study confirms the DNA in outline much of what we know about Armenian history,” says Hovann Simonian, a historian of Armenia affiliated with the University of Southern California by city The New York Times.

“Towards the end of the Bronze Age, when the mixture was underway, there was considerable movement of peoples caused by increased trade, war and population growth. After 1200 BC, the civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age have suddenly collapsed, an event that appears to have caused the isolation of Armenians by other populations. No significant mixing with other people after this date can not be detected in the genomes Armenians say geneticists “according to the New York Times.

“The isolation was probably supported by many characteristic aspects of Armenian culture. Armenians have a language and a distinctive alphabet, and the Armenian Apostolic Church was the first branch of Christianity to be established as a state religion in 301, before the Roman Empire in the year 380 “adds the article states that” researchers also see a genetic divergence signal that developed there about 500 years between the Western and Eastern Armenians. The date corresponds to the onset of wars between the Ottoman and Safavid dynasties and the division of the Armenian population between the Turkish and Persian empires. “

“The genetics team, led by Marc Haber and Chris Tyler-Smith of the Sanger Institute near Cambridge, England, see the isolated populations like the Armenians as a way to reconstruct the history of the people.”

“The Armenians have 29 percent of their DNA ancestry with Otzi, a man whose mummy 5300 years emerged in 1991 from an Alpine glacier. Other genetically isolated populations of the Middle East, as Cypriots, Sephardic Jews and Lebanese Christians also have many ancestry with the Iceman while other Middle Easterners as Turks, Syrians and Palestinians, much less. This indicates that the Armenians and other isolated populations are closer than the present inhabitants of the Middle East Neolithic farmers who brought agriculture in Europe there are about 8,000 years. “

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