I finished recently Armenian Origins of Basque: The Linguistic Verdict by Vahan Setyan and found it quite intriguing. So here are some excerpts:
Some images from the book:
I can't really judge how close Basque and Armenian languages are and apart from the mentioned legend that a leader of Basques came from Armenia with his 7 sons there is little to suggest that Basque actually originated from Armenian language. It may just as well be that both languages are derivatives of the Atlantean language or its dialects and both peoples might be survivors of the Flood aka Atlantis destruction (note that present day Basques and Armenians inhabit mountainous regions or highlands).
By the end of the 19th century the English linguist Edward Spencer Dodgson (1857-1922) stumbled on an intriguing discovery. A renowned scholar of Basque studies, Dodgson had begun learning the Armenian language to expand his linguist horizon. The result was quite unexpected: after only two months, Dodgson noted that Armenian and Basque words are practically identical.
In the Village of Isaba he writes down a local legend which said that Isaba was founded by Armenians, who were the first inhabitants of Navarro and ancestors of the Basque. According to the legend, the leader of the Basque people was named Haitor. He came from Armenia with seven sons and in their honor, he founded seven settlements in Navarro. It also said that the Basques' Armenian ancestors knew the secret of metal processing.
He demonstrates that the Armenians founded the city of Tarragona, on the Spanish coast of the Mediterranean.
In his study of the history of Valencia, published in 1610, he writes that following the Flood the patriarch Tubal and his people, who landed on the eastern coast of Spain, spoke Armenian. Furthermore, Escolano describes the precise locations where legend says the first Armenian inhabitants of Spain were buried. Today those locations, mainlyin Catalonia, comprise a sting of churches, indicating that these places have been deemed sacred since ancient times.
The scientists have developed the most complete list to date of Basque linguist parallels, including close to 1,000 shared words and grammatical elements. Indeed, research has demonstrated that one can form a great number of sentences in either Armenian or Basque that would be mostly understood by speakers of either language.
The Armenian and Basque-Country highlands share toponymic words, In the past, such parallels were not to hold any scientific interest, based on the fact that groups of regions shared words that sounded the same but different meanings. However, the Armenian-toponymic parallels have an important peculiarity: in most cases they mean the same thing.
As the archeological evidence points out to the appearance of the Armenoids on the Pyrenean Peninsula in the middle of the third millennium BC, it would be only logical to assume that the Basques are Armenoid in origin. The hypothesis is further bolstered by recent genetic research, which brings to this story an interesting and unexpected twist. It is a known fact that the Armenians have a marrow-donor problem. In other words, Only an Armenian marrow can be transplanted in an Armenian person. That is why scientists have been busy researching for donor tissue compatible with Armenians. What they have discovered is that Basque marrow-tissue composition is the closest to the Armenian one.
For instance, in the village of Isba he discovered a local legend about how the village was founded by the Annenians, the first inhabitants of Navarra, who were considered as the ancestors of Basque people. The legend speaks of Haytor, as the leader of Basque, who arrived there from Armenia with his seven sons. Only in Armenian haytor means "Armenian grandchild".
It can be argued that Basque etymological root is 'eusk' and is directly associated with the Armenian term - 'vosk' and 'voski'- as in "gold". The Armenian term - 'voskan', meaning, "having gold" is parallel with Baske - Baskon - Vaskon - morphology.
Further doubt was raised between Basque and Georgian parallels when lexical coincidences were noticed. Cognates with Basque have been sought among several languages, although a genetic relationship between the Northern and Kartvelian groups remains unproven (Kerziouk, 2015). Moreover, in numerous cases proto-Basque forms have not been matched with proto-Georgian forms, making the coincidences anachronistic.
The Carpathian Mountain is more than a 1500 km mountain range that seems like an extensive 'wall barrier'. Its etymology is derived from Annenian - 'kar' + 'pat', literally meaning 'stone wall' or 'rock wall' and the relief map of the mountain range reveals this description.
Our biggest concern about his paper (Campbell, 2007) was:
The omission of evidence that would point Etruscan to Armenian (Ellis,1861), in his Armenian Origins of the Etruscans, illustrating a far older relationship than its association with Greek. "...Thracians were themselves from the Caspian to the Alps and Tyrrhenian Sea, and carrying an Armenian dialect into Etruria and Rhoetia." (Ellis (1870). Asiatic Affinities of Old Italians, p. 4.)
It is not surprising that Ellis (1886) examined the associations between Basque and Etruscan with the utility of Armenian elements. He argued that a language akin to the Armenian was used in Etruria and the Etruscans, derived from Lydia. He further posited that "the Armenians, like the Celts, are now few in number. They belong once to a longer extent of a country where they spread westward from Armenia to Italy under the names of Phrygians, Thracians Pelasgians, Etruscans and also spread to other locations.
H.V. Hilprecht (1859-1925), a German-American Assyriologist who conducted extensive excavations and interpretations of Hittite inscriptions said: "Before we were able to make any definite statement as to the reading of the inscriptions, we could have surmised that the Hittite language was Armenian. This is a surmise no longer; the actual reading of the inscriptions has transformed it into a certainty. For almost everything that we know in the Hittite tongue is Armenian.
We certainly can notice that the Araratian Kingdom (Urartu) was the direct continuation of the Kingdom of Mitanni and in the same geographical vicinity. Urartian ancient texts and the Urartian vocabulary reveal that 70% of the root words are Armenian words. We can accept the notion that the grammar of any language changes over the time, but the pronunciation less so, leaving Armenian and Biainian (Urartian) pronunciations intact and being the same.
Ayvazyan (2015) found that a comparison of the Biainian (Urartian) and Armenian languages revealed that (a) the larger part of the Biainian lexicon that has reached us and is comprehensible has its parallel in Armenian, (b) the majority of those common words (roots) are native to Armenian being of IE origin in its volume and linguistic value, (c) the Armenian constituent represents the base of Biainian and it cannot be the result of borrowings and interactions and (d) a certain stratum of Hurrian exists both in the Biainian lexicon and some grammatical elements which, nevertheless, concedes both quantitatively and qualitatively to the Armenian language.
Interestingly, the methods and works of Martinez-Areta (2013) have revealed that the sound correspondences for all consonants and vowels in a wide range of roots, stems, and words, including basic vocabulary indicate ProtoBasque (PB) and Proto-Indo-European (PIE) to be related. More accurately, not the suggestion of PB descending from PIE, but the hypothesis that two ancient languages descend from the same, more ancient mother language.
Leila Stepanian, Professor of Armenian language in Armenia, has found extensive parallels of Armenian linguistic strata within Polynesian languages.
According to Michelena (1964), the Aquitanian words constitute the most ancient testimony of the Basque language. Trask (1995, 1997) assert that "probably all Basque scholars now accept that Basque descended more or less directly from Aquitanian." Campbell (2008) provides a list of Aquitanian words to compare Basque such as Aq. arixo "oak" and Basq. 'haritz' "oak", and Aq. ausci "gold" and Basq. 'euske(ra)' "gold". That is indeed interesting because in Armenian harich means "oak" and voski means "gold". Thus, we have Arm. harich - Aq. arixo - Basq. haritz and the Arm. voksi - Aq. ausci - Basq. euske(ra) connection, a critical dimension that is vital for consideration...
Aquitanian is to be the language that either Basque descended from or Aquitanian and Basque shared a common source (see Trask 1995, Trask 1997), where Luis Michelena and Gorrochategui (1985,1989) also found Aquitanian-Iberian connection that could be shared with Basque. Now, Pyrenees hold a key in all this because the majority of the of Aquitanian inscriptions that have been found north of the Pyrenees were of Aquitanian mold whereas those that werefoundin the southern territory were Basque (Vasconic).
Greeks called the 'Pelasgians' as the people who ruled the lands before they moved in the Aegean. Naturally, the original Pelasgians would not speak the Hellenic language. One of the biggest credits given to the Pelasgians is their establishment of the Mycenaean Civilization 4000 years ago.The problem is that no etymological explanation is satisfactory or even comes close to explaining even the name of these people. Even the Greeks mentioned that the Pelasgians did not speak Greek. Various have considered the Pelasgians culture to be Neolithic... Greeks in their writing do show their admiration to the Pelasgian civilization...
We certainly can argue that the affinities that have been found between Armenians, Pelasgians, Lydians, Phrygians and Etruscan by several historians and linguists including Ellis (1861) and Drews (1994) and they should not be overlooked.
Some images from the book:
I can't really judge how close Basque and Armenian languages are and apart from the mentioned legend that a leader of Basques came from Armenia with his 7 sons there is little to suggest that Basque actually originated from Armenian language. It may just as well be that both languages are derivatives of the Atlantean language or its dialects and both peoples might be survivors of the Flood aka Atlantis destruction (note that present day Basques and Armenians inhabit mountainous regions or highlands).