Tag: Caucasus

Khevsur – Descendants of Crusaders?

My father was reading an over 100 year old book, where he found information about “Kevzor” people living in Kaukasus mountains and with the roots far away from Alsace, today’s France.Khevsureti, Caucasus

This was interesting enough to search for more information. And after a while I found out a Wikipedia article about Khevsureti.

The article tells “There has been a hypothesis, coming from the locals and descriptions by Russian serviceman and ethnographer Arnold Zisserman […], that these Georgian highlanders were descendants of the last European Crusaders.[…] the pure Crusader origin of Khevsurs is not supported by most modern scholars. However, some form of settlement of Crusaders in these areas is possible, as they are mentioned in several manuscripts of the time as participants of several battles against the Muslims in Georgia […], and the fact that some passed through here after the fall of the Holy Land.”

And the crusades reminded me from the medieval Europe and maps from that era. See the map from AD 1160 at Medieval Europe and the Middle East

 

Armenian, the Cradle of Indo-Europeans?

 

Typical Armenian terrain
Typical Armenian terrain

Despite the harshness of winter in most parts, the fertility of the Armenian plateau’s volcanic soil made Armenia one of the world’s earliest sites of agricultural activity. This is the reason that there have been many great civilizations there in the region.

Today the Armenians live there, surrounded by the Caucasus mountains. In Armenia they mostly speak Eastern Armenian. While Western Armenian was the language spoken on the Turkish side of the border and of many people living abroad in diaspora.

The Armenian language is an Indo-European language,

Read more:

PS: To conjugate some sample verbs in Armenian, install Verbix for Windows.

Caucasian Languages

I had one day off from the work and spent some time trying to find websites that I frequently visited 15 years ago. (Regarding this, see another blog post).

Caucasus Mountains, Dagestan, area where Lezgian languages are spoken
Caucasus Mountains, Dagestan, area where Lezgian languages are spoken

Finally I found my way to The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire. On that website I found my way to some minor languages spoken in the Caucasian Mountains. These Lezgian languages today struggle for their lives to survive and keep their own culture.

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