Artsakh - Population

Population

Following the modern consensus among western scholars concerning the origin of the Armenian people, they represent a fusion of the mostly non-Indo-European natives of the Armenian Plateau (including Artsakh) and the incoming proto-Armenians, conventionally called the "Armens", who moved eastwards through the Armenian Plateau after the collapse of Urartu in the 6th century BC. According to this theory, from earliest time the Armenian Plateau was inhabited by many ethnic groups. The ethnic character of Artsakh may thus have been originally more diverse than it is now. It may have even been the homeland of the ancient tribes who lived in the region of Arran, although that is not certain.

According to the Encyclopædia Iranica, the proto-Armenians had settled in Artsakh already by the 7th century BC, though until the 6th-5th centuries BC the Armenians in the strict sense must have lived only on the western half of the Armenian Plateau (in areas between Cappadocia, the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the lake of Van). The proto-Armenians came to Artsakh and adjacent mountainous regions (such as Syunik) somewhat later than the central parts of the Armenian Plateau. They intermarried with the pre-Armenian inhabitants to form the present Armenian people.

It is worth nothing that Strabo described Armenia (Artsakh and Utik included) in the 2nd century BC as "monolingual", though this does not necessarily mean that its population consisted exclusively of ethnic Armenians.

By medieval times, from at least the 9th century, the population of Artsakh had a strong Armenian national identity. Its people spoke a local Eastern Armenian dialect, the Artsakhian dialect (today known as the Karabakh dialect), which was mentioned by 7th century grammarian Stepanos Syunetsi in his earliest record of the Armenian dialects