Bolivia

A link between Urartu and Bolivia?

A suspected link exists between Ur as in the Uru people (which means People of the Dawn) of the Bolivian Altiplano and Lake Uru Uru; and Ur as in the city of that name and early peoples of the Near East Mesopotamian region, presently Iraq.

Heyerdahl quotes the early Sumerians coming from Dilmun which he identifies with the island of Bahrein. Another Dilmun exists near Mt Ararat and Lake Van on the shores of Lake Urumia in present day Iran near the border with Turkey. It was near here that the fossilised remains of a possible giant reed ship 500 ft in length were found, suggesting that this was indeed Noah’s Ark. Since this region is several thousand feet above sea-level, an alternative to the flood theory might be that the reed ships were built locally and used on either Lake Van or Lake Urumia.

There are many similarities between the people and region of Urartu (Armenia) and the people and region of the Altiplano. An extract is given below of details of the Urartu region and these similarities will be familiar to those who know the Uru and Chipaya regions of the Altiplano.

From The Penguin Encyclopedia of Ancient Civilisations, Urartu and Armenia

"Urartu is the Assyrian name for the Armenian province and lofty mountain which we call Ararat"……… "there existed a flourishing Bronze Age civilisation on the territory of present –day Armenia from about 3,000BC onwards – long before the Urartians or the Armenians appeared in history…….

The core of both Urartu and ancient Armenia takes in the Lake Van area, the middle Araxes valley, and also the mighty double peak of Mount Ararat and the upper reaches of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates…. Most of the area is high plateau or table land, cut up by enormous mountains, many being extinct volcanoes more than 10,000 ft high……Parts of Armenia, notably the Araxes valley and the Van region, are incredibly beautiful and fertile. This gives some encouragement to the view that Armenia was the site of the biblical Garden of Eden. Certainly it can be said that the story of Noah’s ark landing on Mount Ararat has some historical justification of a symbolic kind, since a number of animals, birds, and useful plants, including the vine, developed from species still extant in Armenia and the Caucasus……..Much of the highland zone of Armenia is virtually uninhabitable, except by nomad shepherds seeking summer pasture for their flocks and herds. This windswept region, mostly over 5,000ft above sea level, has a harsh climate, and snow lies there for seven or eight months of the year. The findings of archaeology indicate that the climate was milder and moister in ancient times. …….The country is often shaken by destructive earthquakes. The subsoil is rich in metals and minerals, including gold, silver, copper and iron, and there are important salt mines. There are large supplies of a hard volcanic rock called obsidian, formed from dark vitreous lava, and much used by Stone Age man for making implements.

A notable geographic feature in northeastern Armenia is the enormous alpine Lake Sevan (Lake Van) surrounded by a ring of mountains and lying some 6,000ft above sea level. ……Colossal irrigation works and fortifications bear witness to the power and resources of the Urartian rulers, who assumed the title ‘king of kings’…….The local inhabitants dwelt in beehive-shaped houses and sometimes the dwellings were rectangular in ground plan……the local people benefited from extensive public works (particularly irrigation)….the Urartians were small in stature…..besides gold and silver, Urartu possessed rich deposits of iron, copper and tin…..around 400 BC they lived in partly subterranean houses cleverly designed to exclude the winter frost and snow………From the early Bronze Age onwards, the inhabitants of the Armenian lands placed themselves at the forefront of ancient technological development, notably in the fields of ceramics and metallurgy….The burnished pottery is decorated with imaginative motifs in the form of spirals and other geometric designs…The Urartians were expert at carving large blocks of stone which could be fitted neatly together, even without the use of mortar."…………………..