Mythologies of the Kartvelian Tribes

The Georgians,or Kartvelians (/kɑːrtˈvɛliənz/; Georgian: ქართველები, romanized: kartvelebi, pronounced [kʰaɾtʰʷelebi]), are a nation and Caucasian ethnic group native to present-day Georgia and surrounding areas historically associated with the Georgian kingdoms. Significant Georgian diaspora communities are also present throughout Russia, Turkey, Greece, Iran, Ukraine, the United States, and the European Union. Georgians arose from Colchian and Iberian civilizations of classical antiquity; Colchis was interconnected with the Hellenic world, whereas Iberia was influenced by the Achaemenid Empire until Alexander the Great conquered it. In the early 4th century, the Georgians became one of the first to embrace Christianity and now the majority of Georgians are Orthodox Christians, with most following their national Georgian Orthodox Church, although there are small Georgian Catholic and Muslim communities as well as a significant number of irreligious Georgians. Located in the Caucasus, on the continental crossroads of Europe and Asia, the High Middle Ages saw Georgian people form a unified Kingdom of Georgia in 1008 AD, the pan-Caucasian empire, later inaugurating the Georgian Golden Age, a height of political and cultural power of the nation. This lasted until the kingdom was weakened and later disintegrated as the result of the 13th–15th-century invasions of the Mongols and Timur, the Black Death, the Fall of Constantinople, as well as internal divisions following the death of George V the Brilliant in 1346, the last of the great kings of Georgia.

The Kartvelian languages (/kɑːrtˈvɛliən, -ˈviːl-/ kart-VEL-ee-ən, -⁠VEEL-; Georgian: ქართველური ენები, romanized: kartveluri enebi; also known as South Caucasian, Kartvelic, and Iberian language) are a language family indigenous to the South Caucasus and spoken primarily in Georgia. There are approximately 5 million Georgian language speakers worldwide, with large groups in Russia, Iran, the United States, the European Union, Israel, and northeastern Turkey. The Kartvelian family has no known relation to any other language family, making it one of the world's primary language families. The most widely spoken of these languages is Georgian. The earliest literary source in any Kartvelian language is the Old Georgian Bir el Qutt inscriptions, written in ancient Georgian Asomtavruli script at the once-existing Georgian monastery near Bethlehem, dated to c. 430 AD. Georgian scripts are used to write all Kartvelian languages. Georgian is the official language of Georgia (spoken by 90% of the population) and serves as its main language for literary and business use. It is written with an original and distinctive alphabet, and the oldest surviving literary text dates from the 5th century AD. The old Georgian script seems to have been derived from the Greek script, but this is not certain. Mingrelian has been written with the Georgian alphabet since 1864, especially in the period from 1930 to 1938, when the Mingrelians enjoyed some cultural autonomy, and after 1989. The Laz language was written mainly between 1927 and 1937, and now again in Turkey using the Latin alphabet. Laz, however, is disappearing as its speakers are integrating into mainstream Turkish society.

This study re-examines the linguistic phylogeny of the South Caucasian linguistic family (aka the Kartvelian linguistic family) and attempts to identify its Urheimat. We apply Bayesian phylogenetics to infer a dated phylogeny of the South Caucasian languages. We infer the Urheimat and the reasons for the split of the Kartvelian languages by taking into consideration (1) the past distribution ranges of wildlife elements whose names can be traced back to proto-Kartvelian roots, (2) the distribution ranges of past cultures and (3) the genetic variations of past and extant human populations. Our best-fit Bayesian phylogenetic model is in agreement with the widely accepted topology suggested by previous studies. However, in contrast to these studies, our model suggests earlier mean split dates, according to which the divergence between Svan and Karto-Zan occurred in the early Copper Age, while Georgian and Zan diverged in the early Iron Age. The split of Zan into Megrelian and Laz is widely attributed to the spread of Georgian and/or Georgian speakers in the seventh-eighth centuries CE. Our analyses place the Kartvelian Urheimat in an area that largely intersects the Colchis glacial refugium in the South Caucasus. The divergence of Kartvelian languages is strongly associated with differences in the rate of technological expansions in relation to landscape heterogeneity, as well as the emergence of state-run communities. Neolithic societies could not colonize dense forests, whereas Copper Age societies made limited progress in this regard, but not to the same degree of success achieved by Bronze and Iron Age societies. The paper also discusses the importance of glacial refugia in laying the foundation for linguistic families and where Indo-European languages might have originated.

Kartvelian languages, family of languages including Georgian, Svan, Mingrelian, and Laz that are spoken south of the chief range of the Caucasus. A brief treatment of Kartvelian languages follows. For full treatment, see Caucasian languages. Of the Kartvelian language family, only Georgian, the official language of Georgia, has an ancient literary tradition. Georgian dates to the 5th century AD. The Georgian written form is also used by speakers of the other languages, which are nonliterate. Some scholars consider Mingrelian and Laz to be dialects of a single language rather than independent languages. The linguistic characteristics of South Caucasian languages indicate descent from a common protolanguage. The phonology of Kartvelian languages is fairly uniform, though Svan has several distinctive vowels. Other grammatical characteristics—including the systems of word inflection, derivation, and syntax, as well as a common vocabulary—also exhibit a great correspondence. From these common features, linguists have postulated a Proto-Kartvelian language with certain features that are strikingly parallel to Indo-European. They have further concluded that Svan, which retains a number of archaic structural features, was separated from the other three languages at a fairly early stage in their development.

Georgian mythology (Georgian: ქართული მითოლოგია, romanized: kartuli mitologia) refers to the mythology of pre-Christian Georgians (/kʌrtˈvɛliənz/; Georgian: ქართველები, romanized: kartvelebi, pronounced [ˈkʰaɾtʰvelebi]), an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group native to Georgia and the South Caucasus. The mythology of the Kartvelian peoples is believed by many scholars to have formed part of the religions of the kingdoms of Diauehi, Colchis and Iberia. Later influences include the mythologies of the Ancient Greeks, the Vainakh peoples and Iranians – the last-named comprising both the belief systems of the Northern Iranian nomad Scythians and Sarmatians (still preserved to some extent in the mythology of their descendants the Ossetians) and that of the Zoroastrian religion of the Ancient Persian empire, which has left an enduring legacy among the nations of the Caucasus. Georgian myths and legends are preserved mainly as popular tales, many of them eventually fusing with Christian legends after the Christianization of Georgia seventeen centuries ago. The evangelizing of Georgia, however, was far from uniform. While the lowland populations embraced Christianity in the fifth century, the highlanders of the mountain valleys in the Greater Caucasus range were converted some ten centuries later – and only superficially. Survivals of pagan beliefs and practices in the Georgian plains are thus, understandably, heavily influenced by Christianity, lacking in mythological unity and essentially folkloric. The mountain Georgians, on the other hand, preserved a rich and well-organized [pagan] religious system to the beginning of the twentieth century, with differentiated cults that continued to be productive [thanks largely to the persistence of] a priestly class with an orally-transmitted body of knowledge.