Transcriber: Luke Civantos Reviewer: Gohar Khachatryan
I'm very excited to be here, proud to be speaking at TEDxYerevan today.
My topic today is archaeological tourism,
which I think has tremendous potential, tremendous potential for Armenia.
Now don't guess what this picture is, don't think about this picture.
(Laughter)
It is not hamburger meat,
it is nothing worse than hamburger meat, I assure you that.
More about this picture in a minute.
What I want to start with is a question,
to set the concepts for my presentation today.
The question is this, how long do you think,
how many years do you think, soft tissue, tissue from a body,
can last in an archaeological setting in a cave.
How many years?
My friend Boris Gasparyan,
who runs the archaeological institute here, he's here today,
tells me that soft tissue normally can last about 500-600 years
in an archaeological setting.
So you can imagine his surprise
when Boris and his team open up a skull,
that they found at an archaeological site here in Armenia,
and out drops brain tissue. Brain tissue from a skull
that Boris and his team found in the Areni Cave in Vayots Dzor Marz
here in Armenia.
And they found this skull on the six thousand year level.
So what does that mean? That means that this brain tissue
that normally would only last about 500, 600 years in such a setting,
somehow lasted six thousand years in the Areni cave.
There’s something really unique happening here in Armenia,
and the Armenian people need to know about it;
the world needs to know about it.
So how do we, how does our media take better advantage
of these archaeological sites, and archaeological treasures,
both in the area of education and research,
but also in economics and tourism?
So we have some tourists here,
standing in the entrance of Areni cave.
Well, actually a handsome man in the middle is Boris, and not a tourist.
So we have these tourists standing
at the entrance to the Areni cave on this dirt path.
But what do you see in front of that dirt pathway?
You see various vessels and artifacts,
that I understand are about 5000 years old, maybe 5500.
So the danger is that everybody that walks on that pathway
is going to damage some of these artifacts below.
One possible solution is to install an elevated walkway
along the wall behind those tourists,
and more about that elevated walkway in a minute.
5500 year old shoe from the Areni Cave
is currently on exhibit at the History Museum here in Yerevan.
Now, Nike Shoe Company does not know about this shoe yet,
(Laughter)
and I think when Nike finds out about this shoe,
it’s going to make a great commercial.
But most Armenians know about this shoe.
But the shoe is really something much more than a single artifact
that brings a few hundred more people to the History Museum every year.
If you go to the source of this shoe, to the Areni Cave,
you will really see, experience, and feel something really amazing.
Here’s Dina, I think she’s here today.
Here’s Dina. Dina’s on the research team here.
She’s the one, I think it was in 2008,
who uncovered that shoe in that small pit in the first level of the Areni Cave.
She uncovered the shoe in 2008, but the cave, the Areni Cave
has so much more to offer than the shoe,
and there’s so much in the Areni Cave,
so much in the cave that hasn’t even been explored yet.
The potential is really immense.
In other highlights of the cave, this one’s also pretty well-known.
This is the 6000 year old wine-making equipment from the cave,
6000 year old wine vessels.
And where the white arrow is where the people would stomp on the grapes
and the juice would run down into that vessel,
that round vessel in the middle.
And then the juice would be fermented
and stored in the vessels along the outside.
6000 year old equipment.
That means that these vessels have been there since about 4000 BC.
4000 BC is 3000 years before ancient Hellenic Greece.
So that means that in this part of the region, this part of Armenia,
there was a civilization and culture
that was sophisticated enough to make wine and to enjoy wine,
3000 before ancient Hellenic Greece.
Another wine story from Areni. This is the Zorah wine.
You probably know Bloomberg recently named
this Armenian red wine, Zorah wine,
one of the top ten wines in the world.
(Applause)
The vineyard here is in the shadows of the Areni Cave,
those hills beyond the vineyard is where the Areni Cave is.
Zorik, the Italian Armenian who runs the vineyard and the winery,
is committed to making this wine using traditional Armenian methods,
the grapes and the vessels, the ceramic vessels
that we saw in the earlier slide.
Now Zorik is becoming pretty famous now, right?
He’s got one of the top ten wines in the world.
So he is often invited now to wine-tasting events all over Europe.
He goes to these events now, and as soon as these European vintners,
who've been making wine for generations hear
that Zorik’s first vintage was in 2010, three years ago, 2010,
they turn up their nose at this newcomer to the wine-making business.
Zorik has a response now when he’s teased this way.
He now says I may be the newest wine-maker in this room today,
but my next door neighbor in the Areni Cave is the oldest wine-maker in the world.
(Applause)
So why don’t more people come here?
Why aren’t there students, PhD students,
researchers, and tourists all over this country?
There’s a lot of reasons, there’s limited access –
some of these sites are hard to reach, there’s not much promotion going on,
there’s inadequate resources, there are lots of reasons.
But one specific reason I want to show with this slide,
again from the Areni Cave.
This is also the 6000 year old level.
I think on the right side of your screen
you can probably see a couple of vessels
that are a part of that wine-making equipment.
But what do you see on the left side of that screen, in that red circle?
I see a passageway that is totally filled with dirt and rocks.
There’s no way to know what’s on the other side of that passageway
because the excavators, the archaeological teams here,
can’t continue their digging in Areni Cave because they can’t get the dirt out.
When you dig, you’ve got to do something with the dirt.
They can't get the dirt out without walking on that pathway
and damaging those artifacts below.
I see on the other side of that passageway
a big cavern with goodness knows what kind of treasures,
what kind of artifacts there might be on the other end of that pathway.
But right now we have no way to know
what’s on the other end of that passageway.
Armenia needs to fix this,
and Armenia’s international partners would like to help.
Here’s Boris again, this is at the institute,
the Archaeological Institute here in downtown Yerevan.
And he’s showing off some of the treasures from the Areni Cave.
In fact, there are hundreds of artifacts and treasures
that have been excavated from sites all over Armenia,
that are currently sitting in cardboard boxes and shoe boxes,
wrapped in tissue paper in warehouses and basements,
because there’s no place to display these treasures.
There’s no place to do research on them,
there’s no place to display them in institutes
and small buildings in downtown Yerevan.
So here’s Boris, he’s showing off this textile.
This is a 6000 year old textile from the Areni Cave.
It has no business being around so long, six thousand years.
So he’s describing to his visitors --
he’s had some visitors from the Smithsonian Institution
in Washington, D.C. and Carnegie Corporation in New York,
some really important potential international partners,
they are very interested in what the institute is doing.
So he describes the preserving capabilities of the cave.
He says the secret is a unique combination of temperature, humidity, and dung.
Dung, yes, cow and goat dung,
which apparently has remarkable preservative properties.
My wife Libby is trying to get Boris to bottle up some of that dung
(Laughter)
into a commercial face cream.
(Laughter)
We’ll see how that sells, Boris, we’ll see how that sells.
(Laughter)
Areni Cave is not alone, there are many sites all over Armenia.
This is a place called Kakavadzor,
it’s a newly discovered site, it’s on the road to Gyumri.
A magnificent open site, it’s a promontory,
I hope you can see on the picture
there are magnificent gorges on both sides.
And the promontory points directly at Mountain Ararat
a magnificent, a magnificent sight.
And the promontory is full of dozens of altars
and different kinds of carved-out beds you can see here.
Sacrifices, rituals, goodness knows what these were used for
because this site has not been excavated at all.
And look at the picture on the right.
The picture on the right are two magnificent snake petroglyphs
on flat stone in somebody’s driveway.
There’s a house at the entrance to this promontory
and these petroglyphs are sitting right on the ground,
I guess this guy drives through these things
on his way to work every day.
Where else but Armenia would you have two snake petroglyphs,
from, I don’t know, 5500 years old,
that’s what this site is, in somebody’s driveway.
It’s really quite, quite amazing.
So, Kakavadzor, newly discovered site,
5500 years old, no excavations yet.
University students, PhD students, universities, all over the world
would salivate to have a chance to work with the team
from the institute to excavate this site.
What can we do to make this happen, how can we make this happen?
Wait, hold on, there’s more.
I hope you can see this picture. This site is in Armavir Marz.
Some of us recently visited this site, it’s from Google Earth,
the picture is from thousands of feet up,
I don’t know how far away the camera is.
So you can tell this is a huge structure,
a tremendous structure, stone structure. 4500 years old or so.
It’s used for hunting, or was used for hunting.
You can maybe see on the right side of your screen an opening
which is where the people would entice or drive the animals into that opening.
The animals would instinctively run along the inside of that stone wall
and at this point on the left side of your screen there’s a big pit.
Animals fall into the pit, whalla, dinner.
This is a hunting structure from 4500 years old
on a hillside in Armavir Marz.
There are also petroglyphs all over.
As exciting as this site is to see,
there’s something even more exciting about it.
This site and the analysis of this site is changing the way,
changing the conversation among anthropologists and archaeologists
about the origin of human communities. It’s a pretty big deal.
Why did people come together into communities or villages,
why did they start working together?
The traditional thought is maybe it was the introduction of agriculture.
It caused hunters and gatherers to come together into a village.
But this demonstration,
this was before the introduction of agriculture in this region,
this demonstrates that people worked together on communal projects
in communities of one sort or another,
before the introduction of agriculture is changing, potentially changing,
a revolutionary idea, changing the way
anthropologists are looking at this really important point.
And this site is right in our backyard. in Armavir Marz.
There are many other sites, there’s Ukhtasar mountain,
there’s Sisian, magnificent petroglyphs all over,
just to demonstrate again that the potential is enormous.
There are sites all over Armenia,
a dozen or so that are being worked on now,
many more than that not being worked on.
The potential is really enormous.
So here’s my challenge, the challenge is the Embassy,
we’ve just now received from Washington about $50,000
to begin work on Areni Cave, working with the Institute.
We’re going to put a perimeter fence,
protective fence, around the outside of the cave,
we’re going to begin to install that elevated walkway
that we talked about on that earlier slide.
Hopefully it will improve access to the cave,
and that’s a start.
(Applause)
Get more tourists in to appreciate the sites and the cave,
maybe bring more resources to the institute,
and allow the resumption of the excavation,
so we can get the dirt out and see what’s on the other end of that passageway.
So it’s a start.
There’s another important partner that’s been working with the Institute,
Michael Gfoeller, who’s here today with us,
a retired US Ambassador,
he was the Deputy Ambassador.
(Applause)
He was number two here at the US Embassy back in the late 1990s,
and since he left Armenia, he and his brother Joe
have been raising funds for archaeological digs
in the Republic of Armenia.
(Applause)
But they really have been virtually alone in this effort.
There really is nobody else, who has been working insistently
to support and work with the Institute and Boris and his team on his digs.
Other countries about the size of Armenia,
Israel and Cyprus, even little Malta,
have done some pretty good work
to excavate their sites and conserve their sites
and promote their sites for education and tourism.
Why not Armenia? Why not Armenia?
So how can we help?
The Institute is working with traditional partners,
with Embassies and international organizations
and foundations and universities.
And again, making a bit of a start,
doing some important good work.
But there are lots of platforms out there, new creative platforms,
where individuals can contribute to efforts like this.
In fact, Armenia doesn’t make very good use
of any of these platforms right now.
There’s huge potential for Armenia.
Crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, microloans, social entrepreneurship,
huge potential including in this area of archaeology.
And there’s one site that I gather is about to do a campaign,
hopefully pretty soon, in archaeology, a crowdfunding platform.
So my plea to you today,
I hope that everybody today will be leaving Tumo Center,
they will all be committed to doing what we can
through our organizations,
or individually, through one of these crowdfunding sites,
to bring these archaeological treasures to light
and to show off Armenia as an archaeological treasure.
Armenia is starting to do some good work in promoting its religious sites,
its historic sites, its cultural sites.
Why not the archaeological sites?
So again, I hope when we leave here
we do more than just imagine all the great stuff
that you can see at the Areni Cave.
I hope we can go out and we see it ourselves.
And I hope even more importantly
that we bring that story to the world.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)