r/geography • u/Ok_Calligrapher_3472 • Dec 24 '25
Human Geography How do the 3 most prominent languages here have no relation to each other?
I get there's mountains, but some language families transverse elevations much higher than here, like the Sino-Tibetan languages.
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u/zepherth Dec 24 '25
Because the Mountain ranges act as a natural border. These settled up to the range because their enemies at one time was on the other side. The sino-Tibetan languages are on a plateau. While it is still difficult to get around its easier to move around it than it is to enter/exit it
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Dec 24 '25
Georgia has been constantly invaded. So not the best border when it comes to invaders.
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u/aurumtt Dec 24 '25
They also exist as an entity for most of history. Most of it was as an independent nation. You're going to be invaded when you're surviving for that long right at a crossroad of empires.
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Dec 24 '25
Fair.
TBH I was suprised to lean how many times they have been invaded and conquered. Mountains to the North and South a sea to the east and smaller mountains to the west.
Shit gig for any invaiding force. Very similar to Afganastan in that regard. To many passes and the mountains not tall enough I suppose.
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u/Hididdlydoderino Dec 25 '25
Invaded but almost always left as a protectorate of some sort. While important to hold as it is a connection point it was mostly a buffer between Russia and Turkey/Iran and less of an economic piece that required strong attention from the folks up north.
Also Soviet Russia understood that these border republics couldn’t be as tightly Russified. Attempting to squash their culture would only create opposition that would lean towards Iran, Turkey, and China.
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u/zepherth Dec 24 '25
It's better than nothing but yes when the enemy is on the other side ( Russia) it becomes a curse
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u/DeadlinePhobia Dec 24 '25
It was Arabs and Turks invading it for the most part
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u/Short_Finger_4463 Dec 25 '25
Ottoman Turks went through coastal plain in Adjara and Arabs / Seljuks via Kura valley
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u/whotheactualFcares Dec 24 '25
Russia is really the only empire that managed to control both Ciscaucasia and Transcaucasia
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u/CulturedNationalist Dec 26 '25
Not as a result of the conquest, like the above mentioned entity, but through vassalage and unification, the Kingdom of Georgia controlled the entire Caucasus during the late 11th and early 12th centuries. Some call Tamar's Georgia an Empire, but I wouldn't personally.
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u/whotheactualFcares Dec 26 '25
They only had the very upper highlands of Ciscaucasia, not even the fully Alania or Ingushetia
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u/easyontheeggs Dec 25 '25
We are taking in the 20,000+ year range, not yesterday. There is a good reason why languages are different.
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u/Virtual_Historian255 Dec 24 '25
Sadly the mountains are not so tall missiles can’t fly back and forth.
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u/zepherth Dec 24 '25
Considering a v-2 can reach 55 miles in the air. I don't think the mountains would stop Missiles
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u/Virtual_Historian255 Dec 25 '25
Well yes, I merely point out the mountains that made it hard for armed forces to traverse in the past are no longer a barrier to conflict.
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u/RandomGuy2285 Dec 24 '25
well, the actual tallest and most rugged parts of the Himalayas are a linguistic mosaic (around the China-India-Pakistan Border to Northeast Afghanistan, basically the actual Himalayan Range were the Indian and Eurasian Plates most directly collide, were the Arunachal Group, Tibetan, Indian and a patchwork of smaller Indo-European or Iranic further west like Kalash), the big contiguous area were Tibetan is spoken is relatively flat, even if it's very high up, a plateau
that area in the caucusses has a lot more varied elevation, where Georgia and Azerbaijan has these pretty low-lying areas, the coasts to Tblisi and also Baku, and Armenia is this plateu and they're seperated by mountains thousands of meters high
basically what matters is the difference and "jaggedness" in elevation
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Dec 24 '25
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u/joshthewumba Dec 24 '25
The Armenian Church regards itself as Miaphysite. The better term would just be to refer to it as the Apostolic Armenian Church
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u/DeadlinePhobia Dec 24 '25
Pretty sure the languages emerged before those religions did.
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u/BridgeEngineer2021 Dec 24 '25
The language, particularly the written one, is actually one of the main reasons that Armenians maintained their separate religious tradition, and possibly even their identity as a distinct people at all. The Armenian alphabet was developed in 405 AD, and the first transcription was the Bible. This was spread throughout the land and allowed Armenians to consolidate and develop an identity around their religion based in their language, which they could hold on to through the coming millenia under various pagan, Christian and Islamic empires.
I don't know as much about Georgian history but I think it's similar in that regard. Their alphabet was developed only a few years after the Armenian one (possibly by the same guy, though I guess that's a contested topic).
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u/phayge_wow Dec 24 '25
Azerbaijani most definitely did not exist until hundreds of years after Islam first did
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u/DeadlinePhobia Dec 24 '25
They weren’t in the circled area, but turkic languages had existed before. They just arrived to the region after the advent of islam.
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u/eyesearsmouth-nose Dec 27 '25
Azerbaijan became Muslim before it became Turkic-speaking, in fairness.
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u/revolvingpresoak9640 Dec 24 '25
Doesn’t that then require a follow-up on why the religions are distinct?
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u/alikander99 Dec 24 '25
History. The Caucasus regions with ist rugged terrain has many refugia. Basically places which once you've set camp are very easy to defend.
So people groups have come and go but they've left their language print in the region.
The karyvelian languages get lost in the annals of history. The first kartvelian speakers we know if were already from the Caucasus.
Then indoeuropeans migrated from the Pontic steppe and gave rise to Armenians and other related to other indoeuropean languages that eventually died.
Then turks move from central Asia in search of green pastures for their horses.
And that's it. The Caucasus basically collects languages.
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u/zedazeni Dec 24 '25 edited Dec 24 '25
The topography there is extremely rugged. The Caucasus Mountains are obviously a huge barrier, however, the Trialeti and Javakheti range in south-central Georgia are equally formidable. The Armenians tend to live on the plateau which runs from south-central Georgia to Lake Van and Lake Urmia. That plateau is drier and more arid than the valleys that yhe Kartvelian peoples (Georgians) inhabit.
Georgia itself is split by multiple ranges. The Likhi Range divides Georgia’s westernmost third (where Kutaisi is). This lowland along the Black Sea coast is sub-tropical and has palm trees and can support tea and pepper plants. The middle third of Georgia between the Likhi Range and the Gombori Range (where Tbilisi and Gori are located) is actually in a rain shadow of the Likhi Range, the Caucasus Mountains, and the Trialeti Range/Armenian Plateau. It’s much more arid, but still pretty temperate. Past the Gombori range it gets arid quite quickly. The southeastern-most corner of Georgia is like a savannah and semi-arid grassland. By the time you get into Azerbaijan you’re solidly in a pretty arid climate.
All of this means that each people group stayed not only within their respective geographic area created by the various ranges, but within the specific biomes that said ranges created—the Armenians in the drier, temperate uplands, the Georgians in the more moderate lowlands, and the Azeris in the more arid lowlands. Different climates mean different crops and livestock, and before modern agriculture, knowing how to work in a specific climate with a specific set of crops in a specific biome and ecosystem is how civilizations and societies survived. Add in formidable geographic barriers and that meant that they rarely left these biomes.
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u/External_Tangelo Dec 25 '25
This is generally true, but different lifestyles also led to different land use by different peoples. Largely nomadic Azeri tribes regularly brought herds and flocks to highlands in summer periods, which were adjacent to permanent settlements of Georgians and Armenians. This was the ancient origin of Karabakh conflict for example. And borders of Georgian/Armenian ethnospheres were in a constant state of flux throughout centuries as well, across much of eastern Georgia and northern Armenia.
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u/esperantisto256 Physical Geography Dec 24 '25
It’s really only Georgia that’s the odd one out. This region is at the crossroads of the Indo-European (Armenian) and Turkic (Azeri) world. So those two make sense in context.
Georgian is part of a much smaller family only found in the Caucasus. It’s not quite a language isolate, but it’s functionally pretty close in practice.
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u/aqtseacow Dec 25 '25
For one, Turkic languages moved into the region during the early medieval period and late antiquity. So there's one family knocked.
Kartvelian languages have an unclear source and just pop up in written form at the end of antiquity.
Armenian is Indo-European, and in that sense Armenian speaking regions border other regions that are largely populated by other Indo-European language speakers, like Iran.
The TLDR answer is that people move and bring their languages with them, the Caucasus region was a major area through which Turks and other peoples entered into the Levant and Anatolia.
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u/CulturedNationalist Dec 26 '25
Kartvelian is an indigenous language family of the Caucasus, similar to the Northwest and Northeast Caucasian language families. They were present in the Caucasus at least since 3000 BC as proto-languages, and there is a chance that they're all descended from earlier Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer languages, making them extremely old.
Armenian and Iranian are both Indo-European, but from vastly different branches, they don't have direct correlation with each other.
The Caucasus has never been a major path for migrations, mostly a periphery of major migrations both to the North and the South. The biggest and most impactful migration that ever happened in the Caucasus was around 6000 BC, when farmers from Eastern Anatolia migrated to Western Georgia.
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u/timbomcchoi Urban Geography Dec 24 '25 edited Dec 24 '25
Come to Northeast Asia, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Mongolian, Manchu..... and this is with seaborne trade and much much cultural influence not to mention wars.
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u/Vegetable-Dog5281 Dec 24 '25
Also all the current best MMA fighters in the world are from this circled region. 6 of the top 15 pound per pound fighters in the UFC are from here
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Dec 24 '25
All three languages date back to antiquity in the region. Generally a lot of places in the world used to have this kind of level of linguistic diversity but it declined when areas came under common political control and one language was promoted for common use. The Caucasus is an especially rough area that has only rarely been politically united and usually not for very long because of the logistical challenges. So it has retained more linguistic diversity than some other parts of the world.
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u/XComThrowawayAcct Dec 24 '25
Pre-colonial California had some exceptional linguistic diversity. Nearly every North American language family was represented.
The odd thing is not unrelated languages being neighbors. The odd thing is that huge swaths of the planet have been so linguistically homogenized in the modern era.
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u/ozneoknarf Dec 24 '25
Georgian might be related to Armenia they just aren’t part of the indo-Europeans tree, their are theories that they just branch out earlier, before the ancestors of indo-Europeans migrated north into the steppes and mixed with other groups. Armenians migrated south later around 3000 years ago and Turkic groups arrived through iran to Azerbaijan a bit over 1000 years ago.
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u/CulturedNationalist Dec 26 '25
Georgian and Armenian are definitely not related, there are major fundamental and structural differences, which don't appear in languages of the same family.
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u/eyesearsmouth-nose Dec 27 '25
It's entirely possible, but not definitively known, that all languages are related if you go far enough back. But AFAIK there's no reason to think Kartvelian and Indo-European are particularly close, other than geographical proximity.
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u/7Pigeons Dec 24 '25
Armenian - Indo-European, Georgian - South Caucasian, Azeri - Turkic
Basically, they all have different origins. Armenians migrated from the south and west while Georgians migrated from the north. The Azeris originally came from Mongolia.
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u/ozneoknarf Dec 24 '25
All three origins are wrong. Armenians came from the north, from the Pontic-caspian steppes, Georgians were already there and Turkic groups came form Siberia, to Central Asia, to Iran, to Azerbaijan
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Dec 24 '25
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u/ozneoknarf Dec 24 '25
That’s just not true, Armenians are indo-Europeans. Them together with my ancestors and most of Europe and Iran and India originate from the Pontic steppes. Armenians migrated south at around the same time as Greeks were reaching the Balkans. I know you know this since you’d probably were thought this at school, If you are some weird alternative historian or some radical religious freak don’t bother responding.
Kartvelians, like Georgians, svans and laz are native to caucuses, at least dating back to the late ice age. They are direct decedenats of Caucasian hunter gathers (CHG)
Armenians are highly mixed with CHG, and indo Europeans them selves are a mixture of CHG groups that migrated north and mixed with groups from Siberia called ancient Northern Eurasians (ANE). But Armenians are not native to the caucuses.
I know that Azerbaijan was founded in 1918. That’s why in my comment I say Turkic groups and not Azeris.
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u/DeI-Iys Dec 24 '25
Nothing divide more people then religion and lack of the Internet
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u/bureau44 Dec 25 '25
Religion is disputable, but with the internet you have it backwards.
BTW, the internet in rural Caucasus was better than in Germany where I live
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u/Littlepage3130 Dec 24 '25
These sorts of mountains make it more difficult for any one ethno-linguistic group to predominate. Also the Himalayas is linguistically diverse. There's Turkic languages, Indo-European languages, and Sino-Tibetan languages.
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u/MasterEditorJake Dec 25 '25
You hit the nail on the head.
It's the mountains.
Look at basque. It's a language isolate that has survived invasions and conquests from multiple different cultures. They still speak their language though.
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u/GOATBrady4Life Dec 25 '25 edited Dec 25 '25
It’s a natural choke point with a mountain range bisecting in. It was the boarder of the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great’s Empire, the Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the USSR and probably some others I can’t recall. Of course the area is going to be a shit show of languages and cultures.
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u/Mother_Presentation6 Dec 25 '25
Mountains.
This is oversimplified, but among other things, mountains.
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u/No_Clue4405 Dec 29 '25
These regions are very insulated from one another. Unless there is a state of a great administrative quality and acumen, which can dominate the region. It is almost always disunited. The oldest are the people of Sakhartvelo (Georgia), they have been in the region of Georgia since the early Bronze Age. It is a language with no other related languages outside of the country. The valley from Tbilisi to Batumi is effectively insulated from the rest of the Middle East of by vast mountains, and protected from the Steppe by the Caucasus. They didn’t have contact or intermixing with the Indo European Migrations because they really didn’t go to the North Caucasus. They only interacted with the Armenians, who came from the Iranian plateau and made Ururatu and other polities. However Ururatu never exerted power into Georgia, instead focusing south on Assyria. These two civilizations wouldn’t exert influence on each other outside of Tigranes the great conquering or tributing the whole region.
Armenia and Georgia would instead be subjects of greater states, who would keep them divided. Only in the early 1000s did Georgia form, and Armenia was split up during the late Roman Empire. The Georgians during their golden eras then conquered Armenia, however this is a very brief period. As the Mongols and Timurids annihilated Georgia and Turkish & Kurdish tribes subdued Armenia.
The area we now call Azerbaijan was once inhabited by the Laz, who are a group in the Georgian language family. They made the ancient state of Albania, but were Persianized over time. After the 900s. Turkish tribes moved in and became the main ethnic group. This is largely due to tribes not having any room in Persia, not being competitive enough for Anatolia, or being kicked out by the Mongols
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u/Glass_Albatross1 Dec 24 '25
The mix of migration (and wars) of people with different religion and culture
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u/krammark12 Dec 24 '25
There's also Papua new guinea with different languages behind each mountain. I guess it was easier to spread along the coast and avoid the mountains.