Armenians

Armenians are an ethnic group native to the Armenian Highlands of the South Caucasus and eastern Anatolia, with their own distinct alphabet, created around 405 CE by Mesrop Mashtots, and the Armenian Apostolic Church, one of the oldest national churches, adopted as a state religion by the Kingdom of Armenia in 301 CE. The Armenian Genocide of 1915 to 1923, carried out by the Ottoman government, killed a substantial share of the Armenian population and scattered survivors across the Middle East, Europe and the Americas, so that a large global diaspora today outnumbers the population of the modern Republic of Armenia itself. Armenian communities remain prominent in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Russia, France and the United States, and Armenian identity is closely tied to a continuous literary, architectural and liturgical tradition dating back over 1,500 years.