4100 BC to 1300 BC

Shoes, wine and the highlands

People have farmed the Armenian highlands for thousands of years. In the Areni-1 cave, in today's Vayots Dzor province, archaeologists found a leather shoe about 5,500 years old and one of the oldest known wineries. From about 3500 BC the Kura-Araxes culture spread across the region. Hittite texts of the fourteenth century BC mention a land called Hayasa nearby.