Instead of “Vannic,” it has been proposed to call the language “Khaldian.” The chief god of the people who spoke the language was Khaldis, and in the inscriptions we find the people themselves described as “the children of Khaldis.” Derivatives from the name are found employed in a geographical sense northward of the region to which the inscriptions belong. Thus the Khaldi “in the neighbourhood of Colchis” are said to have been also called Khaldæi;[134] “Khaldees” are frequently referred to by Armenian writers as living between Trapezont and Batûm, and a Turkish inscription at Sumela shows that as late as the beginning of the fifteenth century Lazistân was still known as Khaldia. That the name was ever applied, however, to the kingdom which had its chief seat at Van is not proved, and it is therefore best to adhere to the term “Vannic,” which commits those who use it to no theory.[135] The decipherment of the Vannic texts has not only led to the discovery of a new language, it has also thrown a flood of light on the early history, geography and religion of the Armenian plateau. The military campaigns of the Assyrian kings had brought it into contact with Assyrian civilization, and in the ninth century before our era a dynasty arose which adopted the literary culture and art of Assyria, and founded a powerful kingdom which extended its sway from Urumia on the east to Malatia on the west, and from the slopes of Ararat and the shores of Lake Erivan to the northern frontiers of Assyria. The main fact which has thus been disclosed is that the Armenians of history--the Aryan tribes, that is to say, who spoke an Indo-European language--did not enter the country and establish themselves in the place of its older rulers before the end of the seventh century before our era. The fall of the Vannic monarchy seems to have coincided with the fall of the Assyrian Empire, with which it had once contended on almost equal terms, and in each case the invasion of the so-called Scythian hordes from the plains of Eastern Europe had much to do with the result. The founders of Armenian civilization and of the cities of the Armenian plateau had no connection with the Indo-European family. Their type of language corresponded with that which distinguishes most of the actual languages of the Caucasus, though no genetic relationship is traceable between them. The break with the past, however, occasioned by the irruption of the Indo-European invaders, was so great that not only did the older language become extinct and forgotten, but even the tradition of the older civilization was also lost. Like the recovery of the Sumerian language and the culture it represented, the recovery of the Vannic language and culture is the revelation of a new world.