Against the back drop of the continuing exodus from Armenia, President of the Yerevan-based Architecture Research NGO Samvel Karapetyan argues in the following video that emigration is an inseparable part of Armenian history.

Karapetyan argues that while the history of peoples, in general is a history of wars, that of Armenian, in the main, is one of emigration.

As an example, he refers to the emigration of 100,000 Armenian families from Vaspourakan to the Byzatine regions of Caesaria and Sebastia at the behest of Emperor Basil II, who promised them fertle lands to the west.

In Wikipedia we read the follwing regarding this early mass emigration:

In 1021, he also secured the cession of the Kingdom of Vaspourakan by its king, Seneqerim-John, in exchange for estates in Sebasteia. Basil created in those highlands a strongly fortified frontier, which, if his successors had been capable, should have proved an effective barrier against the invasions of the Seljuk Turks.