Deminer Found Ancient Weapons While Clearing War Minefields

David Simonyan spent years hunting for weapons that could kill, but the soil beneath his feet held secrets spanning three millennia.

As a HALO Trust deminer working in Artsakh after the 1990s Nagorno-Karabakh war, Simonyan cleared fields so heavily contaminated with landmines and unexploded ordnance that he describes them as thick as sunflower seeds. Then during one clearance operation in 2003, he unearthed something unexpected: an ancient iron spearhead.

The discovery sparked a realization about the land he was trying to save. Working near the ancient city of Tigranakert, Simonyan found that modern minefields and ancient battlegrounds occupied the exact same terrain.

"The wars have changed, but the idea remains the same," he explains. High ground positions like cliffs have offered defensive advantages for thousands of years, so every army throughout history contested the same strategic locations.

His collection grew to include artifacts from the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. Among his most prized finds were three-winged arrowheads like those mentioned in ancient Armenian legends about the archer Hayk, who defeated the Babylonian king Bel with a single shot.

In late 2004, Simonyan's demining career ended abruptly when a landmine explosion left him severely injured across nearly his entire body. Three years later, he channeled his experience into the documentary "Catharsis," named after the Greek word for cleansing.

"We call the soil 'Motherland' because it is like our parents who provide everything for life," Simonyan says. "To keep it as our Motherland, it must first be healed through demining."

Why This Inspires

Simonyan's mission was always about more than clearing explosives. He saw demining as healing the earth itself, purging the seeds of war so the land could sustain life again.

In September 2023, a massive military attack forced over 100,000 ethnic Armenians, including Simonyan, into sudden exodus. He could carry only a few old photos, letters, and a small portion of his collection to Yerevan.

Today, those rescued artifacts sit on a shelf in his house as the only physical remnants of his life in Artsakh. They represent an archive of a lost homeland, witnesses to thousands of years of human history on contested ground.

The man who once cleared the earth of war's deadly remnants now guards ancient finds to ensure the past survives, even when borders move and populations are displaced.