Prehistory of Iran
Encyclopedia
The prehistory of Iran could be divided to Paleolithic, Epipaleolithic, Neolithic, and Chalcolithic periods as follow:

Paleolithic

One of the potential routes for early human migrations toward southern and eastern Asia is Iran, a country characterized by a wide range of geographic variation and resources, which could support early groups of hominins who wandered into the region. Evidence for the presence of these early populations in Iran includes sorne stone artifacts discovered From gravel deposits along the Kashafrud
Kashafrud
Kashafrud Basin is an archaeological site in Iran, known for the Lower Palaeolithic artifacts collected there; these are the oldest-known evidence for human occupation of Iran.,...

 River Basin in eastern Iran, the Mashkid and Ladiz Rivers in the southeast, the Sefidrud River in the north, the Mahabad
Mahabad
-Culture:Muhammad Qazi translated more than 70 important literary works into Persian. Other writers and poets have hailed from Mahabad in the 19th and 20th century including Wafaei , Hejar , Hêmin , Abdorrahamn Zabihi and Giw Mukriyani...

 River in the northwest, and some surface occurrences and isolated finds From the west and northwestern parts of the country.

The main known early human occupation sites in Iran are: Kashafrud
Kashafrud
Kashafrud Basin is an archaeological site in Iran, known for the Lower Palaeolithic artifacts collected there; these are the oldest-known evidence for human occupation of Iran.,...

 in Khorasan, Mashkid and Ladiz in Sistan, Shiwatoo in Kurdistan, Ganj Par
Ganj Par
Ganj Par is a Lower Paleolithic site located in the Gilan province in northern Iran.Located on an old western terrace of the Sefīd-Rūd River, the site was discovered by a team of archaeologists from the Center for Paleolithic Research of the National Museum of Iran in 2002.The Lower Paleolithic...

 in Gilan, Darband Cave
Darband Cave
Darband Cave is a Lower Paleolithic site in the Gilan Province in northern Iran, located on the north side of a deep tributary canyon of the Siahrud River, a tributary of the Sefīd-Rūd River that flows into the Caspian Sea....

 in Gilan, Khaleseh in Zanjan, Gakia in Kermanshah, Pal Barik in Ilam. These sites fall between one million years ago to 200,000 years ago.

Mousterian
Mousterian
Mousterian is a name given by archaeologists to a style of predominantly flint tools associated primarily with Homo neanderthalensis and dating to the Middle Paleolithic, the middle part of the Old Stone Age.-Naming:...

 Stone tools made by Neanderthal
Neanderthal
The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia...

 man have also been found in various parts of the country.There are more cultural remains of Neanderthal
Neanderthal
The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia...

 man dating back to the Middle Paleolithic
Middle Paleolithic
The Middle Paleolithic is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle Paleolithic in African archeology. The Middle Paleolithic and the Middle Stone Age...

 period, which mainly have been found in the Zagros region and fewer in central Iran at sites such as Shanidar, Kobeh, Kunji, Bisetun, Qaleh Bozi
Qaleh Bozi
Qaleh Bozi is a complex of caves sites located about 25 km south-southwest of Isfahan, Iran; northeast of Dizicheh and north of Nekouabad and Hassanabad villages. The sites include two rockshelters and a cave located at altitudes between 1750 to 1810 m above sea level at 32° 24' N 51° 33' E...

, Tamtama, Warwasi
Warwasi
Warwasi is a Paleolithic rockshelter site located at north of Kermanshah in western Iran. It was excavated by Bruce Howe under direction of late Robert Braidwood in the 1960s. This site contains a rich archaeological sequence from Middle Paleolithic to late Epipaleolithic.-References:Braidwood,...

.

Evidence for Upper Paleolithic
Upper Paleolithic
The Upper Paleolithic is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. Very broadly it dates to between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, roughly coinciding with the appearance of behavioral modernity and before the advent of...

 and Epipaleolithic
Epipaleolithic
The Epipaleolithic Age was a period in the development of human technology marked by more advanced stone blades and other tools than the earlier Paleolithic age, although still before the development of agriculture in the Neolithic age...

 periods are known mainly from the Zagros region in the caves of Kermanshah
Kermanshah
Kermanshah is a city in and the capital of Kermanshah Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 784,602, in 198,117 families.The overwhelming majority of Kermanshahi people are Shi'a Muslims...

 and Khoramabad such as Yafteh
Yafteh
Yafteh is a Upper Paleolithic cave located at the foot of Yafteh Mountain, north-west of Khoramabad, Western Zagros, Iran.The site was found and later excavated by two American archaeologists, Frank Hole and Kent Flannery, in the 1960s. It contained a thick Upper Paleolithic sequence which yielded...

 Cave and a few number of sites in the Alborz range and Central Iran.

Epipaleolithic

The end of the Palaeolithic, called “Epipalaeolithic”,is in a period of about 7000 years from c. 18,000 to 11,000 BC. In those days groups of hunter-gatherers were mostly living in the caves of the Zagros Mountains. Compared to earlier groups of game hunters, a tendency towards increasing the number of the kinds of plants and animals, which were collected and hunted, can be observed. Not only smaller vertebrates were hunted but also pistachios and wild fruit were collected. Finally, consuming snails and smaller aquatic animals like crabs is new (Flannery 1973).

Neolithic

We know almost nothing about the 2500 years which followed the Epipalaeolithic after 11,000 BC. Only when discovering the place of Asiab (c. 8500-8000) in the Kermanshah area we are in better known periods. Asiab was a small camp of hunter-gatherers, only seasonally inhabited. Besides the fact that
wild goats and sheep were hunted, great numbers of snail shells were found. These finds were interpreted in the way that from time to time the hunting activities of the inhabitants of Asiab were
unsuccessful and that then they were forced to consume food which they usually did not like.
Some nearby and more constantly occupied settlements in the Zagros date from a short time after Asiab, from the time between 8000 and 6800 BC. Still the material culture of Tappeh Ganj Dareh
Ganj Dareh
Ganj Dareh is a Neolithic settlement in the Iranian Kurdistan portion of Iran...


and Tappeh Abdul Hosein does not include any pottery. Thus this period is often called “aceramic Neolithic”. This is also true for the oldest levels of Tappeh Guran, located in Luristan, as well as for the sites of Ali Kosh and Chogha Sefid in the plain of Deh Luran, west of the Zagros Mountains. There, flocks of sheep and herds of goats were kept for the first time. Managing animals meant a fundamentally new orientation of the Neolithic inhabitants of Iran and must be understood to be connected with a whole number of other innovations, particularly the architecture of houses. We do not definitely know if in those days there was any cultivation of cereals. Tools for harvesting and for making cereal products are there, but remnants of burned grain are extremely rare.

Chalcolithic

Iranian Chalcolithic could be divided into three parts. "Early Chalcolithic" refer to occupations falling into the fifth millennium b.c., "Middle Chalcolithic" includes three successive phases (early Middle, Middle and late Middle Chalcolithic) dated to the fourth millennium b.c. "Late Chalcolithic" indicates pre-Bronze Age occupations dating to the first half of the third millennium b.c.
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