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Gilan province is one of the 31 provinces of Iran. It lies along the Caspian Sea, in Iran's Region 3, west of the province of Mazandaran, east of the province of Ardabil, and north of the provinces of Zanjan and Qazvin. It borders Azerbaijan in the north.
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 broadly spanned from 300,000 to 30,000 years ago. There are considerable dating differences between regions. The Middle Paleolithic was succeeded by the Upper Paleolithic subdivision which first began between 50,000 and 40,000 years ago. Pettit and White date the Early Middle Paleolithic in Great Britain to about 325,000 to 180,000 years ago, and the Late Middle Paleolithic as about 60,000 to 35,000 years ago. The Middle Paleolithic was in the geological Chibanian and Late Pleistocene ages.
The Palaeolithic Era in Iran is the prehistory of Iran in the period from c. 800,000 BCE to c. 11,000 BCE and can be divided into the Lower Paleolithic, Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic periods.
Ganj Par is a Lower Paleolithic site located in the Gilan province in northern Iran.
Kashafrud Basin(کشفرود) 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. Kashafrud includes a cluster of sites which are located 35 km to 85 km southeast of Mashhad, near the Kashfarud River. The French geologist Claude Thibault, in collaboration with the Iranian geologist Ali Ariai, conducted surveys in the Kashfrud basin east of Mashhad in 1974–75, during which 80 stone artifacts were collected from seven open areas.
Spirit Cave is an archaeological site in Pang Mapha district, Mae Hong Son Province, northwestern Thailand. It was occupied 12,000 to 7,000 uncalibrated radiocarbon years ago by prehistoric humans of the Hoabinhian culture.
The Do-Ashkaft Cave, being a Middle Paleolithic cave site, is located north of Kermanshah, near Taq-e Bostan, Iran about 1,600 m (5,200 ft) above sea level. Its entrance faces south of Meywala Mount, overlooking the national park of Kuhestan. The site was first visited in 1996 by Iranian researchers F. Biglari and S. Heydari-Guran and during the following four years a series of surface surveys were made at one-month intervals, which resulted in a rich collection of Middle Paleolithic lithic artifacts.
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.
Fereidoun Biglari is an Iranian archaeologist and a museum curator.
Marjan Mashkour is an archaeologist and member of the French National Centre for Scientific Research. She is the first Iranian to specialize in the field of zooarchaeology and has been engaged in many field and laboratory projects in Iran and the Near East.
The Cantabrian caves' unique location make them an ideal place to observe the settlements of early humans thousands of years ago. The magnificent art in the caves includes figures of various animals of the time such as bison, horses, goats, deer, cattle, hands and other paintings. Archaeologists have found remains of animals such as bears, the remains of arrows and other material indicating a human presence; these artifacts are now found mostly in the Regional Museum of Prehistory and Archaeology of Cantabria.
The Alborz range, also spelled as Alburz, Elburz or Elborz, is a mountain range in northern Iran that stretches from the border of Azerbaijan along the western and entire southern coast of the Caspian Sea and finally runs northeast and merges into the smaller Aladagh Mountains and borders in the northeast on the parallel mountain ridge Kopet Dag in the northern parts of Khorasan. All these mountains are part of the much larger Alpide belt. This mountain range is divided into the Western, Central, and Eastern Alborz Mountains. The Western Alborz Range runs south-southeastward almost along the western coast of the Caspian Sea. The Central Alborz runs from west to east along the entire southern coast of the Caspian Sea, while the Eastern Alborz Range runs in a northeasterly direction, toward the northern parts of the Khorasan region, southeast of the Caspian Sea. Mount Damavand, the highest mountain in Iran measuring 5,610.0 m, is located in the Central Alborz Mountains. Mount Damavand is the 12th most prominent peak in the world and the second most prominent in Asia after Mount Everest.
The prehistory of the Iranian plateau, and the wider region now known as Greater Iran, as part of the prehistory of the Near East is conventionally divided into the Paleolithic, Epipaleolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age periods, spanning the time from the first settlement by archaic humans about a million years ago until the beginning of the historical record during the Neo-Assyrian Empire, in the 8th century BC.
Kashafrud or Kashafrud River is a river that flows from the Hezar Masjed Mountains in Razavi Khorasan Province in northeast of Iran. After passing from the vicinity of the cities of Radkan and Chenaran in Razavi Khorasan Province and then passing north and east of the city of Mashhad, the Kashfrud joins the Harirud River at the frontier of Iran and Turkmenistan.
The Vogelherd Cave is located in the eastern Swabian Jura, south-western Germany. This limestone karst cave came to scientific and public attention after the 1931 discovery of the Upper Palaeolithic Vogelherd figurines, attributed to paleo-humans of the Aurignacian culture. These miniature sculptures made of mammoth ivory rank among the oldest uncontested works of art of mankind. Because of the cultural importance of these sculptures and the cave's testimony to the development of Paleolithic art and culture, in 2017 the site became part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site called Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura.
Obłazowa Cave is a cave situated in the nature reserve of Przełom Białki at Nowa Biała near Krempachy, Gmina Nowy Targ in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, southern Poland. The cave has a 9 m long chamber to which a short corridor leads. It is one of the most important Paleolithic sites in Poland.
Wezmeh Child or Wezmeh 1 represented by an isolated unerupted human maxillary right premolar tooth of an individual between 6–10 years old. It was found with large numbers of animal fossil remains in a cave site called Wezmeh near Islamabad Gharb, western Iran, around 470 km (290 mi) southwest of the capital Tehran. The site was discovered in 1999. The premolar is relatively large compared with both Holocene and Late Pleistocene P3 and P4. Researchers analyzed it by non-destructive gamma spectrometry that resulted in a date of around 25,000 years BP. But later analysis showed that the gamma spectrometry dates the date was minimum age and the tooth is substantially older. Endostructural features and quantified crown tissue proportions and semilandmark-based geometric morphometric analyses of the enamel-dentine junction aligns it closely with Neanderthals and shows that it is distinct from the fossil and extant modern human pattern. Therefore, it is the first direct evidence of Neanderthal presence in the Iranian Zagros. Given that the cave was a carnivore den during late Pleistocene, it is probable that the Wezmeh Child was killed, or had its remains scavenged, by carnivores who used the cave as den. Within an approximate 30 km radius of the Cave, 13 Middle Paleolithic sites have been recorded; among them, the nearest sites are located about 10 km to the northwest. The tooth is on display at Paleolithic gallery of National Museum of Iran
Chiquihuite Cave is a possible Upper Paleolithic archaeological site in the Astillero Mountains, Zacatecas State, in North-Central Mexico. Chiquihuite Cave may be evidence of early human presence in the Western Hemisphere up to 33,000 years ago. It is located 2,740 meters above sea level and about 1 kilometer higher than the valley below. The lithic artifacts discovered here have been dated to 26,000 years ago based on more than 50 samples of animal bone and charcoal found in association with the tools. However, there is scholarly debate over whether the artifacts should be considered evidence of human activity or if they were formed naturally. No evidence of human DNA or hearth have been unearthed.
Khalvasht is a Late Paleolithic rockshelter site located at the Amarlou region, in the Gilan Province, northern Iran. The shelter is located above the Loshan-Jirandeh road and at an altitude of about 1100 m a.s.l. The shelter faces south and is located at the base of a series of conglomerate outcrops that are about 160 m long. A spring emerges about 300 m to the southwest of the site. The shelter contains evidence for the late Paleolithic human cave occupation. Stone artifacts were found by two Iranian archaeologists, Fereidoun Biglari and Hossein Abdi in 2000. The artifacts are made of gray and black chert, a red variant of fine red-green chert, fine dark brown chert, and one example of white chert. These rock types are found in pebble and cobble sizes in the area. The artifacts include flakes, flake fragments, blades and bladelets, a small flake core, and one core tablet. The core tablet is from a bladelet core with scares of previous bladelet removals. The site was occupied by the Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers about 18,000-12,000 years ago.
References
- ↑ Biglari, F.; V. Jahani, 2011. "The Pleistocene Human Settlement in Gilan, Southwest Caspian Sea: Recent Research". Eurasian Prehistory. 8 (1–2): 3–28.
- ↑ FALAHIAN Y. 2006a. Evidence of Neolithic occupation at Chapalak near Nodeh-e Farab, Journal of Gilan Culture, Nos. 25-26, pp. 8-12
- ↑ BAE K. 2009. Archaeological survey of the Gilan Province, 2007-2008, Institute of Cultural Properties, Hanyang University.
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