Pistacia is a genus of flowering plants in the cashew family, Anacardiaceae. It contains 10 to 20 species that are native to Africa and Eurasia from the Canary Islands, all of Africa, and southern Europe, warm and semidesert areas across Asia, and North America from Mexico to warm and semidesert United States, such as Texas or California.
The Zagros Mountains are a long mountain range in Iran, northern Iraq, and southeastern Turkey. This mountain range has a total length of 1,600 km (990 mi). The Zagros mountain range begins in northwestern Iran and roughly follows Iran's western border while covering much of southeastern Turkey and northeastern Iraq. From this border region, the range continues to the southeast under also the waters of the Persian Gulf. It spans the southern parts of the Armenian highland, the whole length of the western and southwestern Iranian plateau, ending at the Strait of Hormuz. The highest point is Mount Dena, at 4,409 metres (14,465 ft).
A winery is a building or property that produces wine, or a business involved in the production of wine, such as a wine company. Some wine companies own many wineries. Besides wine making equipment, larger wineries may also feature warehouses, bottling lines, laboratories, and large expanses of tanks known as tank farms. Wineries may have existed as long as 8,000 years ago.
Teppe Hasanlu or Hasanlu Tepe is an archeological site of an ancient city located in northwest Iran, a short distance south of Lake Urmia. The nature of its destruction at the end of the 9th century BC essentially froze one layer of the city in time, providing researchers with extremely well preserved buildings, artifacts, and skeletal remains from the victims and enemy combatants of the attack.
Tepe Sialk is a large ancient archeological site in a suburb of the city of Kashan, Isfahan Province, in central Iran, close to Fin Garden. The culture that inhabited this area has been linked to the Zayandeh River Culture.
Persian wine, also called Mey and Badeh, is a cultural symbol and tradition in Iran (Persia), and has a significant presence in Persian mythology, Persian poetry and Persian miniatures.
Shulaveri–Shomu culture is a Late Neolithic/Eneolithic culture that existed on the territory of present-day Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, as well as parts of northern Iran. The culture is dated to the mid-6th or the early-5th millennium BC and is thought to be one of the earliest known Neolithic cultures.
Godin Tepe is an archaeological site in western Iran, located in the valley of Kangavar in Kermanshah Province. Discovered in 1961, the site was excavated from 1965 to 1973 by a Canadian expedition headed by T. Cuyler Young Jr. and sponsored by the Royal Ontario Museum. The importance of the site may have been due to its role as a trading outpost in the early Mesopotamian trade networks.
Wine has been produced for thousands of years, with evidence of ancient wine production in Georgia from c. 6000 BC , West Azerbaijan province of Iran from c. 5000 BC, Armenia from c. 4100 BC, and Sicily from c. 4000 BC. The earliest evidence of a grape and rice mixed based fermented drink sometimes compared to wine was found in ancient China.
Ganj Dareh is a Neolithic settlement in western Iran. It is located in the Harsin County in east of Kermanshah Province, in the central Zagros Mountains.
Aratashen is a town in the Armavir Province of Armenia. It is located on the Ararat plain.
The culture of the ancient Phoenicians was one of the first to have had a significant effect on the history of wine. Phoenicia was a civilization centered in current day Lebanon. Between 1550 BC and 300 BC, the Phoenicians developed a maritime trading culture that expanded their influence from the Levant to North Africa, the Greek Isles, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula. Through contact and trade, they spread not only their alphabet but also their knowledge of viticulture and winemaking, including the propagation of several ancestral varieties of the Vitis vinifera species of wine grapes.
The Gadar River rises in the Iranian Zagros Mountains near the point where the borders of Iran, Turkey and Iraq meet. From its source, the river first flows towards the southeast and then changes course due east through the Ushnu-Solduz valley. After leaving the valley, the river turns north and flows into marshes bordering Lake Urmia. The length of the river is approximately 100 kilometres (62 mi), its drainage basin is variously estimated as 1,900 square kilometres (730 sq mi) and 2,123 square kilometres (820 sq mi) and its discharge is 0.34 cubic metres (12 cu ft) per second. The Ushnu-Solduz valley has been occupied since many millennia, as testified by the excavations at sites like Hasanlu Tepe and Hajji Firuz Tepe.
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.
Patrick Edward McGovern is the scientific director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, where he is also an adjunct professor of Anthropology. In the popular imagination, he is known as the "Indiana Jones of Ancient Ales, Wines, and Extreme Beverages"
Tell Maghzaliyah, in Nineveh Governorate, Iraq, is a prehistoric fortified aceramic Mesolithic and Neolithic site located approximately 7.5 km northwest of Yarim Tepe, with which it shows some similarities. It is situated near the Abra River, a tributary of the Habur River, which eventually drains into the Euphrates River. Tell Maghzaliyah shows the development of pre-Hassuna culture. There are also numerous connections to the Jarmo culture going back to 7000 BCE.
Kul Tepe Jolfa is an ancient archaeological site in the Jolfa County of Iran, located in the city of Hadishahr, about 10 km south from the Araxes River.
Dalma is the name given to the ancient culture whose widespread ceramic remains were excavated in central and northern valleys of the Zagros Mountains in north-western Iran. Dalma assemblages were initially discovered by the excavations carried out at Dalma Tepe and Hasanlu Tepe in south-western parts of Lake Urmia, in the valley of Solduz. Further excavations in Dalma Tepe as part of the Hasanlu Project of the University of Pennsylvania in 1961 uncovered more Dalma assemblages. The excavated materials included architectural, burial, and ceramic remains, clay, bones, artifacts, ground stones, and chipped stones. They indicated that Dalma culture dated back to the fifth millennium B.C. As stated by Akbar Abedi, an Iranian archaeologist, Dalma is one of the famous type sites located in north-western Iran.
Bülövaqaya settlement is an archeological site located on the left bank of the Sarisu river, west of Göynük village of Babek district.
