TEHRAN - Kermanshah is a unique region that enjoys continuous human settlement for a span of one million years, top archaeologist Saman Heydari-Guran said on Wednesday.

“We have abundant evidence indicating one million years of human settlement in Kermanshah, which is an exception in the plateau of Iran and even in West Asia…,” the archaeologist said.

“In addition, the geography of this region is full of ancient monuments that have been affected by many factors,”

Heydari-Guran made the remarks in an event organized to mark the 16th anniversary of Bisotun’s registration on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

“Bisotun inscription dates back to 2500 years ago, which has unique features. Bisotun is the largest text panel in the world written in cuneiform in three languages, Akkadian, Elamite, and ancient Persian,” he explained.

“Kermanshah region has had one million years of archaeological continuity and we do not have a gap during this period, which is due to the geography of the region. The high number of springs, the fertile soil due to the mountainous area, and the rivers have contributed to this continuity,” Heydari-Guran said.

“If we want to honor anyone for this cause, we should encourage the people of this land who have lived here for over a million years.”

Last November, a team of archaeologists led by Heydari-Guran announced the discovery of stone tools such as an ax and machete believed to be created by Homo erectus, an extinct species of archaic human, on the outskirts of Kermanshah.

According to Heydari-Guran, the creators of those tools may have been the so-called ‘Homo erectus’ although other groups [of early humans] made similar tools, given the similar sites in other parts of Asia.

“During a week-long survey in this area, tens of stone axes, utensils, and mother stones related to the [Lower] Paleolithic period were discovered, which according to their technical characteristics and typology are related to the Acheulean era,” the archaeologist said.

“This is the first time in 60 years that tools from the Paleolithic period have been discovered in Kermanshah,” the archaeologist said.

“In the 1960s, an archaeological mission from the University of Chicago, headed by Robert Braidwood, discovered a stone ax near Gakiyeh village and since then there has been no report of the discovery of such tools in Kermanshah.”

Such axes are stone tools related to the [Lower] Paleolithic period and that were made 250,000 years to 1.5 million years ago, he added.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Heydari-Guran noted the recently discovered stone tools may date back to about 700,000 to one million years ago.

“Since there is currently no absolute historiography for this human settlement, it is not possible to give an exact date for the construction of these tools, but it is possible to predict a date of about 700,000 to one million years ago.”

The Iranian plateau was roamed by the Neanderthals. A 2019 study published in the Journal of Human Evolution, suggests that Neanderthals were roaming over the Iranian Zagros mountain range between 40 to 70 thousand years ago.

Until the late 20th century, Neanderthals were regarded as genetically, morphologically, and behaviorally distinct from living humans. However, more recent discoveries about this well-preserved fossil Eurasian population have revealed an overlap between living and archaic humans.

Neanderthals lived before and during the last Ice Age of the Pleistocene in some of the most unforgiving environments ever inhabited by humans. They developed a successful culture, with a complex stone tool technology, that was based on hunting, some scavenging, and local plant collection. Their survival during tens of thousands of years of the last glaciation is a remarkable testament to human adaptation.

Zagros mountain range in southwestern Iran, extending northwest-southeast from the border areas of eastern Turkey and northern Iraq to the Strait of Hormuz, is about 990 miles (1,600 km) long and more than 150 miles (240 km) wide. It forms the extreme western boundary of the Iranian plateau, though its foothills to the north and west extend into adjacent countries.

According to Britannica, the oldest rocks in the Zagros range date to Precambrian time (that is, before 541 million years ago), and the Paleozoic Era rocks date to between 541 million and 252 million years ago and are found at or near the highest peaks. Most of the rocks in the mountain range, however, are limestone and shale from the Mesozoic Era (252 million to 66 million years ago) and the Paleogene Period (66 million to 23 million years ago). The range was primarily formed by orogenies (mountain-building episodes) driven by the movement of the Arabian Plate underneath the Eurasian Plate during the Miocene and Pliocene epochs (23 million to 2.6 million years ago).

AFM