TEHRAN – Archaeologists have recently discovered some prehistorical relics during a field survey conducted in Robat Karim county, which is situated southwest of the Iranian capital.

Relics dating from the 5th millennium BC to the early 3dr millennium BC have recently been untethered in trenches carved by archaeologists on Tepe Parandak of Robat Karim county, a tourism official said on Saturday.

Based on preliminary studies, the objects date from the Neolithic and Elamite eras, the official said.

The official said that extensive archaeological excavations would soon carry out in this area to determine the role and position of Tepe Parandak in the history of the nation, the report said.

The first well-documented evidence of human habitation is in deposits from several excavated cave and rock-shelter sites, located mainly in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran and dated to Middle Paleolithic or Mousterian times (c. 100,000 BC).

From the Caspian in the northwest to Baluchistan in the southeast, the Iranian plateau extends for close to 2,000 km. It encompasses the greater part of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan west of the Indus River, containing some 3,700,000 square kilometers. Despite being called a “plateau”, it is far from flat but contains several mountain ranges, the highest peak being Damavand in the Alborz mountain range at 5610 m, and the Dasht-e Loot east of Kerman in Central Iran, falling below 300 m.

The first well-documented evidence of human habitation is in deposits from several excavated cave and rock-shelter sites, located mainly in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran and dated to Middle Paleolithic or Mousterian times (c. 100,000 BC). A 2019 study published by the Journal of Human Evolution suggests that Neanderthals were roaming over the Iranian Zagros mountain range between 40 to 70 thousand years ago. 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.

AM