TEHRAN – A team of archaeologists have discovered evidence of Neanderthal residence in a recent investigation at Kamari Cave, on the outskirts of Holamabad in the western Iranian province of Lorestan.
They revealed important evidence of human habitation from late prehistoric and historical periods of 40,000 to 80,000 years ago. Lorestan’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Bureau has released its findings.
Department director Ata Hassanpur said the excavations began in February 2024 under the supervision of Fereidon Biggrali of the Iranian National Museum and Sonia Sidran of Shahid Behati University. The project was approved by the Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism. The first discoveries reveal rare cultural sequences in the cave, ranging from the mid-Paleolithic period to historic periods.
According to Biglari, mid-Paleostemic artifacts include stone tools, bones from hunting animals such as wild goats and red deer, and fireplace deer. These findings may be related to Neanderthal residence. Hassanpour added that the discovery of painted buffer wear and red wear from the Calcolithic era (over 5,500 years ago) demonstrated the continued use of the caves by idyllic communities of that era, highlighting advances in pottery technology during that time. Evidence has also been found from other periods, such as the Iron Age, Seleucian, and Parthian Age.
Shidrang focuses on the identification of rock shelters near the cave, including evidence of residence from both the Paleolithic and Calkolithic periods in the Middle Period, suggesting that it was used simultaneously with the cave. She said that Kamari caves had been excavated twice before. Again by American archaeologist Frank Hall in 1965 and again by Behrouz Bazgir in 2011.
Biglari emphasized that new discoveries, particularly abundant evidence of Neanderthal inhabitants, will focus on caves for studying the cultural and biological evolution of Laurestan and Western Iran over a long period of time. He added that continuous excavations in the deep archaeological deposits of the cave could reveal ruins of the Neanderthal skeleton and other archaeological evidence from this lesser-known era.
Qamari Cave was registered as a National Heritage Site in 2001 under registration number 4144.
A 2019 survey published in the Journal of Human Evolution suggests that Neanderthals roamed mountains around Ilanzagros 40 to 70,000 years ago.
Until the second half of the 20th century, Neanderthals were considered different from living humans, genetically, morphologically, and behaviorally. However, recent discoveries about this well-preserved fossil Eurasian population reveal the overlap between living and archaic humans.
Neanderthals lived in some of the most unforgiving environments ever inhabited by humans, around the last Ice Age of the Pleistocene. They developed a successful culture with complex stone tools techniques based on hunting. Their survival during the tens of thousands of years of the last ice age is a prominent testament to human adaptation.
morning