TEHRAN – Many local officials and university experts held a coordination meeting on Monday to plan the sixth season of archaeological excavations at QAL-E Kord Caves, marking the continuation of work in one of Iran’s oldest human settlements in Abaj district, Kazbin province.
The session was attended by Hamed Vahdatinasab, the project’s scientific advisor and leader of previous excavation seasons. This was attended along with Milad Hashemi, a faculty member at Tarbiat Modares University and head of the upcoming excavation team. They met with Seyed Medi Hoseini, chief of the Regional Tourism Bureau, to discuss the beginning of a new excavation phase scheduled for early August.
Vahadatinasab explained to attendees about findings from five previous excavation seasons. He noted that the drilling team is ready to resume work aimed at revealing further evidence of early human habitation.
Hosseini expressed support for the department for the new season, highlighting the rich cultural heritage and tourism potential of the Avaj region. He emphasized that promoting tourism and increasing visitors involvement remains a priority this year.
According to Vahadatinasab, Qal-e Kord is considered the oldest human settlement in Iran.
“We are looking for a chronology of the residents of these caves, knowing that Qal-e Kord is home to the Neanderthals. We are also looking for animal relics and food they consumed…
Archaeologists said the stone tools obtained from the cave indicate that they are the residence of other humans who lived before the Neanderthals. species such as the Heidelberg man or perhaps the erect man kind.
As Vahdatinasab stated, archaeologists have so far managed to identify two species of animals, prehistoric horses, deer, brown bears and rhinoceros.
In November 2018, the first season of Iran-France’s joint archaeological exploration discovered over 6,000 cultural works in the region. It also produced relics of horses, deer, bears, and many stone tools bones belonging to the Mid-Lestic Age (200,000 to 40,000 years ago).
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 around the last Ice Age of the Pleistocene in some of the most unforgiving environments ever inhabited by humans. 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.
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