Document Type : Original Article
Author
Assistant Professor, Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Lorestan University, Khorramabad, Iran.
10.22034/api.2022.705948
Abstract
Lorestan Province in western Iran has always been known as one of the ancient regions and human settlements in the Paleolithic era. Based on information obtained from archaeological excavations in the caves of Khorramabad Valley and Kohdasht in the past few decades, the history of settlement in Lorestan Province dates back to about one hundred thousand years ago and the Middle Paleolithic period. In an archaeological survey recently conducted in the Miankauh region of Pol-e Dokhtar County, evidence of hand tools belonging to the Old Paleolithic period was identified from 15 sites. This period, which has been considered to be between 1,800,000 and 250,000 years old, is of great importance in world archaeological studies due to its connection with the history, route and manner of dispersal of early hominids. A total of 153 hand tools were found from these sites, which were close to each other; A cleaver, a cleaver-mother stone, a mother stone, an axe handle, a cleaver, a triangular pick, a perforator, a scraper, and a chipper were found, which, based on comparative typology, belong to the Upper Paleolithic period. The importance of these findings in archaeological research on the Iranian plateau is very high, because to date, this number of significant hand tools has not been reported from the introduced Upper Paleolithic sites of Iran, which indicates that Lorestan province could be one of the important areas and habitats of early humans on the path of dispersal out of Africa.
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