By: M. Sadeq Nâzemi-Afshâr
If the earth unveils its secret
It will eventually show its origin (Ferdowsi)

All the Phenomena considered ordinary and evident today have had a beginning. Up to a mere hundred years ago, rockets, aircraft and even automobiles did not exist. We do know about the origins of thousands of inventions and discoveries, but before that, there had been times when our language did not exist, our religion was unknown, there was no such thing as agriculture, and the human being even did not know how to use fire. Three billion years ago, there was no living creature on earth; five billion years ago, our beloved planet was nothing but a mass of burning gases in the solar system. Modern science and paleontology have proved that all the creatures living on earth have emerged slowly during millions of years, during which, more sophisticated forms of life have risen, eventually leading to the formation of man as the epitome of creature. It is a proven fact that the origin of many ancient discoveries and inventions was the man dwelling in the Middle East and particularly a vast part of it, which is known as the Iranian Plateau. This article tries to address the questions about the history of settlement in the Iranian Plateau and how its inhabitants succeeded in being the first how tamed horses, invented agriculture, pottery, use of metals, irrigation methods, and many other things. During the first 500,000 years of the Ice Age when mankind spread in Asia, huge glaciers covered Central Asia as well as the northern and central regions of Iran, creating conditions, which were not suitable for the life of men. Meanwhile, southern Iran was much more humid than it is today, covered by vast expanses of meadows, which provided a favorable climate for our ancestors. Therefore, before reaching China and Java, mankind must have dwelled in this area for thousands of years. As a result, it would be appropriate to search for relics of one-million-year-old man in the southern Iranian Plateau. Some paleontologists have suggested that men have reached East Asia through the Persian Gulf, for this waterway totally dried up three times during the Ice Age. Thus men could have potentially crossed this passage. However, the fact that the bed of dried up seas remains arid for thousands of years as a result of layers of salt and a lack of soil formation, makes it highly unlikely that men have crossed the Persian Gulf. The highest possibility is that between a million and 500,000 years ago, men have entered the Iranian Plateau from Africa, beginning a new life in the meadows of southern Iran, adjacent to the frozen mountain ranges of Alborz and Zagros. During the 300,000 years that followed, these men have reached the whole of Europe and Asia through Iran, forming a race; which is today known as the Neanderthal. The brain of the Neanderthals weighed about 1200 grams, their bodies were covered with hair, and they still had a tiny tail end inherited from their tailed ancestors. Several categories of the Neanderthal predecessors have so far been identified. It is known that the Neantherthals dwelling in Europe totally perished in the last Ice Age, and that the existing man has descended from a branch that used to live in the Middle East, one that is known to paleontologists as Homo sapiens. The reason for the extinction of the last generation of European Neantherthals was that in the last Ice Age, glaciers in Europe advanced as far as the Mediterranean Sea, destroying the Neantherthals together with the flocks of European deer and gazelles. The Neantherthals dwelling in Asia and the Iranian Plateau, however, were able to survive by migrating further southwards when the climate turned colder. Considering these facts, remains of men dating back to one million to 500,000 years ago should have been found in Iran. In 1896, Garry Hume of the Minnesota University carried out studies in Baluchestan region, in the course of which, very old relics were found which became to be known as Ladizin in paleontology. According to geological evidence, the tools unearthed date back to between 80,000 and 100,000 years ago. Another excavation was done in 1949-50, when a group of professors from the University of Pennsylvania found four skeletons of Ice Age men at a depth of nine meters in Kamarband and Toyo caves near the Caspian city of Behshahr. The group put the date of the skeletons around 70,000 years ago, i.e. the Paleolithic period. The skulls showed that the skeletons belonged to Neantherthals, with protruded foreheads and jaws. The lower jaw is about seven centimeters thick, bearing thick teeth. Obviously, the Neantherthals dwelling in northern Iran had migrated to that part of the Plateau after the gradual subsiding of the Ice Age. Ice Age and the melting of glaciers, the altitude of permanent snow in Iran's Alborz and Zagros mountain ranges rose about 1,000 meters; Large rivers started to flow across the central parts of the Iranian Plateau and hundreds of large and small lakes engulfed the central mountain ranges, which then resembled islands. As a result of the melting of glaciers and the flowing of rivers, the transfer of sediments from the mountains to the Plains was considerable, burying multitudes of primitive men. However, the moulds remaining from that period are the best sites to explore the lift of human beings after the Ice Age, i.e. 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. At that time, Iranians dwelt in natural caves alongside Alborz and Zagros ranges, as well as on hills intact from permanent floodwater. With the gradual warming of the climate and the drying up of southern meadows, Iran dwellers migrated to the north, with some groups leaving the Iranian Plateau. Many paleontologists believe that the Sumerians and the Egyptians, who founded the early large states, were among those immigrants. In his book " prehistoric Relations of Iran and Egypt", the famous Indian paleontologist Mahrji Bakhaikoka writes: " Group of Iranian immigrants who worshiped the sun, migrated to the banks of the Nile,". In his memoirs, Spiegel writes, " the Iranian civilization is much order than the Egyptian one." the oldest civilization found in Mesopotamia is the Chaldean civilization, which dates back to 4,000 BC. On this issue, renowned paleontologist Dr.Laprier writes: " The original homeland of Chaldeans was Susa (in Iran).

Sumerians and Akadians were their predecessors. The more ancient race, i.e. Sumerians had originated from Tajiks, who at first dwelt in Kordestan province and were known as Kords. This term was later distorted into Khald, then Kald and then Chaldean. These people left Kordestan for Mesopotamia and founded the Chaldean civilization. Griffith Taylor, a professor of human geography at the Sydney University, Australia, has offered an exhaustive theory on the origin of Homo sapiens. According to his theory, which is called " The Cradle Land", as a result of four Ice Ages, which happened during the fourth geological period, the human race has emerged as four waves from Iran and Turkistan, spreading throughout the world. On the other hand, recent discoveries by paleontologists show that almost during the whole of the fourth period, a large sea covered the regions north of the Alborz, as well as the Caucuses and central Asia, and therefore the possibility of the dwelling of men in those areas before the historic ages does not exist. The only favorable site for men to survive, then, was the southern region of the Iranian Plateau. Encyclopedia Britannica confirms this point, saying that "It may well be proved eventually that the human race evolved in Central Asia or Iran", adding as a reason for such evolution that "the condition of the earth, and its vegetation and animals was such that it encouraged innovation and invention, but not so favorable as to render work and endeavor unnecessary." In addition to plenty of geological evidence, there are other indications that Iran is the Cradle Land. The alternating, gradual climatic changes and the existence of four distinguished seasons provide the best climatic conditions for evolution. The first tamed animals, such as the dog, the horse, the sheep and the goat, are native to Iran, and the discovery of the bones of these animals in the ancient caves of the land show that Iranians were the first people to tame animals. In Doosheh cave, near the city of Khorramabad, considerable pictures dating back to 15,000 BC have been found which show men riding horses and holding the animals' reins. The oldest evidence showing the use of horses in Mesopotamia and Egypt, however, date back to only 4,000 years ago. Also, according to researches carried out by Professor Morris Damas in his book, "The History of Industry and Invention", it was the Arian race that first utilized wheeled carriages pulled by the horses. The existence of rich mines of copper, tin and stone in Iran, the lack of them in other prehistoric sites such as Egypt and Mesopotamia, and particularly the proximity of tin and copper mines in Khorasan - a unique phenomenon in the whole world rejects the possibility of the discovery of metals in any ancient site but in Iran. Production of bronze an alloy made of the copper, tin and antimony, must have definitely been started in Khorasan. In his book "The History of Civilization", Henry Lucas writes that tin is not an abundant mineral, and was first extracted in Khorasan, Iran. The earliest copper melting furnaces, dating back to 7,000 years ago, have been found in the Qazvin Plain (Esmail Abad and Sages Abad), near Tehran, while the Mesopotamian civilization is not older than 4,000 BC, i.e. 6,000 years ago. In addition, there was no copper mine in ancient Sumer, and therefore the discovery of copper objects in that area is indicative of trade relations between Iran and Sumer in the 4th millennium, BC. The Bronze Age in Egypt began much later, i.e. during the Middle Empire about 2160 BC; it did not begin in China until at least 1500 BC. It has been proved that the origin of many current languages in the world was Iran. Hindu, Pashtu, Soghdi, Kharazmi, German, Latin, English, French, Armenia, Spanish, Italian, Greek and many of the dead languages originate from Sanskrit, the language of ancient Iranians. Some of the keywords of this language, such as mother, father star and tens of other words are almost the same, with minor variations in dialect, in all the living languages from China to Europe. The global expansion of the languages of ancient Iranians is one of the important reasons proving that Iran was the Cradle Land, from where the immigrants spread their languages throughout the world. The existence of large reserves of clay all throughout the Iranian Plateau and the archeological discoveries relating the first man-made pottery objects to the land of Iran are a strong evidence for the invention of this craft by Iranians. Remains of pottery found in Iran and Egypt date back to 9000 and 7000 years ago respectively. It is also worth noting that the oldest earthenware made by the pottery wheel as well as the oldest glazed pots have been found in the Iranian Plateau. In the Susa grave yard, which dates back to 5,000 years ago, large water jars have been found which are made by the pottery wheel and with screened soft paste (glaze). The thin, resonating jars are well backed and died reddish by means of applying iron oxide.

More important than all is the fact that wheat, a plant that is considered to be the key to the beginning of civilization and man's true progress in 10,000 years ago, is a native plant of the Iranian Plateau. It must be noted that the early stages of agriculture could have not started on the blanks of the Nile, Tigris or Euphrates, owing to the fact that these rivers are of a flooding nature. In ancient times, those rivers were surrounded by vast marshlands home to various insects, particularly the malaria mosquito, and the cause of the deadliest disease of all times, which made it impossible for men to inhabit. Therefore, early men must have begun agriculture in temperate plains and foot of mountains, and migrated to the riverbanks in more advanced stages, when they could dam the rivers and utilize the water. The reason of Iranian's emigration throughout the world lies in the discovery of agriculture. With the advent of agriculture and storing foodstuffs between the 9th and 7th millenniums BCE, Iran's population increased considerably, Climatic changes of the next millenniums and the drying-up of Iran's central lake in the 5th and 4th millenniums, BCE, forced parts of the population to emigrate. As regards agricultural devices, Professor Damas writes that the windmill was definitely built in Iran's plains for the first time, where constant winds would rotate them. Another important invention of the primitive man was weaving fabrics. Damas writes: "In the Susa graveyard, axes have been found which are wrapped in cloths, which have contracted the hue of the axes. Chemical analysis of the cloths shows that they are made of various fabrics ... some are made of linen, with very fine warps and woofs woven in opposite directions. Today's advanced equipment cannot produce a fabric finer than those woven about 5,000 BP". Last but not least is architecture. The discovery of clay houses dating back to the 7th millennium BCE in Dehloran (Dehlorân), and a 6,000 years-old seal print in Susa showing the first circular domes on the roofs of the houses are indicative of the advanced stages of this art and craft in Iran. All the paleontological facts mentioned briefly in this article inevitably show that the early cradle for the formation of Homo sapiens was Iran, the same legendary land from where the Arayn race rose and spread in the world.