TEHRAN (IRNA) – Initial
investigations show that the ancient findings in Qaleh-Kord Cave in Qazvin Province of Iran date back to at least 400,000 years ago, which makes the cave the earliest known human habitat in the country.
A joint team of Iranian and French archeologists co-led by Hamed Vahdatinasab and Gilles Berillon is carrying out an excavation operation in the cave.
Vahdatinasab said on Wednesday that Qaleh-Kord Cave is among the most important Paleolithic sites in Iran and in the Middle East and the first and second rounds of joint excavation by Iranian and French teams were carried out in 2018 and 2019 while there were a lot of illegal diggings made by unprofessional people.
The biggest achievement of the second excavation chapter, according to the archeologist, was the finding of the tooth of a Neanderthal child dating back to 155,000 years ago, being currently kept in Qazvin Museum.
A 3-year halt caused by the coronavirus pandemic gave the scientists the opportunity to carry out absolute dating studies on the findings in different methods, as said by Vahdatinasab.
He noted that the carbon-14 dating method didn’t work for the cave’s objects for its 45,000-year limitation, so the archeologists used electron spin resonance (ESR) uranium-thorium dating methods.
The initial conclusions suggest that the cultural deposit in the site dates back over 400,000 years ago, making the cave the earliest known human settlement in Iran.
Vahdatinasab said that the dating besides the hand tools found in the cave implies that it has been a habitat for human species like Homo heidelbergensis or a species of Homo erectus.
He said that there have been also found the remains of two extinct horses, a deer, a brown bear, and a rhino in the archeological site.