Zagros Mountains

No one of the familiar geographical terms adequately defines the area in which man developed asphalt technology. Middle East is too inexact. Southwest Asia is too broad, and Mesopotamia is too narrow. Most of Iraq and much of adjacent Iran were involved. Figure 1 defines the area encompassed in the present work it ranges south to north from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea and includes (southwest to northeast) Mesopotamia proper, the central Zagros Mountains, and a small part of the Great Desert of Iran. 

Highland Asphalts. New analyses from seven sites in the foothills and valleys of the Zagros Mountains in southwest Iran are presented in Table VI. Susa is the only site from which an asphalt had been examined previously, and our analysis agrees well with that of LeChatelier in Table... 

Kiyumars, the first Indo-Iranian king who ruled from the Mountain of Madai. Mount Elburz or Harra are other names for Mount Madai. It is located in the Taurus Mountains between the Commagene of East Anatolia and the Zagros Mountains of Azerbaijan. ... 

Mountains (such as the 1988 Spitak, Armenia, earthquake) and within a wide fold-and-thrust belt of the Zagros Mountains, Iran. Underthrusting of the Indian plate beneath Eurasia along the Himalayan front has generated some great (magnitude M > 8) earthquakes such as the 1934 Bihar-Nepal, India, earthquake (M = 8.1, Table 1), and possibly even larger earthquakes may have occurred in historic times. 

The Early Development of Pastoralism in the Central Zagros Mountains. Journal of World Prehistory 17/4 395-448. 

The Evolution of Tribal Society in the Southern Zagros Mountains, Iran. In Chiefdoms and Early States in the Near East The Organizational Dynamics of Complexity, edited by G. Stein and M. Rothman, 47-65. Monographs in World Archaeology 18. Madison, WI Prehistory Press. 

Most of the obsidian in Near East comes from sources either in the mountains of Turkey (Anatolia) or in northern Iran (Armenia), both outside the Eertile Crescent. Information on the sources of obsidian found at early Neolithic sites provides data on both the direction and intensity of trade. Sites in the Levant generally obtained obsidian from Anatolia, while sites in the Zagros used Armenian material. The percentage of obsidian in the total flaked stone assemblage at these sites indicates that sites closest to the sources use a great deal of obsidian, while those furthest away have only a small amount available. At Jericho, for example, 700 km from the Anatolian sources, only about 1% of the stone tools are made from obsidian a similar situation holds at Ali Kosh, 800 km distant from the Armenian sources. 

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