Kurds, the earliest farmers, and the earliest village-farming community in Kurdsu

Stratigraphic and DNA evidences

 

The botanist Hans Helbaek wrote (in Braidwood 1960, 99) During the last few decades, close teamwork between biologists and archeologists has made a fair start. Natural scientists go to excavations and make their own professional assessments, or they do their own excavating and at the same time become steeped in the scientific and technical background of archeology. Biologists go to the field to study prehistoric deposits in situ and to make ecological observations of present conditions. Only by such means will it be possible in the long run to build up the image of the true conditions of man's life in the remote past.

Technically, the study of ancient plants is performed by macroscopic comparison as well as by microscopic analysis. The material of all the categories is procured by archeology, and its dating-of paramount significance-also depends upon archeology.

Any attempt to draw up a comprehensive history of the cultivated plants should naturally begin with the transition between the food-collecting and the food-producing stages of human economy. Hitherto it has been difficult to get even tolerably near this critical point, and it must be realized that the actual turning point of the transition will never be demonstrable in full, either botanically or culturally. Paleolithic man did not suddenly resolve to give up his perambulations and settle down to tilling the soil and tending crops, immediately beginning to build the houses and make the specialized tools which permanent settlement implies. Probably some kind of nursing and protection of the wild food plants came first, without either actual specialized implements or sedentary life, while only eventually did the advantage of tillage and of permanent residence dawn upon the earliest farmers.

(Braidwood 1961, 2008) Many indications point toward the hill flanks of the Fertile Crescent in southwestern Asia as the scene of the earliest development of effective food production and a village-farming-community way of life, - some 10,000 years ago or less. In its 1959-60 field season, with a staff made up of both cultural and natural historians, the Iranian Prehistoric Project reclaimed further evidence of this important transitional step in human history. Over 250 prehistoric sites were thus located, and their surface materials were tentatively classified into eight rough chronological groups or models, which must represent - in a very general way - a time span of culture history from about 100,000 years ago to about 5000 years ago. Sites yielding surface materials suggesting the time range from about 15,000 to about 8000 years ago - the interval during which the swing to effective food production and village-farming communities must have occurred were well represented and several of these were selected for excavation in the spring of 1960.

The rock shelter called Warwasi, about 12 km northeast of Kermanshah, yielded a sequence of flint industries from a phase of the Mousterian (The Middle Paleolithic or Old Stone Age broadly spanned from 300,000 to 30,000 years ago.) through a sequence of blade tools which included both Baradostian (at least begun from 36000 BC.) and Zarzian levels (The period of the Zarzian (levels) culture is estimated about 18,000-8,000 years BC. It is succeeded Baradostian culture in the same region and was related to Imereti culture in Caucasus). On the basis of the field classification of these materials alone, there is reason to suspect little typological disconformity in this developing sequence, which probably ends at about 10,500 years ago.

The Zagros Paleolithic Museum is a museum in Kermášán (Kermanshah), established in 2008, contains rich collections of stone tools and animal fossil bones from various Paleolithic and Neolithic sites in Eastern Kurdsán (Iran), dating from ca. 1,000,000 years to some 8,000 years ago.

Warwasi, Tapaí Saráw Gá-mási-áw (Tapa Sarab), Ášáw, Ásíáw (Asiab) in Eastern Kurdsu and Jáŕmo, Karim Šahir, near Karkúk in Southern Kurdsu.

The IranianPrehistoric Project. During the 1959-60 field season the project's expedition excavated three sites, Warwasi, Sarab and Asiab near Kermanshah in search of evidence on the development of village farming communities by early man. The new sites are south and east of the previously excavated sites at Jarmo and Karim Shahir (top left) in Iraqi Kurdistan. [Based on a U.S. Air Force long-range navigation chart, 1:3,000,000]

Braidwood, R. J. and others, Iranian Prehistoric Project, Science, 133, 1961

 



Nevertheless, all indications suggested that such traces of early village-farming communities as had been found in western Asia were the earliest available anywhere in the world. We were quite prepared to see independent beginnings in food-production, based on other plants and sometimes animals, in other parts of the world (Braidwood, 1952a), but we reasoned that these were later experiments than the Near Eastern instance.

In 1951, Howe and Wright excavated Barda Balka (Wright and Howe, 1951). It is an open-air site, with its stone tools contained in certain specific Pleistocene gravels on a hilltop and in part consolidated within the breccia of a peculiar natural columnar remnant (Pl. 9B) of this same gravel system which first drew attention to the locality. The site is immediately south of the main Chemchemal-Sulimanlyah road, 2 miles northeast of Chemchemal, In the rolling country which flanks a major tributary wadi of the Chemchemal branch of the headwaters of the Tauq Chai.

 For the earlier food-gathering horizons, the stratigraphic evidence of Pleistocene geology provides the basis for a local starting point. The artifacts of the early food–gathering or middle Paleolithic site of Barda Balka are incorporated in a river-gravel deposit marking the base of the youngest of three major aggradation cycles observed locally in the Chernchemal valley. This position places the site stratigraphically at a point much older than all other archeological remains so far found in the same valley, since they can all be associated in one way or another with the geological phases following the last major aggradation cycle. Incidentally, these later remains are all obviously much later on typological grounds also. However, to prove that the Barda Balka hand-ax, pebble-tool, and flake industry preceded the Mousterian of the caves and open-air sites of Iraq (read it Kurdsu), one must rely on stratigraphic sequences outside the immediate area. These, on the basis of repeated and well known occurrences, show generally Levalloisian-Mousterian flake industries stratigraphically following core-biface or pebble-tool horizons either in caves elders, as in open-air river-valley sequences, as on the Indian subcontinent, to take only the nearer examples. While stratigraphic evidence cannot yet be shown in Iraq, the industries which on typological grounds could make up such a sequence exist at Barda Balka in a geological sequence, at telegraph pole 26/22 and Serandur, neither yet associated with any stratigraphic sequence, and in the Mousterian deposits found in the lowest levels of several caves. (Braidwood, R. J. and Howe, B., Prehistoric Investigations in Iraqi Kurdistan, Chicago, 1960, P.3, 31, 147).
 

The "core tools", "pebble tools", "bifaces" or "choppers" terms have generally been abandoned because they are not accurate or apply to more than one tradition. These are specified in “Oldowan” tools, which are not necessarily cores, pebbles, or bifaces, and comprise more than hand-axes. Oldowan tool use is estimated to have begun about 2.5 million years ago. (Encyclopedia)
 

Plate 9B

This peculiar natural columnar remnant is itself the Barda Balka, which means “the outstretched stone”, bard means “stone” and bal “outstretched form”. So it is not “at Barda Balka” as described below, but the site’s name Barda Balka is dedicated to this remarkable stone. See Bible Discovered pg. 248.

 

B. Natural “monolith”(probably a fossil-spring core) at Barda Balka. Gravel slope in background and to left of view yielded stone tools (Braidwood).

 

 

Plate 10

The Zarzi (A) and Pale Gawra (B) caves

 

    

 

 

Plate 27

Jarmo wheat. A. Imprint of ventral side of

spikelet. B. Cast of imprint shown in A beside

fresh spikelet of Triticum dicoccoides.

C. Imprint of dorsal side of spikelet.

D. Carbonized kernels. Scale, about 4 diam.

 

 

Plate 28

Jarmo plant remains. A. Imprints of two-row barley florets, with kernel partly preserved in lower imprint. B. Carbonized kernels of two-row barley, with internode and one lateral flower partly preserved in top row.
C. Carbonized seeds of field peas. D. Carbonized kernels of Pistachia mutica. Scale, about 4 diam.

These statements were made by the field excavators Braidwood, R. J. and others, in Prehistoric Investigations in Iraqi Kurdistan, Chicago, 1960 and Iranian Prehistoric Project, Science 133, 1961, I have quoted, as I have referred; except my explanations The Zagros Paleolithic Museum, Kermášán’s sites and Barda Balka.  

However, who were the indigenous people created them? Can one relate these findings to the Kurds? From 1998 constantly, I answered this question with YES and I could provide still more evidences for my claim.

What are the linguistic and historical evidences? How does DNA provide evidences for this claim? 

Kurds are obviously descendants of indigenous (first) Neolithic Northern Fertile Crescent aborigines https://hqberai.blogspot.com/search?q=DNA

 

New Biological Findings and the DNA reports on

http://hqberai.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-tacit-acknowledgment-indo-european.html

Following this article on December 7, 2012, announcement: Kurds the earliest farmers and the earliest village-farming-community in Kurdsu (Stratigraphic, Biological and DNA evidences).

The head of the Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies, Professor Roger Pearson and John H. Brown – have been kindly asked: What is the DNA evidence? We will look forward to seeing the revised version.

On December 25, 2012, I provided them a 30 pages revised version of “Kurds the earliest farmers and the earliest village-farming-community in Kurdsu”.

In reaction, John H. Brown wrote on December 27, 2012. We will submit it to our referees and advise you their decision immediately we receive it.

But I have received no response, neither their advice! Here our conversations:

From: iejournal@aol.com [mailto:iejournal@aol.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2012 9:37 PM
To: Hamiit Qliji Berai
Subject: Re: Kurds the earliest farmers and the earliest village-farming-community in Kurdsu

Thank you for sending this. We will submit it to our referees and advise you their decision immediately we receive it. John H. Brown 

On Dec 25, 2012, at 3:58 AM, Hamiit Qliji Berai wrote:

As promised, I have the pleasure to send you the document you asked for “The Earliest Farmers”
It took me longer than expected. Please find the attachment.
Best wishes, Hamíit Qliji Bérai 

From: iejournal@aol.com [mailto:iejournal@aol.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 1:04 PM
To: Hamiit Qliji Berai
Subject: Re: Kurds the earliest farmers and the earliest village-farming-community in Kurdsu

Will look forward to seeing the revised version 

 

On Dec 11, 2012, at 9:52 PM, Hamiit Qliji Berai wrote:

Thank you, I will get back to you as soon as possible,
Hamiit

From: iejournal@aol.com [mailto:iejournal@aol.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 3:13 AM
To: Hamiit Qliji Berai
Subject: Re: Kurds the earliest farmers and the earliest village-farming-community in Kurdsu

What is the DNA evidence?

 

On Dec 10, 2012, at 8:40 AM, Hamiit Qliji Berai wrote:

Kurds the world’s earliest farmers

The world’s earliest village-farming-community in Kurdsu, stratigraphic and DNA evidences.