Abstract:

Abstract enThe purpose of this study is to examine the influences of geographic, climatic and cultural factors on the emergence of food production in the Central Zagros region of Western Iran. The article argues that the Zagros region of Iran, i.e., the eastern part of the Fertile Crescent (rich in flora and fauna) played a major role in the process of domestication in spite of unfavorable geographical, demographic and climatic factors; but that the region was a “subsidiary center of domestication” in comparison with the northern (Anatolia – Syria) and western (Levant) parts of Fertile Crescent. 1- The earliest Neolithic sites in Iran were located among the intermontane valleys of the Zagros where rain-fed agriculture was possible. Early settlements (seasonal campsites rather than permanent year-round villages) were few and often widely separated: The first settlers were transhumant herders and early farmers, though hunting and gathering continued to be component economic resource. 2- We know that summer temperatures were up to 2 °Chigher than today during the first Holocene millennia (9500-8500 BCE.) and that climatic changes brought seasonal conditions that favored annual plants like cereals. But this climate change took a thousand years to reach Western Iran. 3- The populations of Zagros Aceramic Neolithic villages are smaller and scattered than in Northern Mezopotamia and Levant because of rugged topography and limited arable land. The rapid population growth was often one of the structural determinants of social change (change to the Neolithic way of life), because neighboring communities in cross-cultural interaction change their modes of subsistence. The present article seeks to examine the impact of cross-cultural encounters as a part of the Neolithic expansion across the Fertile Crescent. 

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