Middle paleolithic to neolithic cultural history of North Iraq

Six sections of 1–2.7-m depth contain ten sediment samples, each collected from the caves of Shanidar, Hawdian, and Hazar Merd with the nearby river valley sites of Zawi-Chemi, Gawra River, and Barda Balka, respectively, in North Iraq. They have been analyzed palynologically for their climatic significance and vegetational cover during late Quaternary in northeastern Iraq. The main information gathered from these palynological analyses as well as stone tools is ancient open site settlements in Barda Balka of Paleolithic interglacial Acheuleon culture. During the last Ice Age (120,000–10,000 years before present (B.P.)) people refuged to cave settlements. Baradost Mountain as well as the Aqra and Piera Maqroon mountains cavemen of the Middle Paleolithic Period are related to steppe vegetation with cold climate and glacial storms. Those cavemen manufactured stone artifacts of Mousterian to Gravetian culture and have their own religious belief and funeral ceremony especially recorded in the Shanidar cave. They lived by hunting and food collecting from a nearby valley to each cave. During earliest Holocene time (10,000 years B.P.), changing climate to moderately warm climate with Quercus forests and poacean vegetation was recorded, and the cavemen evolved to Neolithic culture and hence moved to settle in plain areas and built the oldest villages of the world, viz., Zawi-Chemi and Jarmo with continuing temporarily living in the caves as well. Their habit changed from food collectors to farmers who cultivated the land with wheat, barley, fruits, olive, legumes, and flowers of brilliant colors, nice odor, and nectariferous as well as domesticated animals for their food resources. Clay tablets of the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians have documented (Arapha) Kirkuk as one of their cities since 5,500 years B.P. The stone writing records of Assyrian king Sennacherib (705–681 years B.C.) state of making irrigation canals flowing to the temple of Ishtar in Erbil. On the other hand, the similarity of Jarmo village in the present Kurdstan region of Iraq to ancient Tell Hassuna village, south of the present Mosul city (within ancient Nineva city), and the pottery of Jarmo villages to Nineva pottery could give evidence for Jarmo people as followers to the Babylonian–Assyrian cultures within their empire and to prove that people of North Iraq and South Iraq are interrelated cultures through the history within Mesopotamian cultures.