Shiwatoo ( ckb, شیوه‌تو), located 7 km to the west of Mahabad, overlooking Mahabad-Piranshahr road in the West Azarbaijan Province,

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

, is an archaeological site of the

Lower Paleolithic The Lower Paleolithic (or Lower Palaeolithic) is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 3 million years ago when the first evidence for stone tool production and use by hominins appears in ...

, years ago. Archaeologists collected nearly one hundred artifacts from an area measuring about one hectare overlooking the Mahabad River. Many of the artifacts were made from andesite, quartzite, and basalt cobbles. The stone industry consists primarily of cores, tested cobbles, and core-choppers. The most characteristic find from this site is a

Cleaver (tool) In archaeology, a cleaver is a type of biface stone tool of the Lower Palaeolithic. Cleavers resemble hand axes in that they are large and oblong or U-shaped tools meant to be held in the hand. But, unlike hand axes, they have a wide, straig ...

, which is a type of

biface A hand axe (or handaxe or Acheulean hand axe) is a Prehistory, prehistoric stone tool with two faces that is the longest-used tool in human history, yet there is no academic consensus on what they were used for. It is made from stone, usually f ...

stone tool of Acheulean tradition of the

Lower Palaeolithic The Lower Paleolithic (or Lower Palaeolithic) is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 3 million years ago when the first evidence for stone tool production and use by hominins appears in ...

.Jaubert, J.; Biglari, F.; Bordes, J.; Bruxelles, L.; Mourre, V.; Shidrang, S.; Naderi, R.; and Alipour, S. 2006 New Research on Paleolithic of Iran: Preliminary Report of 2004 Iranian-French Joint Mission. Archaeological Reports (Iranian Center for Archaeological Research) 4: 17–26. Shiwatoo stone

References

* https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Acheulian-artifacts-from-Shiwatoo-Mahabad-region-Drawing-J-Jaubert_fig3_292068003 * https://www.academia.edu/13844333/Shiwatoo-_Lower_Paleolithic * The Paleolithic of Iran: Report of 2004 Iranian-French Joint Mission Paleolithic Lower Paleolithic Pleistocene Archaeological sites in Iran Former populated places in Iran History of Iran Prehistory {{NEast-archaeology-stub