The Hotu and Kamarband Caves or Belt Caves are prehistoric archaeological sites in

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 ...

. They are located apart, in a cliff on the slopes of the

Alborz The Alborz ( fa, البرز) range, also spelled as Alburz, Elburz or Elborz, is a mountain range in northern Iran that stretches from the border of Azerbaijan along the western and entire southern coast of the Caspian Sea and finally runs nort ...

mountains in the village of Toroujen (currently called Shahid Abad), south west of Behshahr. Excavations took place led by Carleton S. Coon and were reported on between 1949 and 1957. Hotu cave, Upper entry

Hotu Cave has an approximate size of . The site produced pottery shards, stone tools and material that could be radio-carbon dated. Twenty-two samples were dated and attributed to eight different cultures. The 2 earliest cultures, present at around 9,910 to 7,240 years BCE are assumed to be seal hunters and vole eaters. The bones of a dog have been cited as an example of exceptionally early animal domestication. Pre-

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...

finds date to around 6,120 years BCE. Kamarband cave is notable for three human skeletons discovered there, dating to approximately 9,000 years BCE. Other finds include

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and sta ...

blades, walrus and deer bones, giving valuable information about human development from the

ice age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gre ...

in the Mazandaran area. At Hotu Cave dwellers were identified as having Y-chromosome haplogroup J ( xJ2a1b3, J2b2a1a1), with a more refined analysis putting it at J2a-PF5008*.

Literature

* C. S. Coon, ''Cave Explorations in Iran 1949'', Museum Monographs, The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1951. * C. S. Coon, "Excavations in Huto Cave, Iran, 1951: A Preliminary Report", ''Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society''; 96, 1952, pp. 231–69. * C. S. Coon, ''The Seven Caves: Archaeological Explorations in the Middle East'', New York, 1957.

References

External links

Pbase.com: Photo gallery of Huto & Kamarband Caves
{{coord missing, Iran Caves of Iran Landforms of Mazandaran Province Archaeological sites in Iran History of Mazandaran Province Prehistoric Iran 9th-millennium BC establishments Tourist attractions in Mazandaran Province National works of Iran