Darband Cave is a

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 3.3 million years ago when the first evidence for stone tool production and use by hominins appears ...

site in the

Gilan Province Gilan Province () is one of the 31 provinces of Iran, in the northwest of the country and southwest of the Caspian Sea. Its capital is the city of Rasht. The province lies along the Caspian Sea, in Iran's Regions of Iran, Region 3, west of ...

in northern

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

, located on the north side of a deep tributary canyon of the Siahrud River, a tributary of the

Sefīd-Rūd The Sepid-Rud (, ) (also known as Sefid-Rud) is a river, approximately long, rising in the Alborz mountain range of northwestern Iran and flowing generally northeast to empty into the Caspian Sea at Rasht. Names Other names and transcription ...

River that flows into the

Caspian Sea The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, described as the List of lakes by area, world's largest lake and usually referred to as a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, ...

. The cave contains evidence of the earliest prehistoric human cave occupation during the Lower Paleolithic in Iran. Stone artifacts and animal

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...

s were discovered by a group of Iranian archaeologists of the ''Department of Paleolithic'' of the

National Museum of Iran The National Museum of Iran ( ) in Tehran hosts some of the world's most important monuments dating back through preserved ancient and medieval Iranian antiquities. It is an institution formed of two museums; the Museum of Ancient Iran and the ...

and ICHTO of

Gilan Gilan Province () is one of the 31 provinces of Iran, in the northwest of the country and southwest of the Caspian Sea. Its capital is the city of Rasht. The province lies along the Caspian Sea, in Iran's Region 3, west of the province of ...

. The site dates back to the late

Middle Pleistocene The Chibanian, more widely known as the Middle Pleistocene (its previous informal name), is an Age (geology), age in the international geologic timescale or a Stage (stratigraphy), stage in chronostratigraphy, being a division of the Pleistocen ...

period. The site was excavated by a team under the direction of Fereidoun Biglari in 2012 Biglari, F., V. Jahani, M. Mashkour, and S. Amini, 2014, Test Excavations at the Lower Paleolithic Site of Darband Cave, Roudbar, Gilan Province, 2012, Proceedings of the 12th Annual Symposium on the Iranian Archaeology, pp. 101-104, Iranian Center for Archaeological Research, Tehran.

Bear remains

The presence of large numbers of

cave bear The cave bear (''Ursus spelaeus'') is a prehistoric species of bear that lived in Europe and Asia during the Pleistocene and became extinct about 24,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum. Both the word ''cave'' and the scientific name '' ...

and

brown bear The brown bear (''Ursus arctos'') is a large bear native to Eurasia and North America. Of the land carnivorans, it is rivaled in size only by its closest relative, the polar bear, which is much less variable in size and slightly bigger on av ...

remains and sparse stone artifacts at the site indicates that Darband primarily represents a bear den. The co-occurrence of artifacts and bear bones does not imply human predation or scavenging. Because there are no clear cut marks, except a few burning signs on the bear bones, they probably accumulated through natural processes

References

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External links

* Archaeological sites in Iran Former populated places in Iran History of Gilan Landforms of Gilan province Caves of Iran Lower Paleolithic Prehistoric Iran Cave bear {{NEast-archaeology-stub