The prehistory of Mesopotamia is the period between the Paleolithic and the emergence of writing in the area of the Fertile Crescent around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, as well as surrounding areas such as the Zagros foothills, southeastern Anatolia, and northwestern Syria.
In general, Paleolithic Mesopotamia is poorly documented, with the situation worsening in southern Mesopotamia for periods prior to the 4th millennium BC. Geological conditions meant that most of the remains were buried under a thick layer of alluvium or submerged beneath the waters of the Persian Gulf. The Middle Paleolithic witnessed the emergence of a population of hunter-gatherers who lived in the caves of the Zagros and, seasonally, in numerous open-air sites. They were producers of a lithic industry of the Mousterian type, and their funerary remains, found in the cave of Shanidar, indicate the existence of solidarity and the practice of healing between the members of a group. During the Upper Paleolithic, the Zagros was probably occupied by modern man. The Shanidar cave contains only tools made of bone or antler, typical of a local Aurignacian called "Baradostian" by specialists.
The late Epipaleolithic period, characterized by the Zarzian (c. 17,000–12,000 years BC), saw the appearance of the first temporary villages with circular permanent structures. The appearance of fixed objects such as sandstone or granite millstones and cylindrical basalt pestles indicated the beginning of sedentarization.
Between the 11th and 10th millennia BC, the first villages of sedentary hunter-gatherers are known in northern Iraq. Houses seem to have been built around a "hearth", a kind of family "property". The preservation of the skulls of the dead and artistic activity related to birds of prey have also been found. Around 10,000 to 7,000 BC, villages expanded in the Zagros and Upper Mesopotamia. The economy was mixed (hunting and the beginnings of agriculture). Houses became rectangular and the use of obsidian was recorded, which testifies to contacts with Anatolia where there were numerous deposits.
The 7th and 6th millennia BC saw the development of the so-called "ceramic" cultures known as "Hassuna", "Samarra", and "Halaf". They were characterized by the definitive introduction of agriculture and animal husbandry. Houses became more complex, with large communal dwellings built around a collective granary. The introduction of irrigation was another feature. While the Samarra culture shows signs of social inequality, the Halaf culture appears to be composed of small, disparate communities with little or no apparent hierarchy.
At the same time, the Ubaid culture developed in southern Mesopotamia at the end of the 7th millennium BC. Tell el-'Oueili is the oldest known site of this culture. Their architecture was elaborate and they practiced irrigation, essential in a region where agriculture was impossible without artificial water. In its greatest expansion, the Ubaid Culture spread peacefully, probably by acculturating the Halaf Culture, across northern Mesopotamia to southeastern Anatolia and northeastern Syria.
Villages, apparently not very hierarchical, expanded into cities, society became more complex, and an increasingly dominant fixed elite emerged toward the end of the 4th millennium BC. The most influential centers of Mesopotamia (Uruk and Tepe Gawra) saw the gradual emergence of writing and the state. Traditionally, this marks the end of prehistory.
Geographical and archaeological setting
Mesopotamia is located in the historical region of the Fertile Crescent in the ancient Near East, around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Mesopotamia corresponds for the most part to present-day Iraq, with the addition of a northern fringe of present-day Syria and the southeastern part of Turkey. Two regions are distinguished within this area: Upper Mesopotamia, or Jezirah, and Lower Mesopotamia.(fr) Aurenche and Kozlowski 2015, p. 18. Furthermore, the strong cultural similarities observed throughout Mesopotamian prehistory between the regions immediately east of the Tigris and west of the Euphrates allow for the study of a larger Mesopotamia bordering the foothills of the Zagros Mountains.Campbell 2012, p. 417.
Upper Mesopotamia is a hilly, flat, steppe vegetation region with an average elevation of 200–300 meters, extending east of the Tigris and west of the Euphrates. Most of the region receives sufficient rainfall for dry farming. However, its southern limits are Ramadi on the Euphrates and Samarra on the Tigris. Practically undocumented for the Paleolithic and Epipaleolithic periods is the part of the Jezirah between the tributaries of the Tigris and Euphrates. This can be explained both from an archaeological point of view, given the scarcity of surveys in this area, and from a human point of view, as the region may have been virtually uninhabited during the periods in question.
Today, Lower Mesopotamia consists of a gently sloping alluvial plain (37 meters above sea level in Baghdad).(fr) Aurenche and Kozlowski 2015, p. 18-19. Around 14,000 BC, the ancient delta of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was at the level of the Gulf of Oman. Around 10,000 BC, only a third of the present surface of the Persian Gulf was covered by the sea. As a result, many Paleolithic sites are found beneath the waters of the Gulf. Thus, the flora, fauna, and prehistory of the once-dry delta remain unknown. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which carry and deposit alluvial deposits at the end of their courses, caused the sea level to rise again after the waters of the Gulf had risen. This last phenomenon buried under several meters of alluvium or a water table all the remains of sites that might have been established before the 4th millennium BC on a plain covered by steppes.(fr) Jean-Daniel Forest (Chercheur au CNRS), "La culture d'Obeid (du VIIe au Ve millénaire)" archive [PDF], in clio.fr, December 2004 (accessed July 7th, 2022) The plains between the left bank of the Tigris and the foothills of the Zagros are the only remaining evidence of the steppe of southern Mesopotamia, once an extension of the southern Jezirah steppe. The present-day alluvial plains are therefore virtually devoid of any surface Paleolithic or Neolithic remains dating from before the 7th millennium BC. This is not because the sites were unoccupied, but rather because they have disappeared under several meters of alluvium, where they remain unexplored if not destroyed by natural forces.(fr) P. Sanlaville and R. Dalongeville, "L'évolution des espaces littoraux du golfe Persique et du golfe d'Oman depuis la phase finale de la transgression post-glaciaire", Paléorient, vol. 31, no 1, 2005, p. 19-20 (read online archive, accessed on March 23rd, 2020)Peter M. M. G. Akkermans and Glenn M. Schwartz, The Archaeology of Syria : From Complex Hunter-Gatherers to Early Urban Societies (c.16,000-300 BC), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 16(fr) Catherine Breniquet, "Tell es-Sawwan, Irak. Essai de synthèse et de prospective sur la néolithisation de la plaine mésopotamienne", Paléorient, vol. 42, no 1, 2016, p. 146 (read online [archive], accessed March 23rd, 2020).
Lower Palaeolithic While 600,000 years ago the Archantropians left flint tools all over the Mediterranean (Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Iran), departing from Turkey and the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, the first human traces in Mesopotamia appear to be rolled and bifacially carved pebbles discovered in 1984 near Mosul in Iraq, dating from the Late Acheulean, i.e. from the last quarter of the Lower Paleolithic (between 500,000 and 110,000 years BC).(fr) Georges Roux 1995, p. 57-58.
Middle Paleolithic
Additional evidence of human presence was discovered in 1949 at Barda Balka ("Raised Stone" in Kurdish), not far from the town of Chamchamal in Iraqi Kurdistan. A number of carved flint artifacts found on the surface around a Neolithic megalith prompted a deeper investigation in 1950. Beneath fluvial sediments at a depth of 2 meters, hunter-gatherers discovered a kind of workshop or camp that had been occupied repeatedly over a short period of time. Their tools consisted of biface flint, axes, scrapers, and pebbles in the form of cleavers, suggesting stone working and butchery. These activities were carried out near a spring on the banks of a stream. On the basis of typological and geological criteria, it is estimated that the site dates back to 80,000 BP (years before present). This date seems to be confirmed by the discovery of animal bones, such as Asian elephant and rhinoceros, around the tools. Some time later, these animals disappeared from these regions.Bruce Howe, Barda Balka, Chicago, Illinois, Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2014, 32 p. , read online archive [PDF]), p. 29.(fr) Georges Roux 1995, p. 58.
At the beginning of the Würm Ice Age, prehistorians believed that people lived in caves on a seasonal basis. In 1928, British archaeologist Dorothy Garrod discovered a Mousterian lithic industry in the lower layers of the Hazar Merd cave in Iraqi Kurdistan, which is also found in many open-air sites. Meanwhile, in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Shanidar cave on the southern flank of Jebel Baradost in the foothills of the northern Zagros, in the province of Erbil in north-eastern Iraq, represents the most important archaeological site in the discovery of Middle and Upper Palaeolithic Mesopotamia. Between 1951 and 1960, the team led by American archaeologist Ralph Stefan Solecki excavated the floor of the cave and reached virgin rock at a depth of 14 meters.(fr) Emma Pomeroy, Paul Bennett, Chris O. Hunt, Tim Reynolds, Lucy Farr, Marine Frouin, James Holman, Ross Lane and Charles French, "New Neanderthal remains associated with the ‘flower burial’ at Shanidar Cave", Antiquity, vol. 94, no 373, February 2020, p. 11–26 (, read online archive). They discovered four different cultural levels. The deepest and thickest of these (8.5 meters), level D, attributed to the Middle Paleolithic, reveals layers of ash mixed with flint tools and bones, suggesting that the cave has been occupied intermittently since 60,000 BP, for about ten thousand years. Numerous tools such as points, scrapers, chisels, and drills characteristic of the Mousterian lithic industry were also found. Arrowheads found in the upper layers of level D, of the "Emirati" type and similar to those found in Palestine, suggest contacts with the Mediterranean Levant.See also Jean-Guillaume Bordes and Sonia Shidrang, "La sequence baradostienne de Yafteh (Khorammabad, Lorestan, Iran)", in (fr) Marcel Otte, Fereidoun Biglari, Jacques Jaubert, Le Paléolithique d'Iran, Actes 15e Congrès UISPP, Lisbon, Actes Colloques UISPP, September 2006, p. 97. In addition, the pollens found and analyzed in the laboratory allowed researchers to deduce strong climatic changes during the period of the cave's occupation: first warmer than today, then very cold, and finally hot and dry up to 44,000 years BP.(fr) Georges Roux 1995, p. 59 and 61.
But the greatest discovery was the presence of ten human skeletons, including two infants. These skeletons, most of them badly damaged, have been there since 60,000 BP for the oldest and 45,000 BP for the most recent. The skulls are in relatively good condition, with Neanderthal characteristics.(fr) Georges Roux 1995, p. 59.(fr) Pomeroy et al. Farr, p. 11. These skeletons fall into two categories, which are separated by 10,000 years: the majority belong to men, women, and children who lived in the cave and died as a result of rocks falling from the ceiling; the other are bodies that were apparently placed there for burial between 50,000 and 45,000 years BC. One of the deposited dead appears to have been lying in a fetal position and covered with flowers; another, discovered in 2017 not far from the first, is resting.(fr) Pomeroy et al. Farr, p. 20 and 23.