Ganj is the archaeological site in Iran in the Middle East. There are many archaeological sites to choose from in the Middle East and they are all very interesting. The Ganj site is a very popular site to visit when you are in the Middle East. In Iran they have special tours that you can take just to visit this special site.
The Ganj site is located along the bumpy mountain tops of the Zagros Mountains that run through western Iran and northeastern Iraq. The archaeological site in the Kermanshah district of southwestern Iran was an early highland village with evidence for domestication of the goat, and some of the earliest ceramics in the Middle East as well. (about.com) There are also other sites where early herding is being studied and they are: Yafteh Cave, Pa, Sangar, Gar Arjeneh, and Ali Kosh.
The settlement of Ganj Derah was about 10,000 years ago. This site has been mainly used for the relationship between goats and humans. Toe bones from a goat were found at the settlement of Ganj Derah. This gives us a new future into animal domestication in the Near East. Also this site has some interesting inscriptions on some walls. This was the earliest site of the Neolithic revolution from a hunting and gathering to an agricultural lifestyle. (Colleen McLinn)
The goat hoof prints found in mud brick suggest beginning of domestication around 8500 BC and the earliest evidence for pottery. (KU) Dr. Melinda Zeder, Curator of Old World Archaeology & Zoo archaeology at the National Museum of Natural History, and Dr. Brian Hesse of the University of Alabama at Birmingham researched this land. (Smithsonian) They discovered that goats were hunted there ever since the time of the Neanderthals and that now they were being bread and herded instead. Their findings on this shift that changed both the societies of human herders and the ecology of regions where goats and other livestock animals lived, was reported in the March 24, 2000 issue of Science (Smithsonian). This site had been excavated by Canadian and American teams in the 1950s-1970s (Binghamton University). The site was also excavated in the 1970's and there are many other times that it has been done. Zeder and Hesse date the pieces of bone and can tell that the herding occurred in the highlands. They could probably tell by the hoofs or by the bone textures because of the rocks or the way the bones were positioned. People and their goats, then moved to arid lowland regions well outside the goats' range. People then abandoned the goats and realized that there were other places to get food and other food producing technologies like fertile lands maybe by streams or lakes. Also the population began to spread and go to new ecological areas (Smithsonian). Humans had been hunter-gatherers for over one million years and shifted to a lifestyle of tilling the soil and herding animals. This lifestyle change is one of the most essential changes in human history and indicates the verge of the modern era.
REFERENCES:
Smithsonian Natural History Highlight.http://www.mnh.si.edu/highlight/goats/. July 2000.
Introduction to Archaeology Study Guide - Domestication and the Neolithic Period in the Old World.http://www.ku.edu/~hoopes/110-h3.htm
NewsletterVolume 10 No 1http://mena.binghamton.edu/newsletter500.htm.May 2000
Research Training Program. Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History PROJECTSUMMARY1998.http://www.nmnh.si.edu/rtp/students/1998/students_1998_mclinn.html. 1998
Written by Jerrad Aspelund, 2003