A forgotten Race Built a Village on This Hilltop Some 8,000 Years Ago
Archeologists in recent years have noted that, no matter how deep they have dug into civilization's cradlelands, the beginnings of settled life still seem some distance away. Tepe Gawra's lowest level, for example, was already a few rungs up the ladder of mankind's progress in settled communities. The bottom layer at Hassuna, south of Mosul, pushed prehistory back a little further. But the absolute beginnings of he settled occupation, which mark man's divorce from nomadic existence, are believed to have been found only in 1948 with the discovery of this primitive site in Iraqi Kurdistan. Expedition members of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago here stand at the top of the Jarmo, civilization's oldest known village. Dr
Robert J Braidwood, head of the expedition, has reason for dating
the settlement between 5000 and 6000 BC. Its ruins stand 30
miles east of Kirkuk, the Iraqi oil centre.
|
