392 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1954 



PLEISTOCENE HISTORY OF IRAQ 



Very important to our understanding of the Stone Age of Iraq and 

 the Near East is a discussion of the former view concerning the sup- 

 posed extension of the Persian Gulf in Mesopotamia. Such an ex- 

 tension of this sea would have been an obstacle to the prehistoric mi- 

 gration of peoples. In a recent instructive paper, Lees and Falcon 

 (1952) have demonstrated that Jacques de Morgan's (1924, pp. 32, 39; 

 1927, p. 2) hypothesis regarding the former extension of the Persian 

 Gulf within the time of man is geologically unfounded. Such a land- 

 ward encroachment of the sea would have meant that migrant peoples 

 would have had to funnel east and west between the foothills of the 

 Zagros and the northern edge of this water. Lees and Falcon (op. 

 cit.) have found no evidence of marine deposition anywhere in the 

 upper Mesopotamian plain. These authors compiled a study from ar- 

 cheological excavations, boreholes, physical and geological observa- 

 tions, and aerial photography which indicates, contrary to de Morgan's 

 hypothesis, that the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Karun Rivers are 

 not building forward a normal delta. Instead, these rivers are dis- 

 charging their load of sediment into a tectonic or sinking basin. 



The fact that there never has been a long northward extension of 

 the Persian Gulf within the time of human occupation negates the 

 cherished belief of archeologists, based upon de Morgan's theory, that 

 Stone Age man was obliged to skirt the head of the gulf in the vicinity 

 of northern Mesopotamia. We can now assume that man could have 

 roamed at will, dry-shod, across the length and breadth of the Mesopo- 

 tamian plains, some actual hint of which is given below. 



Very important to the geochronology of prehistoric archeological 

 sites is the identification of old landforms with periods of liuman 

 occupation. Significant among these landforms are raised sea beaches 

 or marine terraces and inland riverine terraces. Marine terraces arc 

 not discussed here, since they are not within the scope of this paper. 

 In fact, there appear to be certain difficulties in correlating marine 

 terraces of the Persian Gulf, into which the principal rivers of 

 Mesopotamia empty, with inland riverine terraces of the same region. 

 Lees and Falcon (1952, p. 28) state that there is no simple develop- 

 ment of recent marine terraces in the surroundings of the Persian 

 Gulf, because the folding movements of the anticlines that bound the 

 coasts are still active. There are many sections of subsiding shoreline 

 with drowned valley conditions in synclines and many sloping terraces 

 on the flanks of adjacent anticlines. H. E. Wright, Jr. (1952, p. 24), 

 the geologist who accompanied the University of Chicago Oriental 

 Institute expedition to Iraq in 1951, mentions, among other things, 

 that river terraces traceable to marine terraces were not revealed in his 

 geological reconnaissances in northern Iraq. 



