400 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1954 



sia, she realized that the Kurdistan industry of Zarzi, although pos- 

 sibly later in time, should be linked with the industries of Kostenki I 

 and Gagarino, some 600 miles to the north. The microlithic assem- 

 blage from the upper part of Layer B of Zarzi cave resembles the 

 flints from the cave of Gvardzhilas Klde in the Caucasus, a site that 

 also dates from the very end of the Paleolithic (Garrod, 1938, p. 14). 

 Garrod (1953, pp. 22-23), in a recent view of the problem, feels that 

 this "culture is for the moment too isolated to enter into a general 

 picture of the Middle Eastern sequence." On the other hand, Waechter 

 (1952, p. 16) finds a marked similarity of the upper part of Zarzi to 

 the post-Aurignacian of Palestine, as well as to the site of Gvardzhilas 

 Klde.^ For Palegawra, with an industry similar to, but somewhat 

 later chronologically than Zarzi, the same relationships presumably 

 hold. 



Karim Shahir yielded a Mesolithic industry which Howe regards 

 as a development from the Zarzi-Palegawra stage, but definitely later 

 in time (Movius, 1953, p. 417) . 



Prior to the discovery of the Shanidar cave, the superposition of a 

 very late Upper Paleolithic industry such as that of Zarzi upon the 

 Middle Paleolithic of the Hazer Merd cave left a chronological and 

 cultural hiatus unaccounted for. It represented a tremendous jump — 

 presuming a change-over in the climate, physiography, biology, as well 

 as in the flint- working tradition — as though one wiped the slate clean 

 and began all over again. We can be pretty sure that the racial types 

 of Paleolithic man (about which we still know nothing in Iraq) had 

 changed too, as at Mount Carmel in Palestine. 



SHANIDAR CAVE 



Shanidar cave, first explored on an archeological reconnaissance in 

 1951 (Solecki, 1952a), lies in the Rowanduz district of the Erbil liwa, 

 in northern or Kurdistan Iraq (fig. 2). The Chemchemal-Sulei- 

 maniyah area is about 120 airline miles to the southeast of Shanidar. 

 The village, after which the cave has taken its name, is occupied by 

 a small tribal settlement of Barzani Kurds, who had been resettled 

 there by the Iraq Government. Shanidar village is 29 miles by road 

 from Khalifan, a Kurdish village on the main road to Ryat from 

 Erbil. A police post, one of the several that are to be found at points 

 along the roads in this region, dominates the terrace edge above the 

 Shanidar village. 



The synclinal valley of Shanidar lies at about 1,400 feet (426.7 

 meters) elevation (pi. 1, a). It is formed by two rivers, the Greater 



' For additional references concerning possible relationships of the Zarzi site 

 with this Caucasus site see Movius, 1953, p. 416, especially footnote 25. 



