Thursday, 18 March 2010
Czech archaeologists are best-known for their work in Egypt, spanning five decades, but some specialists have begun making headlines for excavation work in a different part of the world: Mesopotamia – the cradle of ancient civilisation that is now present-day Kurdistan. Recently an eight-member team headed by Karel Nováček of the University of West Bohemia, returned from northern Iraq after having uncovered Stone Age tools that were used by either our ancestors or our distant relatives (Homo neanderthalensis). The tools date back some 150,000 years, to the Middle Palaeolithic, the oldest find of its kind in the city of Hewlir in Southern Kurdistan.
“Unlike the Assyrian cities of Nimrud or Ninime, which lasted only into the Dark Ages or the Middle Ages, Hewlir survived. The former sites were consequently far easier to excavate. In Hewlir, by comparison, it is much more difficult to get below the surface.”
“The Citadel (of Hewlir) in all likelihood has an uninterrupted history going back 6,000, maybe even 7,000 years Before Christ. Within its layers it retains remnants of the original monumental architecture of the Assyrian city: temples and royal palaces and the Temple of Ishtar and so on. When it comes to the rest of the town, we are on more hypothetical ground but our research suggests that there was a wider area that was also part of the older Assyrian city.”
