Knowledge of high resolution Y-chromosome haplogroup diversification within Iran provides important geographic context regarding the spread and compartmentalization of male lineages in the Middle East and southwestern Asia. At present, the Iranian population is characterized by an extraordinary mix of different ethnic groups speaking a variety of Indo-Iranian, Semitic and Turkic languages. Desp...

In this study, the ability of a regional climate model, based on MM5, to simulate the climate of the Middle East at the beginning of the twenty-first century is assessed. The model is then used to simulate the changes due to global warming over the twenty-first century. The regional climate model displays a negative bias in temperature throughout the year and over most of the domain. It does a ...

Species and Functional Diversity of Pollarded (Galajar) Less Disturbed Area in the Northern Zagros Forests

Phylogenetic relationships of Iranian Acanthodactylus species were investigated using 1407 bp of mitochondrial DNA including 606 bp of cytochrome b and 801 bp of NADH dehydrogenase subunit 4 (ND4). Analyses done with maximum parsimony, maximum-likelihood, and Bayesian inference included 67 specimens from 27 geographically distinct localities in Iran. Our molecular results proposed three clear a...

The agricultural transition profoundly changed human societies. We sequenced and analysed the first genome (1.39x) of an early Neolithic woman from Ganj Dareh, in the Zagros Mountains of Iran, a site with early evidence for an economy based on goat herding, ca. 10,000 BP. We show that Western Iran was inhabited by a population genetically most similar to hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus, but ...

The present study investigates the occurrence of wild grasses at Epipalaeolithic and aceramic Neolithic sites in the Near East in order to assess their role in subsistence economies alongside the emergence of cereal cultivation. We use Chogha Golan in the foothills of the central Zagros Mountains (ca. 11.7-9.6 ka cal. BP) as a case study, where the archaeobotanical data suggest the frequent exp...

The emergence of farming during the Neolithic transition, including the domestication of livestock, was a critical point in the evolution of human kind. The goat (Capra hircus) was one of the first domesticated ungulates. In this study, we compared the genetic diversity of domestic goats to that of the modern representatives of their wild ancestor, the bezoar, by analyzing 473 samples collected...

Investigation and Comparison of Slenderness Coefficient Old Persian Oak Wild Pistachio Trees in Different Site Conditions the Middle Zagros

In Iran, studies of the transition from hunting and gathering to farming herding have focused on early developments in Zagros Mountains. Here, authors present new zooarchaeological data Hotu Cave, which throw light sheep/goat management domestication during Epipalaeolithic–Neolithic southern shores Caspian Sea. Gazelle dominate Epipalaeolithic levels, while are most abundant Neolithic. Large qu...

DNA barcoding has been suggested as a universal tool for molecular species identification; however, it cannot be applied in cases when morphologically similar species share their DNA barcodes due to the common ancestry or mitochondrial introgression. Here we analyze the karyotype of Polyommatus (Agrodiaetus) morgani (Le Cerf, 1909) from the region of its type locality in the southern Zagros Mou...