New evidences from the Old Paleolithic period in Poldakhtar city, Lorestan province

Lorestan province in the west of Iran is always known as one of the ancient regions and human settlements in the Paleolithic era. Based on the information obtained from the archaeological excavations in the caves of Khoramabad and Kouhdasht in the last few decades, the history of settlement in Lorestan province reaches about 100000 years ago and the Middle Paleolithic period. In the archeological survey that was recently conducted in the Mian-Kouh region of Pol-e Dokhtar county, evidence of artifacts belonging to the Lower Paleolithic period was identified from 15 sites. This period, for which a history between 1800000 - 250000 years has been considered, is very important in the archaeological studies of the world due to its connection with the time, route and dispersal of the early human beings. At all, 153 stone tools from these sites discovered, include; chopper, chopper-core, core, handaxe, cleaver, trihedral pick, borer, scraper and flack were found, which according to comparative typology belong to the Lower Paleolithic period. The importance of these findings in the archaeological researches of the Iranian Plateau is very high, because until today, this number of significant stone tools has not been reported from the introduced Paleolithic sites of Iran, which shows that Lorestan province can be one of the important areas and habitats of early humans on the way of dispersal out of Africa.