Tehran Times

An international team of archaeologists and researchers has produced a facial reconstruction of a young man who lived around 10,000 years ago at Ganj Dareh, a Neolithic site in western Iran.

The remains were originally uncovered at Ganj Dareh Tepe in Harsin county, east of Kermanshah province. The site is known for yielding some of the earliest evidence of goat domestication.

According to the project, individuals from Ganj Dareh belong to the Iran_N genetic cluster, and most carry Y-DNA haplogroup R2, which researchers say is associated with the dispersal of Ancient North Eurasian ancestry. The findings were reported on the X platform by Ancestral Whispers.

Anthropologist Peter Lambert described the young adult as the “third of the sarcophagus burial group” and said the skeleton was largely complete except for several vertebrae and parts of the skull and pelvis. “The mandible and both maxillae are well preserved,” Lambert wrote, adding that the individual’s robust musculature suggests he was male and approximately 15 to 18 years old at the time of death. He noted that the third mandibular molars were partially erupted.

Lambert said the reconstructed cranium was “complete except for the basal elements” and displayed an artificially deformed vault, which he called the best example of the deformation style found at Ganj Dareh. He reported deposits of salivary calculus on the teeth but no additional signs of pathology.

Ganj Dareh, meaning “Treasure Valley” in Persian, was first identified in 1965 and excavated over four field seasons in the 1960s and 1970s by Canadian archaeologist Philip Smith. The site was later revisited in 2017 or 2018 by an Iranian-Danish team led by Hojjat Darabi and Tobias Richter. Archaeological layers at the settlement date to around 8200 BC and have produced the earliest known remains linked to goat domestication.

AM