INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Owlia, Abdollah Jabal Amoli, Hamideh Chubak, Ali-Akbar Saeidi, Mohammad-Hassan Semsar, Mohammadrahim Sarraf, Faeq Tohidi, Rajabali
Labbaf-Khaniki, Mehdi Mojabi, Mohammad-Hassan Mohebali, and Mohammad Mirshokraei were honored during a ceremony held at the ministry
headquarters in Tehran.Furthermore, the late cultural heritage expert Bagher Ayatollahzadeh Shirazi was posthumously honored for his
of cultures, Iran has played a leading role as a source of innovation, being a melting pot and cultural powerhouse connecting Africa, Asia,
and Europe.Highlights are the pre-Islamic empires of the Achaemenids and Sassanids, the formation of a Persian-Islamic culture, and the
artistic masterpieces of the 9th to 13th centuries as well as the heyday of the Safavids to name a few
rich natural and rural landscapes, 26 of which are UNESCO World Heritage.Ancient Iran, also known as Persia, was a historic region of
southwestern Asia that is only roughly coterminous with modern Iran
The term Persia was used for centuries, chiefly in the West, to designate those regions where Persian language and culture predominated, but
it more correctly refers to a region of southern Iran formerly known as Persis, alternatively as Pars or Parsa, modern Fars.During the rule
The Achaemenids were the dominant dynasty during Greek history until the time of Alexander the Great, and the use of the name Persia was
gradually extended by the Greeks and other peoples to apply to the whole Iranian plateau
This tendency was reinforced with the rise of the Sasanian dynasty, also native to Persis, whose culture dominated the Iranian plateau until
requested that the name Iran be used instead of Persia
The two terms, however, are often used interchangeably when referring to periods preceding the 20th century.In addition, the Iranian plateau
was roamed by the Neanderthals
A 2019 study published in the Journal of Human Evolution, suggests that Neanderthals were roaming over the Iranian Zagros mountain range
between 40 to 70 thousand years ago.Until the late 20th century, Neanderthals were regarded as genetically, morphologically, and
behaviorally distinct from living humans
However, more recent discoveries about this well-preserved fossil Eurasian population have revealed an overlap between living and archaic
humans.Neanderthals lived before and during the last Ice Age of the Pleistocene in some of the most unforgiving environments ever inhabited
They developed a successful culture, with a complex stone tool technology, that was based on hunting, some scavenging, and local plant
Their survival during tens of thousands of years of the last glaciation is a remarkable testament to human adaptation.Zagros mountain range
in southwestern Iran, extending northwest-southeast from the border areas of eastern Turkey and northern Iraq to the Strait of Hormuz, is
about 990 miles (1,600 km) long and more than 150 miles (240 km) wide
It forms the extreme western boundary of the Iranian plateau, though its foothills to the north and west extend into adjacent
countries.According to Britannica, the oldest rocks in the Zagros range date to Precambrian time (that is, before 541 million years ago),
and the Paleozoic Era rocks date to between 541 million and 252 million years ago and are found at or near the highest peaks.Most of the
rocks in the mountain range, however, are limestone and shale from the Mesozoic Era (252 million to 66 million years ago) and the Paleogene
Period (66 million to 23 million years ago)
The range was primarily formed by orogenies (mountain-building episodes) driven by the movement of the Arabian Plate underneath the Eurasian
Plate during the Miocene and Pliocene epochs (23 million to 2.6 million years ago).AFM
