Zarzian hunter-gatherers in the Zagros as visualised by Google Gemini AI. My great grandfather?
The unbearably harsh conditions of the Last Glacial Maximum drove the Baradostian Ice Age hunter-gatherers out of the mountains, and into refuges. However, after 20,000 years ago, the climate started to improve permitting people to return to the valleys of the Zagros. But my paternal lineage ancestors do not appear to have moved far, and remained in the Zagros or South Caucasus region for a very long time. I'll conject that they return to the same valleys:
13,000 years ago. Zagros Mountains and valleys (now in Iran) South West Asia
The Zagros and South Caucasus mountains (now in Iran), South West Asia. © OpenStreetMap contributors".
Zarzian Culture.
Equivalent to the Epipalaeolithic of the Western arc of the Fertile Crescent, with its Natufians.
The Baradostians had sustained themselves particularly by hunting caprine - wild goats and sheep. But after the harshness of the Last Glacial Maximum, things appear to have been done differently. People seemed to enjoy a wider diversity of food. Not only ibex and mouflon, but onagers, gazelles, crustaceans, fish, birds, and as the above picture illustrates, tortoises. Wild plants were gathered - legumes, nuts, even grass seeds. There is evidence that they were grinding these, to make a porridge, or to bake flat breads. This may have been an early, critical stage towards future agriculture. Accidental selection processes were going on. For example, by selecting seeds from firmer rachis, they were starting the shift towards domestication. Same unconscious process is thought to have been going on with prey - including those wild goats. By selecting their quarry with concern for preserving availability, they were starting the transition towards domestication. It wasn't that they were intentionally trying to invent farming. It was Nature at work - new relationships forging between humans and species of both animal and plant.
Flint technologies changed. The Baradostians had excelled at manufacturing burins and small regular blades. The Zarzians developed these blades, making them even smaller and geometric - true microliths.