Climatic Changes and life during the Neolithic period in Iran

In geological perspective it is interesting to review the general topography of Iran casus natural hazards such as mudflows, earthflows and earthquake activities. The human impact on nature on the common cultural continuity in all periods of human life in Iran was important and crucial. Archaeologically, we have to consider high exploitation of natural resources such as destruction of forests for firewood and charcoal and agricultural colonization, expansion of agricultural lands in areas ecologically was not viable, extraordinary use of pasturelands for grazing of animal fundamentally effected on cultural collapse in Iran both in time and space. Environmental catastrophes such as earthquakes, floods, and volcanoes have always affected on human settlement patterns in Middle Eastern occupations from the Holocene afterward. Many settlements in Iran are located on active alluvial fans, which pose flood and sediment inundation hazards, but provide fertile soils for agriculture. Furthermore, many settlements are situated close to active faults, which are sources of large earthquakes but provide conduits for water, thus justifying the so-called ‘fatal attraction’ of humans to earthquake-prone locations. We are in preliminary studies of cultural collapse regionally and individually during prehistory and earlier history in Iran disturbed by natural disasters. Collapse of Hesar IIIc (1700BC), Arisman (2600 BC), Sialk during the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Iron Age, Bronze sites in Shar-i Sokhta and its satellite sites, Qazvin plain from the Late Chalcolithic period and abandonment of some settlements of Bronze Age in north east of Iran is some examples shows how environmental instabilities effect on cultural developments in Iran. By such perspective, I will consider how environmental factors caused the abandonment of sites during the Neolithic period.