This remote valley may have been the home of a civilization at the heart of the ancient world’s first globalized economy

Youssef Madjidzadeh is insistent. “There is no difference between Jiroft and Sumer,” says the white-bearded 72-year-old archaeologist, leaning forward on the sofa. We’re in the lobby of a hotel on the grounds of the shah’s former summer place near the Caspian Sea in northern Iran. The bold claim is an exaggeration at best, and a view shared by few of his colleagues. But there is no doubt that the dig he directs near the modern city of Jiroft in southeastern Iran is reshaping the way we understand the first emergence of civilization.

In Tehran, thousands of people are in the streets protesting the results of the recent election that gave Mahmoud Ahmedinejad another term. But here, a six-hour drive over the craggy Elburz Mountains from the capital, foreign and Iranian archaeologists have gathered amicably at this resort to discuss ancient Iran’s relations with the larger Bronze Age world. Much of the discussion revolves around the role of Jiroft as a wealthy and powerful center during the first flowering of urban culture nearly 5,000 years ago.

For a century, the story of civilization is thought to have begun around 3000 b.c. in Sumer in southern Mesopotamia. There the first cities, monumental palaces, and temples were built, and one of the first writing systems developed. Several years ago. Madjizadeh upset that archaeological gospel by contending that Jiroft is every bit as large and important as Sumer. And maybe even older. His first published volume on the site is titled The Earliest Oriental Civilization. These dramatic assertions made headlines in Iran and around the world.

No one at the meeting contradicts him. The foreigners are too polite and the Iranians seem intimidated. Madjizadeh remains defiant, even as the data his team has gathered demonstrates that Jiroft’s heyday was from 2500 b.c. to 2200 b.c., a millennium or more later than the earliest remains of cities in Mesopotamia. “It was necessary to say that at the time, in order to have the attention of the world,” he says, leaning back on the sofa. “I think I did the right thing.”

Madjizadeh’s excavations have been dogged by controversy since they began in 2002 in the wake of the terrible looting that first brought the site to international attention. Some archaeologists complain privately that his methods are not sufficiently up to date, and others bemoan his failure to pull together a strong team of specialists to sort through complicated, challenging finds. Yet despite attempts by Tehran to allow other archaeologists to conduct independent excavations, Madjizadeh continues his work and rejects critical comments as thinly masked jealousy. “Some people hate you because you wear your glasses a certain way,” he says dismissively. “I don’t care what they think.”

No one doubts that Jiroft is challenging our understanding of how civilization first thrived in the third millennium b.c. Long considered a cultural backwater hidden among high mountains and harsh deserts, this valley is emerging as an important crossroads in humanity’s first attempt at globalization more than 4,000 years ago. According to Holly Pittman, a University of Pennsylvania art historian who has collaborated with Madjizadeh, “This is a whole new Bronze Age civilization.”

The discovery is part of a larger tapestry of finds in Iran, Central Asia, and the Persian Gulf region that give are creating a new understanding of civilization’s emergence. Instead of three largely isolated societies hugging the banks of the Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, and Indus rivers, early civilization is turning out to be much more complicated. Myriad kingdoms scattered over thousands of miles traded goods, fashions, and ideas with one another while creating their own unique and independent ways of life. And Madjidzadeh’s excavation is a key part of that evidence. “Jiroft doesn’t displace Mesopotamia,” says Phil Kohl, an archaeologist at Wellesley College who attended the Caspian Sea meeting. “But it does show there are more players in the region than we had previously conceived.”

Until recently, those players were merely hinted at in cuneiform tablets inscribed by Mesopotamian scribes and excavated in the past century at sites such as Ebla and Ur. The texts mention exotic cities and lands such as Aratta, Meluhha, and Marhashi, which scholars long assumed were mythical. But given discoveries east of Mesopotamia in recent decades, historians now believe they can pinpoint actual geographical locations. Harvard University’s Piotr Steinkeller, for example, argues that Jiroft is the city of Marhashi mentioned in tablets from sites in Mesopotamia such as Adab. Steinkeller notes that the texts show that Marhashi lies between Anshan—near today’s southwestern Iranian city of Shiraz—and Meluhha, the probable name of what we call the Indus civilization far to the east in Pakistan and India. But others dispute these identifications. Madjizadeh thinks Jiroft is the ancient city of Aratta, which appears in Mesopotamian texts as a powerful city to the east.

It’s not difficult to grasp why archaeologists—and most of the outside world—would overlook Jiroft. British scholar Sir Aurel Stein passed through this area in the 1930s, noting many ancient mounds. But like Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan before him, he didn’t linger. Entering Jiroft is a little like finding the legendary kingdom of Shangri La—if you like your paradise very, very warm. Dropping down from high peaks above barren hillsides, the road from the provincial capital of Kerman snakes into a lush green world of date palms and fruit plantations. The Halil River meanders through what feels like a miniature version of Mesopotamia and the area is as fertile as any stretch of Nile. But this river never reaches the sea and the valley is one of earth’s hottest places. Summer temperatures top more than 120 degrees and it’s often too blistering for flies to swarm. It is little wonder that outsiders rarely tarried.

How Jiroft emerged as a cosmopolitan center some 4,500 years ago, complete with massive acropolis, a life-size statue of a powerfully built man, and—perhaps—its own unique writing system, is difficult to fathom. To get to Mesopotamia, it is a hard 600-mile trek over high ranges, deserts, and a vast plateau. Reaching the Indus River to the east is no easier. Yet there has been some evidence of Jiroft’s role in long distance trade in the third millennium b.c. Distinctive chlorite (a dark stone) vessels pop up in excavated sites across the ancient world in this period, from the Royal Graves of Ur, to the Arabian Peninsula along the Persian Gulf, to the sites along the Indus River in today’s Pakistan. Some are as tall as flower vases—about 10 inches high—with flared rims, while others are round and low. A few are intricately carved and studded with semiprecious stones, and those decorated with images of snakes or scorpions reveal a mythology far different from that of any known culture. For decades, the origin of these odd artifacts was unknown.

Scholars classified them as “Intercultural Style,” an academic way of saying their origin was unclear. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Harvard University archaeologist C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky dug 55 miles west of Jiroft at a site called Tepe Yahya, and discovered workshops that produced similar chlorite vessels. Kohl suggested then that these objects were made to export to Mesopotamian markets.

But Yahya was small, more village than city, and some archaeologists suspected there were major centers in the area waiting to be found. Then the 1979 revolution closed Iran off from the outside world, shutting the door to further research.

The mystery remained unsolved until 2001, when an illegal dig in an ancient cemetery 15 miles south of the modern city of Jiroft attracted the attention of police. They confiscated hundreds of vessels similar to those found at Yahya and Ur, many of which included fine carvings of animals and plants. Some were embedded with colorful stones. At the same time there was a political thaw in Tehran under President Mohammad Khatami. That led authorities, who had only allowed limited excavation by foreigners since 1979, to call in Madjidzadeh, a respected excavator who was fired from his job as archaeology department chair at Tehran University in the aftermath of the revolution. In the interim, he had left the country with his French wife and taken French citizenship.

In 2003, Madjidzadeh began work in the winter season, the only time when excavation is practical given the heat. He didn’t focus on the denuded cemetery, now a sad landscape of round looters’ holes, but instead began work on two massive, largely untouched mounds located a few hundred yards away called Konar Sandal South and Konar Sandal North. After six years of excavation, the southern mound, which rises 80 feet above the plain, has proven to be the remains of an impressive citadel surrounded by a wall of carefully laid brick, with buttresses and niches. Almost 200 feet of this wall—which is still six feet high in places—has been exposed on the western side. The sophisticated layout reminded Madjidzadeh of the complex decorative patterns found on chlorite vessels looted from the cemetery, which he believes may record the architectural decoration of the citadel itself. The vessels show elaborate swags that also appear on the walls of the citadel. The style is radically different from what archaeologists have found in Egypt, Mesopotamia, or the Indus. “This is really unique architecture,” says Madjidzadeh.

Madjidzadeh was puzzled when he found an entrance gate on the western side of the mound. He had assumed the main gate would face east, toward the river. But geomorphologist Eric Fouache from the University of Paris, who was part of Madjidzadeh’s team, determined that four millennia ago the river flowed on the west side of the mounds. Visiting diplomats from Mesopotamia’s Uruk, as well as merchants from Mohenjo Daro on the Indus and the Persian Gulf, disembarking at the river’s edge, would have been awed by this monumental entrance. The gate was flanked by semi-circular towers nearly 16 feet in diameter and a formidable wall coated in gleaming white plaster, traces of which still remain.

Next, the visitors might have been escorted into a large rectangular room. Here, set in a niche, the team found a muscular male figure sculpted out of mudbrick. His fists rested on top of his belt, which once was painted a brilliant ochre but now retains only a few flakes, and his long skirt was covered with rows of red and black triangles. The upper torso and head are gone, but the full figure may have been over six feet tall. No potsherds or any other material were found in the room to show that it was used as a residence or business. Though lacking evidence, Madjizadeh makes a leap of faith in declaring that this room was a place of worship. “This is the holiest part of the citadel, and certainly a temple,” he says. If true, it would be a momentous find. Though temples are common in this period in Mesopotamia, none have been found east of Susa, the great city on the edge of the Mesopotamian plain that was strongly influenced by its neighbors to the west, such as the cities of Ur and Uruk. Even the Indus River civilization shows no obvious signs of temples, despite its large population and sophisticated city planning.

Based on surveys made by Madjizadeh’s team in the past few years, Jiroft’s ancient settlement sprawled below the citadel’s high walls, at least half a mile to the east and west. Today this area is covered by the thick groves of date palm plantations created in recent years using heavy machinery that flattened a host of smaller mounds once encircling Konar Sandal South. But the team has been able to excavate several small mudbrick homes, which show that most of Jiroft’s inhabitants lived simply, in houses with earthen floors and no foundations, which appear similar to modern ones in the area. Rooms are tiny, there are no central courtyards, and activities such as cooking take place in the open air. The menu in antiquity, like that of today, included domesticated animals such as cows, sheep, and goats. But the ancient population also hunted a variety of wild animals, including gazelles, boars, and rabbits, according to Marjan Mashkor of the Sorbonne, who examined faunal remains found in and among the houses.

In one house, the team also uncovered bits of agate, mother of pearl, turquoise, and other materials likely used for adornment, some of which came from far outside the valley. And excavators working on the eastern side of the ancient town found a brick platform that Madjidzadeh believes was either a center for producing crafts or a massive city wall, though he lacks clear evidence to prove his assertions. There the team has found more than 50 pieces of carved chlorite vessels. These are arguably the most important finds to date. Many foreign archaeologists, including Oscar Muscarella, formerly of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, have expressed skepticism about the authenticity of the looted vessels, although he says that Madjizadeh’s finds demonstrate that while some of the looted artifacts may be fakes, others may come from the time of Jiroft’s heyday.

Those vessels are not the only sign of Jiroft’s connection to the outide world. Tiny, fragile, and worn seal impressions left on clay more than four millennia ago and found at the site provide the most vivid picture of Jiroft’s society. Merchants and priests across southwest Asia used such seals to mark goods, protect stores, and confirm an agreement—a notary’s seal is the modern remnant of that ancient tradition. For Pittman, Madjidzadeh’s discovery of a handful of seals andsome 500 seal impressions has proved an unexpected bonanza and helped reveal the close relations between the far flung peoples of East Asia’s early Bronze Age.

One square seal made of bronze discovered at Jiroft closely resembles those found at Lothal, an important Indus port along the coast of what is now India. Fragments of other seals show signs of contact with neighboring settlements such as Bampur, Shahdad, and Shahr-i-Sokhta—all important centers in third millennium B.C. Iran—as well as sites far to the north in today’s Turkmenistan in what is called the Bactrian Margiana Archaeological Complex (the Oxus civilization.) Still others have iconography similar to those found at Ur. One seal impression has thefaint signs of cuneiform, with two facing figures typical of the Akkadian Empire, which ruled much of Mesopotamia around 2200 b.c. “There is quite a bit of robust evidence for long distance relations,” says Pittman.

The seals are the only remains of what were bags of goods, ranging from wool to beads to the fine chlorite vessels, which traveled on donkey caravans across the Iranian plateau, or south to the Persian Gulf. From there, ships could transport them to Arabia or the Indus. By 2500 b.c., ships were passing from ports in Oman to the Indus, according to excavations on the coast of Oman by Maurizio Tosi from the University of Bologna. The majority of seals and impressions at Jiroft show that ordinary goods—likely textiles, grain, oil, as well as prized objects like the chlorite vessels—passed among the early civilizations.

Along with luxury goods and ordinary wares, the people of Jiroft also exported their exotic imagery—deities that are half-animal and half-human, or even halfvegetation. Scorpion men, strange half-bird creatures, vegetable gods, and snakes dazzle art historians. These figures, which appear on seals, impressions, and vessels, demonstrate that Jiroft had a homegrown religion and mythology, says Pittman. “This is a new set of imagery and iconography.” She hails the finds as opening a window on the early Bronze Age, the critical period when civilizations first began to interact on a regional level. The imagery appears on seals, sealings, as well on the chlorite vessels. There is evidence of an earlier, pre-citadel settlement at Jiroft dating a thousand years earlier. Digging in the largely destroyed cemetery area near the river, Massimo Vidale of Rome’s Institute of Conservation and Preservation recently found continuity of the culture. In and around the remains of a small oval hut, the team uncovered elaborately painted storage vessels, fine alabaster bowls, stone sickle blades, and a small terracotta bull, as well as evidence of metallurgy. Hundreds of lapis lazuli beads show contact with regions such as Afghanistan, the source of the semiprecious stone. Though radiocarbon dates OF WHAT? are not yet available, Vidale estimates that the site dates to the mid-fourth millennium b.c. based on radiocarbon dating of charcoal beside the pottery remains. That is compelling evidence that Jiroft evolved independently of other regions, rather than simply taking on the trappings of civilization passed on by Mesopotamia. How that evolution took place remains to be explored. But a millennium later, as other civilizations began to flex their trade muscles, Jiroft also spread itself over a vast area.

A short walk north of the citadel is another large mound made up of two platforms that are nothing short of monumental. Originally, the bottom one was more than 30 feet high and 900 feet on each side, punctuated with semi-circular bastions. The upper platform was exactly half that size and decorated with niches and buttresses. Madjidzadeh says it is “obvious” that this is a stepped platform of the sort found in Mesopotamia called ziggurats, which were the center of religious rituals. Others are not so sure.

Platforms dating to the early fourth millennium B.C. are found at the western Iranian site of Susa and visible at Iraqi cities, such as Uruk, from the early third millennium B.C. Mesopotamians eventually added ever smaller platforms on top of the base. Determining when Konar Sandal North was built is proving challenging. Despite collecting 17,000 pottery sherds, Madjidzadeh admits that dating remains uncertain.

However, a foreign archaeologist who has examined the materials thinks it is possible the platform was built as much as a thousand years later than the heyday of Konar Sandal South.

It is clear that Jiroft began to decline in the late third millennium b.c. Madjidzadeh attributes Jiroft’s collapse to a prolonged drought that dried up not only the river, but also the underground water sources that even today are critical for the valley’s fertility. A regional drought afflicting the Near East is also considered a culprit in the fall of Egypt’s Old Kingdom and the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, which had taken place a century or two earlier. Fouache, who conducted extensive studies in the Jiroft valley in 2004, is not as convinced. He believes that there was a drier period, but that it was not a severe event. A combination of drought and an international economic collapse, which may have followed the upheavals in Mesopotamia and Egypt, dealt a fatal blow, but the data remain sparse.

A written record would help scholars unravel some of the perplexing questions about the forms of government, religion, and economy developed at Jiroft. And Madjidzadeh is betting that an entire library of an unknown script may lie just south of the southern mound. That audacious claim is based on just three tablets—one found by a local villager and two found by members of the excavation team under a barn in a nearby village. The first tablet has eight simple geometric signs; the second has nearly twice as many in a slightly more complex form, while the third has 59 that appear The symbols do not appear to relate to any known system, although each tablet has additional symbols scratched on the back that resemble Linear Elamite, a script used across the Iranian plateau in the third millennium b.c.

Madjidzadeh believes the tablets may be part of a larger archive of this mysterious writing system. When he presented his finds at a professional meeting in Italy two years ago, several specialists dismissed the tablets as planted fakes—a charge that infuriates the dig director. Vidale backs up Madjidzadeh, saying that two of the three were excavated in situ. Resolving the dispute requires more digging, but the owners of the land where he thinks the archive is located are reluctant to sell and he has been unable to conduct further excavations there. He hopes to reach a deal in 2010 if there is enough money to settle the matter.

In the meantime, Madjidzadeh has been battling critics who say that his methods are old-fashioned and lacking detailed stratigraphic data, and that he has not published enough of his findings. He wrote a report on Jiroft that appeared in the January 2009 issue of the professional journal Iran, published in Tehran. “It was his first article in five years,” fumes Muscarella. It lacked clear inventories and other basic data sought by interested foreign colleagues. Iranian archaeologists also are concerned. “There are not enough data coming out—for such a big site you should have more dig reports by now,” says one Iranian archaeologist who requested anonymity because of concerns about retribution. “The problem with Jiroft is a lack of archaeological proficiency,” he adds.

Efforts to keep a team of foreign specialists involved have failed. The French government refused to fund further efforts by Fouache and others because of worries that Madjidzadeh’s team was not abiding by modern research standards. For example, he kept valuable artifacts that had not been adequately catalogued or conserved in a trunk under his bed. But Madjizadeh also has cultivated powerful allies, some of whom were his students at Tehran University. And he is popular in Jiroft, which named a square after him [when?]. So when the Tehran office in charge of archaeological excavations tried to remove Madjidzadeh early in 2009, it was forced to back down by his allies even more complicated. in the provincial government in Kerman Province, where Jiroft is located. He also has influential backers in Tehran.

Madjidzadeh— who one colleague calls “a strange, sensitive, and complex character”—bridles at the attacks on his methodology. He adds that he works 18 hours a day on his computer. “My wife says I am statue. I am working alone,” he says over tea at the Caspian resort. No one disputes how hard Madjidzadeh works, but archaeologists are still appalled at the comments he made to the Iranian press in the early excavation seasons, when he insisted that is Jiroft the first and oldest civilization. “This is an outrageous claim which is manifestly nationalistic and embarrassing,” says Muscarella. Recently Madjizadeh has backed off his assertion that Jiroft predates Sumer, which is located within Iraq, is promoting tourism Jiroft, building a dozen tourist huts at the foot of Konar Sandal South, to the irritation of some archaeologists who fear the site could be damaged. He waves off such worries. “We had thousands visit for the Iranian New Year!” he says enthusiastically before grabbing his bag and coat and heading back to France and his computer.

As he rushes off, Madjizadeh can’t leave behind the controversy stirred up by his sensational claims, or the critics who maintain his methods are questionable. But he does leave little doubt that archaeologists must rethink the story of civilization’s first growth spurt, and find a place for sites such as Jiroft which provide a new take on how humans first began to connect with distant societies, laying the foundation for today’s globalized world.