Iran: the Historical Cradle of Civilization, the Origin of Human Diversity, and the Bastion of Humanistic Tolerance

Ever since as early as a hundred thousand years ago, when our Homo sapiens ancestors were preceded by Homo helderbergenis along with our cousins the Neanderthals and Denisovans who had crossed the horn of Africa , the southwestern Asian’s temperate Iranian plateau sandwiched between the Caspian Sea and the Himalayan Mountain ranges to the north and the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman to the south has remained the optimal cradle of human civilization. It is exactly this Iranian plateau, including its central Asian and Caucasian highlands, from which further foragers and hunter-gatherers traversed throughout and settled into south/east Asia first, and later onto the European continent between 30,000 – 10,000 years ago.

In fact, from the original Iranian nomadic tribes ( Persians , Medians and Partians) arose the Albanians, Bulgarians, Croatians, Scythians , Urals , Sakas , Western Ukrainians , Ossetians, Minoans , Ionians and the Irish , followed by Bactrians, Kashmiri and Parsi Zoroastrians of India, the Uighurs of China’s Xinjian province, and the 80 plus million people inside today’s Iran as well as the five million Iranians in the diaspora. All these descend from the ancient peoples of Iran . This had preceded the initial movement of our common human ancestors, who settled at the southwestern slopes of the Zagros Mountains to construct spears before they moved further into the northern Iranian plateau 35,000 years ago. A growing number of etymological revisionists have reexamined the term Indo-European tossed around as early as the 17^thcentury, presumably by the colonial presence of the English in India. It is becoming gradually recognized that it is more appropriate to change the term to Irano-European , since there are 313 languages belonging to the Iranian family of languages in contrast to a mere 130 Hindi derived languages, many of which have remained in India and converged with old Pahlavi Avestan Persian. Simply put, proto-Iranian languages such as Gathas, Avesta and early proto-Persian Pahlavi tongues preceded the Rigveda and Hindu languages and vernaculars. Although modern Persian is spoken and understood by most inhabitants across the Persian world, including India, today 250 million people speak one or more of the dozens of Persian dialects and vernaculars. Etymologically speaking however, there are nearly 1,000 Persian words comprehensible to any Persian speaking native used in the English language today; the same number of Persian words, if not more, exist in other European languages.

Our other closely related hominid species the Neanderthals took the migration route from the African savannah along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea straight into Europe a few hundred thousand years ago and some later interbred with Homo sapiens before they became extinct as late as 20-25 thousand years ago, presumably for the lack of an evolved brain, language and tool making. Another group of Homo sapiens of original Iranian pedigree settled between the Zagros Mountains of Iran and the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, an area later referred to as Mesopotamia (Sommer, Akkad, Canaan, Babel, Assur, Aleppo, Damascus, Kaldeh, Phoenicia, and Jewish Kingdoms in Ur). Consequently, the Iranian plateau that in essence stretched into Asia Minor has remained as the most fertile ground for sustaining the earliest human settlements that led to the first socio-economic and later religio-political establishments, especially within the past 10 to 20 thousand years. In fact, there exists archeological evidence for human settlements (Sialk of Kashan, Shahr Sukhteh Zabol, Marlik , Hasanlu and Susa mounds just to name a few) to corroborate this ancient period of human activity that ultimately led to the first world Empire – the Achaemenes, founded by Cyrus the Great whose democratic empowering and just rule spanned across three continents nearly three millennia ago. This period was in fact preceded by at least 3,000 years of Elamites .

The area, ruled by the Achaemenian Just King Cyrus the Great (circa 539 BCE) and the major Parthian and Sassanid Empires that followed, is currently comprised of nearly forty plus sovereign nations, from which 44% of the current world’s population originate. In fact, today’s Iran, with its current territorial borders that define the smallest size of the country since its inception nearly three thousand years ago, is the only country in the region with naturally marked borders (e.g., rivers, lakes, Caspian Sea, Persian Gulf, and high mountains).

This is in contrast to most other countries in the region whose borders were drawn with the use of a cartography ruler in Greenwich England after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In the 19^thcentury, the Russians unilaterally stole from Iran twice and annexed to their Tsarist imperialistic territories the size of the U.S., i.e., the entire Caucuses and central Asian regions currently comprised of 11 sovereign countries with still strong indigenous ethnic, racial, cultural, religious, literal and linguistic ties with Iran. After all, who are the true Iranians other than the so-called Caucasians or central Asians?

One fact well worth citing is that most, if not all, Iranian kings and queens throughout history never imposed their religions or cultures–as did the Greeks, Arabs and Mughals–by way of the sword. In fact, the broader Iran always enjoyed a degree of autonomous self-rule; this is self-evident in today’s Iran with its ethnic and cultural richness of Azari, Baluchi, Kurdish, Luri, Turkmen, Natanzi , Arab, Guilani, Mazandarani, as well as Persian groups. That said, however, western instigators such as Bernard Lewis’ ulterior motives to exploit this and pontificate for dismembering Iran or the region, is ludicrously absurd and without any basis whatsoever, in part, due to the common linguistic and cultural heritage of this vast region. The misguided notion of a “pure race” is ludicrously absurd with no scientific basis, especially in Iran; nonetheless, if anything, it is through cultural commonality and ancestral origin that people of the vast Iranian region would coalesce rather than become fragmented.

Aryanism has far more an Iranian ethos, in contrast to the fictitious racial superiority doctrine perpetrated by occidental colonialism.

Aryanism is indeed derived from Iranian stock and is thus a rainbow of peoples with diverse general features from blond to dark skin that according to Herodotus, were noble, peaceful, and righteous horsemen and arrow and javelin throwers, whose way of life was anchored on adhering to good thought, good words and good deeds.

A PBS documentary on the earliest human settlements, based on the tracing of mitochondrial DNA, traced the earliest man who must have lived 40,000 years ago in southcentral Asia, just north of today’s Iran and the Afghan border. Although Iranians today trace back their ancestry to one of the three major Aryan tribes (Persians, Medians and Partians) descended from the same exact region three plus millennia ago, the genetic makeup of modern Iranians is far more diverse in that it has not only drawn from the indigenous peoples already on the plateau but also absorbed segments of Greek, Arab and Moghul DNA. Incidentally, Iranians never invaded any other region to impose their religion of hegemony, but their culture was spread out in their expanding spheres of influence. In a more recent series of BBC documentaries (click From Russia to Iran crossing Wild Frontiers ), the trekker Levison walks the Caucuses ridges – nearly 3,000 miles from southern Russia and the northern Caucuses down to Iran’s southern Caspian Sea region – to demonstrate that the inhabitants are all from the same Iranian [Caucasian] stock as evidenced by their genetic makeup, common language, culture, life rituals, music and festivals. Another illustration of Iranians and their rich culture can be viewed in this French journal . It is astounding how close the languages, cultural rituals, hymns, foods, calendars, festivals, music, and birth, wedding and burial rituals of peoples surrounding the Caspian Sea are. In fact, an ordinary Iranian can comfortably pass as a native in every country from northwestern China and India to central Asia and the Caucasian nations, Asia Minor, southern Europe and North Africa.

From the vast Iranian plateau arose many original faiths and religiosities as typified by Mithraism, Zoroastrianism, Mazdeism, Manicheism to name a few; they have been conceived or transmitted through ancient Iran and beyond as far back as at least 10,000 years ago. These early beliefs have gone on to partially provide the basis for Hinduism, Buddhism, and later Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In fact, Iran since antiquity has remained the bastion of pluralistic tolerance of diverse faiths and rainbow ethnicities. Although some Persian ultra-nationalists bogusly consider their pedigree to be of “pure” Aryan pedigree, and in fact most people in Iran have an Aryan (that of noble horseman and spear and javelin throwers) cultural heritage, nonetheless, their genetic makeup is heterogeneous [ Persian cat mutt ! ]. As a result, their cultural diversity has been enriched immensely over time through exchange with other neighboring peoples, some as the Greeks, Arabs or Altaics/Moghuls, Indians, Egyptians and Mesopotamians: many arrived as invaders and conquerors but stayed in Iran and assimilated.

Notwithstanding the rulers and dynasties that emerge and disappear into the historical bin of oblivion, Iran still has the greatest ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity if not worldwide, then most definitely in southwest Asia. As a so-called 12-Imam Shiite majority nation, it enjoys communities of Jewish, Zoroastrian, Armenian, Assyrian, Kaldani, Catholic, evangelical and Gregorian Christian and Bahai faiths. For instance, Israel announced it would pay $10,000 for Jews in Iran to immigrate to Israel and the Ha’aretz paper ran an article in which Iranian Mizrahim immigrants to Israel shared their frustration of having left a lavish lifestyle in Iran to now live in Kibbutzim. A number of NGOs in Iran declared they would pay $50,000 for any Jewish Iranian citizen to return home to Iran!

Among all closely knit brethren to Persians, Judaic people stand most prominently.

In the book Esther’s Children , the author Homa Sarshar goes further and relies on oral narration and historical evidence to conclude that the [Jewish] missing tribes must have in fact dissolved into the people of Iran. This explains why Mizrahim Jewish DNA biomarkers are ubiquitous among Iranians. A select number of links below show the pivotal role of Jews of Iran, in certain junctures comprising up to one third of the population, in the conservation of Persian classical music even as music in general was for the past 1,400 years forbidden by Islamic decree. One is hard pressed not to appreciate that music commonly played from China and Japan to the Bukhara Jews of Uzbekistan (Bukhara and Samarkand) and Tajikistan, as well as in the southern Russian republics and the Caucuses to North Africa and Israel, which has been immensely influenced by Persian music and instruments. David Dardashti , the renowned Persian singer and Younes Dardashti ‘s son , is a Persian singer and cantor in a shul in Florida.

In closing, what has truly kept all Iranians and our distant relatives across the globe together is our rich literature of poetry and prose, as exemplified by the largest compendium of poems of 30,000 verses, Ferdowsi ‘s Shahnameh , the epic Poems of the Persian Kings, as well as our common music, seasonal festivities such as Nowruz , our food and way of life, our familial upbringing, etc. all at least several millennia in the making. The first declaration of Human Rights by King Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Empire (below) kept in the London Museum and Sa’adi, the 13^thcentury Persian Poet, has articulated such humanistic commonalty masterfully:

All humans are members of one frame,
Since all at first, from the same essence, came.

If thou feel’st not for others’ misery,
A human is no name for thee.

All the above will, when extraterrestrials arrive and look back at the earth in the mirror of the cosmos 100,000 years from now , in all likelihood be gone; religious Armageddon and self-inflicted environmental disasters, competition for natural resources, greed, self-righteousness and power grabbing by some of us will inflict catastrophic exhaustion upon the earth. We, as well as other terrestrial species, shall have either perished or, as in our past, may have moved elsewhere – perhaps far beyond the earth and possibly beyond our current solar system?

About the author. Davood N. Rahni born in Shermian, Tehran, to Natanzi parents, has served as a professor of bio-electo analytical chemistry in New York for over 30 years. Although prolifically published in his specializations of biosensors, nano-engineering, and neuro-psycho-pharmacology and biological psychiatry, his passion to help advance the better understanding of culture and history, especially of Iran, and the integration of immigrant Americans, alongside his advocating for justice and peace, has led him to produce hundreds of essays, prose and op-eds.

Further Reading
From Russia to IRAN Crossing Wild Frontiers

Iran and Iranians: The Historical Contributions to Humanity
Iran as viewed by the Special full volume of French Journal GeoHistoire
Scythians

Contributions of Iranians since antiquity
Jeanette Rotstain – Purim Purim
Zvi Cohen – Emshab Shabe Shabbat/Persian . פרסית שבת שירים
The Revivo Project – Shabbat Medley
Jewish music in Iran
Persian TV in Israel Persian music שידורי יהדות איראן הזמרת מורין × ×”×“×¨
Jewish Iranian wedding so funny
Sephardi (Mizrachi) Sacred Music of Shiraz, Iran
Jewish journey to Iran
Yona Dardashti Selichot , Patakh Elyahoo, Yesh Elohim, Monajot
Iranian Israelis: life in the shadow of a conflict
Shashmakom- ששמקום (part 1)
Shashmakom- ששמקום (part 2)
Ezro Malakov 70 birthday concert Bukharian Эзро Малаков Юбилейный Концерт
Selichot With Hazan Yair Hamra
Persian style Azan, the Islamic call to prayer
Rabbana, the prayer before breaking fast in Ramazan

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This post was written by David Rahni