Qualla: Do-Ashkaft Cave

Do-Ashkaft Cave: Introduction

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Coffeetalkh, CC BY-SA 3.0. The entrance faces south, opening onto a view of Kuhestan national park and the city of Kermanshah spread across the plain below. At 1,600 meters above sea level on the slopes of Meywala Mount, Do-Ashkaft Cave sits where the Zagros Mountains begin their serious climbing. Neanderthals chose this spot for the same reasons any practical inhabitant would: shelter from the elements, a commanding view of the valley, and raw material for toolmaking scattered in outcrops around the cave mouth. When Iranian researchers Fereidoun Biglari and Saman Heydari-Guran first visited in 1996, they found exactly what those ancient occupants had left behind -- a rich scatter of Middle Paleolithic stone tools that identified Do-Ashkaft as a Mousterian workshop.

Read more: Do-Ashkaft Cave on Qualla

Image: Coffeetalkh | CC BY-SA 3.0

Do-Ashkaft Cave: The Workshop on the Mountain

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Coffeetalkh, CC BY-SA 3.0. The main chamber stretches 23 meters deep and 15 meters wide -- spacious enough for a working group of toolmakers and their debris. The sediments at the cave entrance yielded a concentrated deposit of animal bones, charcoal fragments, and flint tools. Among the artifacts were sid...

Read more: Do-Ashkaft Cave on Qualla

Image: User:Coffeetalkh | CC BY-SA 3.0

Do-Ashkaft Cave: Bones and Breccia

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Robbygrine assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Water has reshaped the cave's interior over millennia. Large deposits of breccia -- angular rock fragments cemented together by mineral-laden water -- indicate that substantial amounts of sediment were washed through the cave and out again. What survived this natural erosion tell...

Read more: Do-Ashkaft Cave on Qualla

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Robbygrine assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Do-Ashkaft Cave: A Landscape of Caves

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Soman assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY 2.5. Do-Ashkaft is not an isolated site. In 1999, researchers surveyed a seven-square-kilometer area around the cave and identified fourteen caves and rock shelters, several containing Upper Paleolithic and later stone tool assemblages. The Kermanshah plain and its surrounding mountai...

Read more: Do-Ashkaft Cave on Qualla

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Soman assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY 2.5

Do-Ashkaft Cave: Neanderthal Footsteps

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Coffeetalkh, CC BY-SA 3.0. The cave gained wider attention when researchers reported evidence of Neanderthal footprints preserved in the cave floor -- a physical trace far more immediate than any stone tool. Footprints are rare in the Paleolithic record, and their discovery at Do-Ashkaft adds a dimension t...

Read more: Do-Ashkaft Cave on Qualla

Image: User:Coffeetalkh | CC BY-SA 3.0

Do-Ashkaft Cave: Near a Masterpiece

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Do-Ashkaft sits near Taq-e Bostan, the famous Sasanian rock reliefs carved more than forty thousand years after the cave's Neanderthal inhabitants departed. The proximity is coincidental but poignant. The same qualities that drew Neanderthals to this mountainside -- its prominenc...

Read more: Do-Ashkaft Cave on Qualla

Image: CC BY-SA 3.0