Qualla: Zagros Mountains

Zagros Mountains: Introduction

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Photogir, CC BY-SA 4.0. Wild wheat still grows in the foothills of the Zagros. So do wild barley, wild lentils, wild almonds, wild pistachios, and wild grapes. Walk through these mountains in spring and you are walking through the original grocery store -- the place where, around 9000 BC, humans first figured out that they could plant seeds on purpose and stop wandering. The Zagros Mountains run 1,600 kilometers from southeastern Turkey through western Iran to the shores of the Persian Gulf, and their story is inseparable from the story of civilization itself. The oldest evidence of wine production anywhere on Earth was found here, in clay jars dating between 5400 and 3500 BC. The cities of Susa and Anshan grew from settlements in these valleys. This is where it all started.

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Image: Photogir | CC BY-SA 4.0

Zagros Mountains: Two Continents Colliding in Slow Motion

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Photogir, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Zagros exist because Arabia is crashing into Eurasia. The collision began roughly 25 million years ago during the Miocene epoch and has not stopped. GPS measurements show the southeastern Zagros shortening by about 10 millimeters per year, dropping to 5 millimeters in the nor...

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Image: Photogir | CC BY-SA 4.0

Zagros Mountains: The Cradle Before the Cradle

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nationalmuseumofiran, CC BY-SA 4.0. Mesopotamia gets the credit as the cradle of civilization, but the Zagros foothills were the nursery. Middle Paleolithic sites cluster throughout the range, with Mousterian stone tools in cave after cave. Upper Paleolithic and Epipaleolithic peoples left their mark at Yafteh Cave...

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Image: Nationalmuseumofiran | CC BY-SA 4.0

Zagros Mountains: Peoples of the High Passes

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vah.hem, CC BY-SA 3.0. The mountains remain a mosaic of cultures. Lurs inhabit the central, western, and southern ranges, speaking their own Iranic language across provinces from Lorestan to Kohgiluyeh. The Bakhtiari, a Lur subgroup, still practice nomadic pastoralism, moving herds between summer pastu...

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Image: Vah.hem | CC BY-SA 3.0

Zagros Mountains: Oak Forests, Vanishing Newts, and a Lost Lion

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Every-leaf-that-trembles, CC BY-SA 4.0. Despite centuries of overgrazing and deforestation, the Zagros harbor remarkable biodiversity. Oak woodlands dominated by Quercus brantii once carpeted more than half the forested area. Park-like pistachio and almond steppelands survive in fragments. The Persian fallow deer, once...

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Image: Every-leaf-that-trembles | CC BY-SA 4.0

Zagros Mountains: Gateway to the Underworld

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Guspike, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ancient Mesopotamians believed the entrance to the underworld lay in the Zagros, at the far eastern edge of their known world. A staircase descended to gates set deeper than the Abzu, the freshwater ocean they imagined beneath the earth. The mountains have served as a spiritual b...

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Image: Guspike | CC BY-SA 3.0