Beneath the rugged mountains of southeastern Iran, archaeologists are carefully unearthing traces of a Bronze Age society that could upend the accepted narrative of where writing and urban life began. The discoveries are emerging from the twin mounds of Konar Sandal, near the Halil River in the Kerman province — a region long dismissed as peripheral in the story of early human civilization.
The ancient settlement, widely referred to as the Jiroft site, sits just outside the modern town of Jiroft, where illegal excavations in the early 2000s led to the unintentional exposure of monumental ruins. Now, two decades of scientific excavations are revealing a complex urban culture with planned architecture, decorated chlorite vessels, and signs of a writing system that may predate Mesopotamia.
Echoes from the Halil Rud Valley
According to the ArkeoNews, the earliest objects recovered from the site suggested a civilization fluent in both form and symbol. Vessels carved from dark green chlorite, inlaid with shell and hard stone, depicted creatures half-human and half-animal, along with intricate architectural motifs. Some of the bowls and vases show terraced temples reminiscent of Mesopotamian ziggurats, often topped with horn-like symbols linked to the divine in Babylonian traditions.
Nearby structures constructed from unfired bricks — including fortifications and ceremonial platforms — speak to a high degree of planning. Excavations led by Iranian archaeologist Youssof Majidzadeh, who first proposed in 2003 that Jiroft could be identified with the legendary kingdom of Aratta, have revealed what may have been both a citadel and a cult complex at the site’s heart.
“Handbag”-shaped stone objects, once thought decorative, are now considered possible standard weights, suggesting a regulated economy. Reliefs from the region also depict eagles and bulls, mirroring themes from Sumerian epics like that of Etana, the mythical king said to have flown to heaven on the back of an eagle.
A Written Legacy Older Than Sumer?
What has drawn new global attention, however, is not the artistic flourishes but the inscribed artifacts. Archaeologists have recovered both stone and clay tablets bearing geometric signs, some of which may represent a form of proto-Elamite writing. These markings appear to date to the fourth millennium BC — earlier than the earliest cuneiform tablets from Uruk, traditionally considered the cradle of writing.
“This method of writing discovered here could have been a catalyst in the emergence of a sophisticated administration and early urbanization,” Majidzadeh has said. While his identification of the site with Aratta remains speculative, the consistency of the symbols across multiple sites on the Iranian plateau, including Tepe Yahya and Tepe Sialk, suggests that Jiroft was part of a wider early literate culture.
The theory that Jiroft developed writing independently — or at least concurrently with Mesopotamia — remains under study, but the implications are already significant. François Desset, in a 2014 study published in Iranica Antiqua, referred to the system as the “Konar Sandal geometric tablets,” noting their unusual structure and unclear relationship to Mesopotamian scripts.
Between Rivalry and Influence
The proximity of Mesopotamian and Iranian cultures has led some scholars to reconsider the nature of influence across the region. References in ancient Sumerian texts to rival kingdoms beyond the Zagros mountains have sparked debates over whether Jiroft could have been one of the eastern powers mentioned in early imperial conflicts.
Some experts suggest the site could also correspond to the Marhashi kingdom, a known adversary of Sumer in Mesopotamian inscriptions. Others remain cautious. The artistic parallels, while striking, may also reflect shared themes across early civilizations rather than direct contact or lineage.
Still, the sophistication of the material culture at Jiroft is no longer in doubt. Carved vessels from the third millennium BCE now reside in collections like the Musée Barbier-Mueller in Geneva, while ongoing work in Kerman province continues to bring to light fragments of a culture that left no written history — only symbols and forms still being decoded.
A Civilization in Pieces
Originally targeted by archaeologists to protect prehistoric necropolises from looters, the site now offers a rare window into a society that appears both connected to and distinct from its Mesopotamian neighbors. Palm orchards line the Halil Rud River today, but 5,000 years ago this landscape may have supported one of the earliest known cities with a monumental architectural vocabulary.
The Jiroft discoveries are being pieced together artifact by artifact, tablet by tablet. They reveal a region rich in symbolic language and urban ambition — one that, if confirmed by further study, may force historians to reconsider the exclusive primacy long granted to Sumer, Uruk, and the fertile plains of the Euphrates.
