Iranian archaeologists recently discovered a 6000-year-old rocky habitation with more than 800 cells in the Barez Mountains, east of the Halil-Rud River in southern Kerman Province, the director of the archaeological team working in the Halil-Rud River area said. "The rocky village is located at a height of 250 meters with two and four square meter cells. The habitation is Iran’s most ancient rock residence ever discovered," Davud Abyan added. The Halil-Rud plains are covered with over 100,000 ancient shards, but no written documents identifying the ancient inhabitants of the region have been discovered yet. We surmise that the people of ancient Jiroft lived in the rocky habitation," Abyan said. Last week, Abyan announced that his team had discovered the ruins of a once prosperous Islamic city near the town of Anbarabad in the Halil-Rud region. They had also excavated a major industrial center dating back to approximately 3000 BCE in Anbarabad.

Source: Tehran Times (20 January 2005)