As mentioned above, the prosperous urban cultures of the Early Bronze Age in Iran experienced a crisis around the eighteenth century bc, with the abandonment of cities and a return to village communities. These villages were characterised by an agro-pastoral economy and a local socio-political organisation. This process of decline did not just affect Iran, but also Central Asia and the Indus Valley. This fact indicates that the decline was probably not just the result of strictly local phenomena, but of far more complex factors. Therefore, the internal crisis, which eventually led to the development of new ways to exploit resources, could have been the context, rather than the outcome, of the change in the people inhabiting the area, featuring the spread of Indo-Iranian peoples in the south.
It is believed that a first ‘wave’ of Proto-Indo-Iranians had already reached south-western Iran a little after the beginning of the crisis and revival of the area. This first wave led to the spread of ‘Indo-Iranian’ names among the maryannu and in Mitanni, and of the light war chariot and horse as far as the Fertile Crescent. If Syria and Mesopotamia only saw the spread of new types of personal names and techniques, it is possible that Iran also experienced the diffusion of the ‘carriers’ of these innovations. This initial and influential wave (due to its military and technical contributions) was followed by other waves, in a process spread through time. However, the subsequent impact of these later waves on the archaeological cultures of the Middle/Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age remains difficult to establish and quite problematic to postulate with any certainty. According to the texts of Shalmaneser III, in the mid-ninth century bc, the Assyrians were in contact with the populations of the Iranian ‘second wave’ (now separated from the Indian element, which moved in other directions) living in the Zagros, most importantly the Medes. It is therefore likely that the linguistic ‘Iranisation’ of the Iranian plateau took place between 1300 and 900 bc. This led to the progressive disappearance of the Pre-Indo-European stratum. The latter was particularly strong in the Zagros area, from Urartu to Elam.
to the growing availability of written sources identifying peoples and states, the distribution of the Iranian populations becomes increasingly clear. Therefore, it becomes possible to identify a series of ethno-linguistic entities. We can define them as ‘nations’ in the Iron Age sense, namely, as entities that considered themselves united through kinship as well as linguistic and religious aspects. Each ‘nation’ was subdivided into tribes and minor entities. This structure varied according to the types of production and settlements, and implied various levels of political organisation. The principal ‘nations’ were: the Medes in the northern Zagros; the Persians in the ancient region of Anshan; the Hyrcanians and Parthians east of the Caspian Sea; the Bactrians and Sogdians north of the Hindu Kush; and the Aryans, Drangianians and Arachosians in Central Iran. A complete picture of the Iranian tribes would only emerge in the Achaeme-nid period, with the division of the empire into satrapies under Darius I. Nonetheless, almost all the names of these Iranian ‘nations’ already appear in previous sources (especially Assyrian ones) or in tales (especially Greek ones) set before the rise of the Achaemenids. However, the final collocation of these groups does not always match the original one. It is therefore possible that in the Assyrian period (from the ninth to the seventh centuries bc) these groups were still relatively mobile, and it was only later that these groups gradually converted to more sedentary forms of settlement and production. This led to the formation of a political system in which each ‘nation’ occupied a specific territory.
According to archaeological and textual evidence, the economy of the Iranian peoples of the period from 1300 to 600 bc was predominantly agro-pastoral. Farming played an important role. The farming of cattle (in the fertile valleys), sheep and goats (in more mountainous and semi-arid areas) continued alongside new forms of farming: the farming of horses, especially in the northern Zagros (Mannaeans, Medes), and the farming of ‘Bactrian’ camels (with two humps). The Bactrian camel spread from Central Asia to the Iranian plateau, reaching the area of diffusion of the Arabian dromedary. Horses and camels may have significantly increased the military and commercial potential of Iranian groups, but they also increased the interest of the Mesopotamian empires in the area (Text 32.1). The latter were not only interested in gaining control over these precious resources, but also over the new commercial routes created by the Iranian groups. These routes linked the Fertile Crescent to Central Asia, from which a large quantity of Afghan lapis lazuli and tin once again reached the Near East (after a an intermission of around a millennium).
World History
