TEHRAN - Gav Bast Mountain, with its 8,000-year history of human occupation, stands as a testament to the deep archaeological significance of Iran’s southern landscapes, a fact now highlighted in a major new virtual exhibition at the National Museum of Iran.

The exhibition titled “Hormuz: Maritime Highway; A Narrative of Thousands of Years of Human Presence on the Shores of the Persian Gulf” was unveiled during a ceremony attended by museum directors, the head of the Iranian Center for Archaeological research, the director of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, and a group of cultural heritage scholars.

Organized in collaboration with the Persian Gulf Archaeology and Anthropology Museum in Bandar Abbas, the Hormozgan Provincial Directorate of Cultural Heritage, and the Museums Directorate, the exhibition is divided into four main sections: Archaeology, Natural and Cultural Heritage, Human Interaction with the Sea, and Intangible Heritage. The archaeological section chronologically spans from the Paleolithic period through the Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Ages, continuing to the Achaemenid, Parthian, and finally the Safavid eras.

One of the remarkable parts of the exhibition is dedicated to the Neolithic period, specifically featuring finds from Gav Bast Mountain north of the city of Bastak. According to research by Fereidoun Biglari and colleagues, artifacts discovered in this area date back 8,000 to 9,000 years (6,000 to 7,000 BCE). The exhibition displays images of the Eshkat-e Ahou rock shelter, documentation processes, and examples of Neolithic stone tools and cores—including pressure micro-blades, microliths, and scrapers—alongside a video of Biglari discussing the archaeological importance of the site.

Located at an altitude of 1,754 meters near the peak of Gav Bast, the Ahou rock shelter features a ceiling adorned with ochre paintings of archers, human handprints, large felines, and bovids, representing the oldest known pictorial narrative on the northern shores of the Persian Gulf. First studied by Khaled Sadeghi in 2001, the shelter was registered as a national heritage site in 2005. Subsequent surveys led by Biglari in 2010 and a comprehensive project between 2020 and 2021—supported by the Bastak Charity Association—conducted photogrammetric documentation, aerial photography, and identified several new open-air sites.

Visitors can explore the Neolithic section of Gav Bast Mountain online at https://explore.iranmuseum.org/HormuzExhibition/ 

AM