By Sepehr Zarei, archaeologist

Zobeiri: Guardian of the Persian Gulf’s millennia-old heritage

Until recently, few imagined human presence on Iran’s Persian Gulf islands extended beyond the last millennium. But archaeological research has transformed this understanding. Excavations on Qeshm Island pushed settlement back nearly 5,000 years, while stone tools on Bam-e Qeshm hinted at an even older past. The discovery of Paleolithic sites on Hormuz Island—Chand-Derakht and Sang-e Ghorab—revealed that Middle Paleolithic populations lived there between 150,000 and 40,000 years ago, highlighting the Persian Gulf’s role in early human migrations. Long before these scientific findings, Master Mohammad Zobeiri had already grasped this deep historical continuity, preserving it in the Deyrestan Anthropology Museum and his book Ganz-e Bapu.