In Lorestan province, the remains of stone age are plenty, vary and worthy of attention. In the north of Kuhdasht, where Mount Hamyan stands, and in the plain of Rumeshkan, there are caves where figures and engravings from ancient men have been found; the days when man was a cave dweller and hunter. Examples of such ancient remains, but after end of the stone age and in more recent times (Neolithic), appear in the “Dousheh Cave” and are said to have a longevity of nearly four thousand BC.
The 8,000-year-old cave of Dousheh is located in the village of Kershurab in the Chegani district of Lorestan. There is a strait where there is a dark opening to a cave on top of the mountain. The cave is five meters high from the floor to the ceiling, and it isn’t easy to reach it due to the closure of the main road leading to the cave. Those who have found a way into the cave have considered its inner space circular.
For the first time, the late Hamid Izadpanah (researcher of Lorestan history) discovered this cave and its ancient petroglyph, and published pictures of them in a book allocated to ancient and historic works of Lorestan, in the 1950s. This work of Izadpanah was essential and long-lasting because now, unfortunately, many of those petroglyphs have disappeared, and the only photos he took and included in his book are the surviving documents from those ancient times.
Monireh Ahari and Mahyar Asadi, who have done detailed and extensive research on the petroglyphs of Dousheh cave, have estimated the presence of humans in that cave to be between 2 and 8 thousand years BC, and the petroglyphs to be two thousand years old. They are considered as valuable image sources of ancient Iran, coming to about 100 petroglyphs. The people who lived in the cave, or lived around it, depicted pictures of their daily life and filled the wide and smooth part of the cave walls with those pictures. The petroglyphs of Dousheh Cave are divided into three categories: animal, human, and war tools. They are all black.
The images in Dousheh cave show the life of humans fighting with animals. Those humans are riding tamed horses or are on foot, fighting and shooting. Animals such as horses and mountain goats are drawn in more numbers, and their artistry is visible and outstanding.
One of the petroglyphs of Dousheh Cave is the battle of man against man and shows someone who attacks another man to kill him. Some are thought to be wearing different clothes from the other men depicted on the cave wall. But the animal characters are only horses, goats, and wolves. War tools are also outstanding in Dousheh images, including quiver, swords, bows and spears. Depicting the weapons more clearly was intentional and those depicting the images wanted those tools to be displayed more clearly.
On the western side of the cave, there are two inscriptions whose script is considered Aramaic. One of the inscriptions cannot be recovered, and the other is also not legible. It is also worth mentioning that rotten bones of humans and animals and broken pottery were found in the mouth of Doshe Cave, and flint was also found inside the cave.
The end of the Do Dousheh cave faces the Aleshtar Valley, which the natives call Marsamsa. The length of the cave is 70 meters, and its width is 7 meters. Its opening is seven meters.
