Prehistoric humans used caves to be safe from wind, rain and wild animals’ attack. The cave was served sometimes as their house. One of the prehistoric human’s settlements has been found inside two caves named Kamarband and Hotu, eight kilometers to Behshahr; the two are a few tens of meters apart.
An archaeologist group from Pennsylvania university under the supervision of Carlton & Stanley came to Mazandaran in 1330s. Their purpose was discovering the skeletons and objects that remained from stone age especially Paleolithic age when people made their needed tools from stones. But what they found in these caves was unbelievable: three skeletons of one man and two women!
The issue that attracted these archaeologists’ attention was the high similarity of these skulls with the contemporary man. Carbon-14 dating test showed the age of them to be 9000 years before Christ. Carbon-14 is a kind of archaeological test where the antiquity of objects and human remains are determined using radiocarbon rays. The similarity of such an old human skull with the modern man was extremely wonderful for archaeologists. The same issue leads to the immediate international fame of these two caves.
The archaeologists are usually facing different historical layers while they are excavating an ancient site. This means that each civilization is created over the previous one and the objects related to each historic period is buried under the newer layers. The same is true in case of Kamarband and Hotu caves.
In addition to stone tools and skeletons, many clay pieces were also found. 174 pieces of clay were unearthed only during the excavations of Kamarband backing to Neolithic age; Neolithic is a main era in the history of human civilization where man started to agriculture and domesticating animals.
Kamarband has an arch-like entrance, but Hotu has two entrances each carved on top of the other. There is a hole on the ceiling of this cave for air circulation. It is interesting to know that some sequences of Afei (The Viper) movie played by Jamshid Hashempour have been cinematographed inside this cave.
If you are interested tao be the guest of prehistoric human, you have to leave Behshahr for Rostamkola, to the west. You can also proceed the main road toward Sari and Neka from Behshahr or get yourself to Shohada hospital through Hasheminejad boulevard and from the hospital proceed the exit of Trojan or Shahid Abad village to reach Kamarband and Hotu.
