Archaeologists worldwide are having hissy fits (!!!) because numerous sites in modern-day Iran and the surrounding region are giving up evidence that a vast network of societies constituted the first cities, redefining the origins of modern civilization.
Residents of the cities traded goods across hundreds of miles and forged parallel but strikingly independent cultures. The social structures, wealth and technologies of this society slowly spread along the Nile and then the Indus rivers in the 3rd millennium B.C.
Archaeologists have thought modern civilization began in Mesopotamia, where the large Tigris and Euphrates rivers bounded a fertile valley that nurtured an increasingly complex society.
This article sure is getting wide play.