"Ancient Greek and Roman historians ventured very few absolute dates in recounting events of great age, and yet several of them - Pliny, Eudoxus, Xanthus, Plutarch - specifically gave dates ranging from 6500 to 6200 B.C. for the time of Zarathustra (Greek Zoroaster), the legendary Iranian prophet whose missionary-borne message was said to have reached far beyond his native land. Until recently these ancient, almost mythic claims could neither be proved nor disproved, but advances in archaeological techniques now clearly reveal the presence of a transformative cultural impulse sweeping across Iran, Iraq, and even into southeast Europe in the last half of the seventh millennium B.C." "The evidence presented here challenges the conventional datings of Zarathustra (c. 630 B.C., c. 1500-1200 B.C.). It also counters the widely held view that the change from hunting and gathering to farming must be tied to the economics of survival. But if there is any truth in the ancient claims, two of the great puzzles of prehistory - the massive late-seventh-millennium spread of agriculture and the placement in time of one of the world's most influential religious leaders - could be resolved as one."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved