The Cosmological Primacy of Keyumars: Mountain Spaces, Lithic Articulations, and Body Aesthetics in the Dawn of Iranian Visual Culture.

Abstract: This study re-examines Keyumars—the human and foundational sovereign in Iranian cosmological traditions—by testing mythic narratives against the physical reality of the Iranian plateau. Moving beyond philological debate the paper applies spatial semiotics, material culture and cultural memory theory across three core domains: mountain and cave spatiality, functional lithic production and the aesthetics of the leopard-skin vestment (palang-pūshī). By reading Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh alongside the Caspian Mesolithic and Neolithic records from Hotu and Kamarband caves we trace how early communities mapped their cognitive environments. The analysis extends to the -Paleolithic rock art of Mirmallas in Lorestan framing these petroglyphs as early graphic storytelling rather than random prehistoric marks. Historiographically the paper critiques the contrasting models of Arthur Christensen and Mehrdad Bahar regarding Indo- Near Eastern origins. Ultimately Keyumars functions not as a historical king but as an autochthonous epistemological model. It represents the conceptual shift on the plateau from raw environment to structured space from stone tool to artistic thought and from wild animal hide to sovereign political identity.