Jarmo (Qal'at Jarmo) is an archeological site located in Southern Kurdistan (northern Iraq) on the foothills of Zagros Mountains east of Kirkuk city. It was one of the oldest agricultural communities in the world, dating back to 7090 BCE. Jarmo is broadly contemporary with such other important Neolithic sites such as Jericho in the southern Levant and Çatal Hüyük in Anatolia. The site of Jarmo is approximately three to four acres (12,000 to 16,000 m²) in size and lies at an altitude of 800 meters above sea level in a belt of oak and pistachio woodlands.
The site was originally discovered by the Iraqi Directorate of Antiquities in 1940, and later became known to the archaeologist Robert Braidwood (1907-2003), from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, who was looking for suitable places to research the origins of the Neolithic Revolution. Braidwood worked as part of the Iraq-Jarmo programme for three seasons, those of 1948, 1950–51 and 1954–55; a fourth campaign, to be carried out in 1958-59 did not come about because of the 14 July Revolution. During the excavations in Jarmo in 1954-55, Braidwood used a multidisciplinary approach for the first time, in an attempt to refine the research methods and clarify the origin of the domestication of plants and animals. Among his team were a geologist, Herbert Wright, a palaeo-botanist, Hans Helbaek, an expert in pottery and radio-carbon dating, Frederic Mason, and a zoologist, Charles Reed, as well as a number of archaeologists. The interdisciplinary method was subsequently used in all serious field work in archaeology. When Braidwood later tried to resume his research plan in the Fertile Crescent, the difficulties he encountered in Iran, where he was digging in Tepe Asyab, took him to Turkey in 1963. In 2012, a team from University College London began new excavations at the site.
Jarmo is a masculine Finnish given name. Notable people with the name include:
Jarmo is a two-player abstract strategy board game. According to Tartarian and Polish legend, Batu Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan, carried this game (or a variant of it) around during his military campaigns. Supposedly, he would play at least one game before a battle in order to prepare himself. In this game, a player attempts to place as many of their pieces onto the other player's first row. At the same time, the player tries to capture as many of the other player's pieces on the way.
A Jarmo variant called Jasir is played in parts of Poland, and in some eastern European countries. In fact, several variants of Jarmo and Jasir exist, but they are all fundamentally similar. Jasir means "archer" in Tartar, and the pieces used in the game are called archers. The games are sometimes collectively referred to as Halma. However, Jarmo and Jasir are not related to the Halma family of games which include Halma, Chinese Checkers, Conspirateurs, and Salta.
An interesting aspect of Jarmo and Jasir is that the board is asymmetric. Each player has a different view of the game from their side of the board. The lines connecting the holes are not the same for each side of the board. To make the game more fair, it is suggested that players play two games and switch sides in between. As a note, most board games have a symmetric board.