Great Zab basin by both Turkey and Iraq. Turkey's State Hydraulic Works plans to construct the Çukurca and Doğanlı Dams near Çukurca and the Hakkâri Dam near the city of Hakkâri. The Hakkâri Dam with a 245 MW power station is in final design and the Çukurca and Doğanlı Dams will support 245 MW and 462 MW power stations, respectively. Iraq has commenced construction of the Bekhme and Deralok Dams and planned two others – the Khazir-Gomel and Mandawa Dams. Plans to build a dam in the Great Zab at the Bekhme Gorge for flood control and irrigation were first proposed in 1937. A feasibility study determined that the site was not suited for dam construction and the plan was abandoned. In 1976, another study proposed three different locations on the Great Zab, including the site suggested in the earlier study. This site was eventually chosen in 1989, when work on the dam commenced. Construction of the Bekhme Dam was interrupted by the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1990 and the dam remains unfinished. After the war, the site of the dam was looted. The plans of the Bekhme Dam called for a high rockfill dam and an underground hydroelectric power station housing six turbines with a total capacity of 1,560 MW. The reservoir that would have been created by the Bekhme Dam would have a storage capacity of and would have flooded numerous villages, the archaeological site of Zawi Chemi Shanidar and the access road to Shanidar Cave (although not the cave itself). History Evidence for human occupation of the Zagros reaches back into the Lower Palaeolithic, as evidenced by the discovery of many cave-sites dating to that period in the Iranian part of the mountain range. Middle Palaeolithic stone tool assemblages are known from Barda Balka, a cave-site south of the Little Zab; and from the Iranian Zagros. A Mousterian stone tool assemblage – produced by either Neanderthals or anatomically modern humans – was recently excavated in Erbil. Neanderthals also occupied the site of Shanidar. This cave-site, located in the Sapna Valley, has yielded a settlement sequence stretching from the Middle Palaeolithic up to the Epipalaeolithic period. The site is particularly well known for its Neanderthal burials. The Epipalaeolithic occupation of Shanidar, contemporary with the use of the Kebaran stone tool assemblage, is the oldest evidence for anatomically modern human occupation of the Great Zab basin. The