Editing History of Iran (section)

===Early Iron Age===
{{see also|Neo-Assyrian Empire|Urartu}}
[[File:Gold Rhyton in the form of a Ram's Head - Reza Abbasi Museum - Tehran, Iran.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|[[Rhyton]] in the shape of a ram's head, gold – [[Saqqez]] - [[Iranian Kurdistan|Kurdistan]] - western Iran <ref>{{cite web | url=https://iranicaonline.org/articles/ziwiye | title=Welcome to Encyclopaedia Iranica }}</ref> –, late 7th–early 6th century BCE]] 
[[File:Marlik cup iran.jpg|thumb|A gold cup at the [[National Museum of Iran]], from the first half of the 1st millennium BC]]
Records become more tangible with the rise of the [[Neo-Assyrian Empire]] and its records of incursions from the Iranian plateau.
As early as the 20th century BC, tribes came to the Iranian plateau from the [[Pontic–Caspian steppe]]. The arrival of Iranians on the Iranian plateau forced the [[Elam]]ites to relinquish one area of their empire after another and to take refuge in Elam, [[History of Khuzestan Province|Khuzestan]] and the nearby area, which only then became coterminous with Elam.<ref name="EI-Elam">{{cite encyclopedia|last=Lackenbacher|first=Sylvie|encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Iranica|title=Elam|access-date=2008-06-23|url=http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/elam-vii|archive-date=2020-11-18|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201118145532/https://iranicaonline.org/articles/elam-vii|url-status=live}}</ref> Bahman Firuzmandi say that the southern Iranians might be intermixed with the Elamite peoples living in the plateau.<ref>^ Bahman Firuzmandi "Mad, Hakhamanishi, Ashkani, Sasani" pp. 20</ref>
By the mid-first millennium BC, [[Medes]], [[Persian people|Persians]], and [[Parthia]]ns populated the Iranian plateau. Until the rise of the Medes, they all remained under [[Assyria]]n domination, like the rest of the [[Near East]]. In the first half of the first millennium BC, parts of what is now [[Azerbaijan (Iran)|Iranian Azerbaijan]] were incorporated into [[Urartu]].