2000 years earlier

Yes, it seems like there was or is a region considered the "Assyrian homeland" [0] of the people for whom the empire was named (Assyria being named for the home city of Assur). Wikipedia's map makes it look the same as the Kurdish territory and when I look up differences between them, Reddit threads describing contemporary accounts are front and center. [1]

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_homeland

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/Assyria/comments/u8c324/relationshi...

"Assyriology" is a bit of a misnomer and really means the study of cultures that used cuneiform. So it includes the Sumerians and their prehistory, which preceded the Assyrians by thousands of years. Taking it up to the Islamic conquest is stretching it a bit, but I suppose there was a lot of continuity between that period and the thousands of years of cuneiform use in the region. E.g. the latest cuneiform tablet known is from 79AD from the city of Uruk, which was inhabited from about 5000BC to 700AD

In addition to archeology, ancient Greeks (and undoubtably others) also did paleontology:

  Like their modern counterparts, the ancient fossil hunters collected and 
  measured impressive petrified remains and displayed them in temples and 
  museums; they attempted to reconstruct the appearance of these prehistoric 
  creatures and to explain their extinction. Long thought to be fantasy, the 
  remarkably detailed and perceptive Greek and Roman accounts of giant bone 
  finds were actually based on solid paleontological facts. By reading these 
  neglected narratives for the first time in the light of modern scientific 
  discoveries, Adrienne Mayor illuminates a lost world of ancient paleontology.

https://classics.stanford.edu/publications/first-fossil-hunt...

Was that Xenophon’s anabasis? I didn’t remember that part but I love the book.

Xenophon, like Plato, was a student of Socrates and wrote philosophical dialogues involving him. Unlike Plato, Xenophon became a mercenary soldier who led 10,000 Greek soldiers to fight their way out of Iraq. It’s very well written — hope they make a movie at some point.

700 years ago, 1325, was before the rise of the Ottomans. Before discovery and colonization of the Americas. Before the modern state. It is crazy to think that there were peoples or states that lasted 700 years and are just gone, a footnote in history.