Prehistoric Georgia

Human habitation in Georgia before written records The prehistory of Georgia is the period between the first human habitation of the territory of modern-day nation of Georgia and the time when Assyrian and Urartian, and more firmly, the Classical accounts, brought the proto-Georgian tribes into the scope of recorded history. Paleolithic, Mesolithic Modern reproduction of a Homo erectus skull found at Dmanisi displayed in the Cantonal Museum of Geology, Switzerland (2009) Humans have been living in Georgia for an extremely long time, as attested by the discoveries, in 1999 and 2002, of two Homo erectus skulls (H. e. georgicus) at Dmanisi in southern Georgia. The archaeological layer in which the human remains, hundreds of stone tools and numerous animal bones were unearthed is dated approximately 1.6-1.8 million years ago (since the underlying basalt lava bed yielded an age of approximately 1.8 million years). The site yields the earliest unequivocal evidence for presence of early humans outside the African continent. Later Lower Paleolithic Acheulian sites have been discovered in the highlands of Georgia, particularly in the caves of Kudaro (1600 m above sea level), and Tsona (2100