Bones Found Near Tbilisi Rewrite Human Evolution, With Georgia as “Cradle of the First Europeans”

The book of human history will need a slight redraft, if a remarkable claim by a prominent Georgian anthropologist and archaeologist – on the basis of human remains recently excavated at a site not far from the Georgian capital Tbilisi – is true.

The skulls, jawbones and fragments of limb bones dug up between 1991 and 2007 near the medieval village of Dmanisi in the foothills of the Caucuses are, according to Professor David Lordkipanidze  – Director General of the Georgian National Museum  – indisputably the oldest human fossils found outside of Africa, at around 1.8 millions years of age. He speculates that the “hominins” from which they derive – people with brains only about 40% the size of modern man’s ancient ancestors Homo erectus, and a much smaller physical stature – are evidence of a precursor to Homo erectus, provisionally called “Homo georgicus.”

“Before our findings,” said Lordkipanidze, while delivering the British Council lecture at the British Science Festival in Guildford, “the prevailing view was that humans came out of Africa almost 1 million years ago, that they already had sophisticated stone tools, and that their body anatomy was quite advanced in terms of brain capacity and limb proportions. But what we are finding is quite different.

“The Dmanisi hominins are the earliest representatives of our own genus – Homo – outside Africa,” he continued, “and they represent the most primitive population of the species Homo erectus to date. They might be ancestral to all later Homo erectus populations, which would suggest a Eurasian origin of Homo erectus.”

Lordkipanidze went on to explain that a “vice-versa migration” may have taken place, whereby “Homo georgicus” migrated from Africa to Eurasia over 1.8 million years ago, evolved into Homo erectus, then returned to Africa to continue the story of mankind as we understand it.

Basically, an interlude in human history occurred.

However “Homo georgicus” fit into the grand scheme of evolution, what seems beyond doubt is that they were the first people known to have set foot on European soil. “Georgia is the cradle of the first Europeans, I would say,” Lordkipanidze concluded.

Picture from Wikimedia Commons.

Read 3 comments, or leave your own