DMANISI, GEORGIA — The forested bluff that overlooks this sleepy Georgian hamlet seems an unlikely portal to the mysteries surrounding the dawn of man.
Think human evolution, and one conjures up the wind-swept savannas and badlands of East Africa's Great Rift Valley. Georgians may claim their ancestors made Georgia the cradle of wine 8,000 years ago, but the cradle of mankind lies 3,300 miles away, at Tanzania's famous Olduvai Gorge.
But it is here in the verdant uplands of southern Georgia that paleoanthropologist David Lordkipanidze has been unearthing one of the largest and most significant troves of prehistoric human fossils ever found outside the Great Rift Valley. His work has begun to change fundamental beliefs about human evolution, and about early man's migration from Africa.
Lordkipanidze's latest findings, partial skeletons 1.77 million years old and described in Nature magazine this fall, paint a portrait of small-framed early humans with primitive brains but longer legs, well-suited for long-distance walking.
Why they left Africa remains a mystery. But the Dmanisi fossils provide ample evidence that when mankind's ancestors did leave Africa, they trekked through the Fertile Crescent and made their way to the lush highlands at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains.
"The Dmanisi fossils are no doubt the earliest hominid fossils in Europe," Lordkipanidze said. "They are the first immigrants. They could be ancestors for any European or Asian population."
Lordkipanidze believes his team's findings at Dmanisi fill crucial gaps in the puzzle of mankind's rootstock. Though not yet accepted by the scientific community as a separate species, Lordkipanidze says "Dmanisi man" could be a link between two stages of early man, the primitive, ape-like Homo habilis and the more human-like Homo erectus.
But for Lordkipanidze, the Dmanisi fossils are invaluable for a different reason: They have etched tiny Georgia into the annals of science, creating recognition that can rev up interest in science in a nation still reeling economically from the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
"What is Georgia for much of the world? For a lot of people, it's the birthplace of Stalin," said the tall, soft-spoken 44-year-old Georgian. "Not many people know about our country. Now we're making a name for Georgia through archaeology."
