Dmanisi is the name of a very old archaeological site located in the Caucausus of the Republic of Georgia, about 85 kilometers southwest of the modern town of Tbilisi, beneath a medieval castle near the junction of the Masavera and Pinezaouri rivers.
Four hominid fossils, thousands of extinct animal bones and bone fragments, and over 1000 stone tools were found buried in 2-4.5 meters of alluvium. The stratigraphy of the site indicates that the hominid and vertebrate remains, and the stone tools, were laid into the cave by geological, rather than cultural causes.
Dating Dmanisi
The pleistocene layers have been securely dated between 1.0-1.8 million years ago; the types of animals discovered within the cave support the early part of that range. Two nearly complete hominid skulls were found, and they most likely represent early Homo ergaster/Homo erectus. They appear to be most like African H. erectus, as in Koobi Fora or West Turkana, although some debate exists. In 2008, the lowest levels were redated to 1.8 mya, and upper levels to 1.07 mya.
The stone artifacts are suggestive of Oldowan chopping tool tradition, similar to tools from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania; and similar to Ubeidiya, Israel. Dmanisi has implications for the original peopling of Europe and Asia by H. erectus, in that the path from Africa to the rest of the world may be postulated via a "Levantine corridor".
Stone artifacts are primarily made of basalt, volcanic tuff and andesite. The stone technology at Dmanisi has been described as similar to both the African Oldowan industry and the younger Eurasian Early Paleolithic (Mode 1). Located on the possible earliest routes for hominids out of Africa, Dmanisi represents a glimpse into the behaviors of euroasian hominids between 1.7 and 1.8 mya.
Homo georgicus?
Recently, scholars led by David Lordkipanidze have debated (Agustí and Lordkipanidze 2011) the assignment of the Dmanisi fossils to Homo erectus, H. habilis, or Homo ergaster. Based on brain capacity, between 600 and 650 cm³, Lordkipanidze and colleagues have argued that a better designation might segregate Dmanisi into H. georgicus. Further, the Dmanisi fossils are clearly of African origin, As their tools conform to mode one in Africa, associated with Oldowan, at 2.6 million years ago, some 800,000 years older than Dmanisi. Lordkipanidze argues that it must have been significantly longer ago than Dmanisi that humans left Africa.
Lordkipanidze's team (Ponzter et al. 2011) also argues that, given microwave textures on molars from Dmanisi, the diet indicated from the you swear on the teeth suggests that the dietary strategy included softer plant foods such as ripe fruits and possibly tougher foods.
Archaeology History of Dmanisi
Before it became a world-renowned hominid site, Dmanisi was known for its Bronze Age deposits and a medieval period city. Excavations within the medieval site in the 1980s led to the older discovery. In the 1980s, Abesalom Vekua and Nugsar Mgeladze excavated the Pleistocene site. After 1989, excavations at Dmanisi were led in collaboration with the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz, Germany, and they continue to this day. A total area of 300 square meters has been excavated to date.
Sources
This glossary entry is a part of the About.com guide to Lower Paleolithic, and the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Agustí J, and Lordkipanidze D. 2011. How "African" was the early human dispersal out of Africa? Quaternary Science Reviews 30(11-12):1338-1342.
Calvo-Rathert M, Goguitchaichvili A, Sologashvili D, Villalaín JJ, Bógalo MF, Carrancho A, and Maissuradze G. 2008. New paleomagnetic data from the hominin bearing Dmanisi paleo-anthropologic site (southern Georgia, Caucasus). Quaternary Research 69(1):91-96.
Gabunia L, Anton SC, Lordkipanidze D, Vekua A, Justus A, and Swisher CCI. 2001. Dmanisi and dispersal. Evolutionary Anthropology 10:158-170.
Gabunia L, Vekua A, and Lordkipanidze D. 2000. The environmental contexts of early human occupation of Georgia (Transcaucasia). Journal of Human Evolution 38:785–802.
Gowlett JAJ. 2006. The early settlement of northern Europe: Fire history in the context of climate change and the social brain. Comptes rendus Palevol 5:299–310.
Lordkipanidze D, Jashashvili T, Vekua A, Ponce de León MS, Zollikofer CPE, Rightmire GP, Pontzer H, Ferring R, Oms O, Tappen M et al. 2007. Postcranial evidence from early Homo from Dmanisi, Georgia. Nature 449:305-310.
Mgeladze A, Lordkipanidze D, Moncel M-H, Despriee J, Chagelishvili R, Nioradze M, and Nioradze G. 2011. Hominin occupations at the Dmanisi site, Georgia, Southern Caucasus: Raw materials and technical behaviours of Europe's first hominins. Journal of Human Evolution 60(5):571-596.
Pontzer H, Scott JR, Lordkipanidze D, and Ungar PS. 2011. Dental microwear texture analysis and diet in the Dmanisi hominins. Journal of Human Evolution 61(6):683-687.
