Dmanisi
Five skulls from Georgia, 1.8 million years old, are so varied they call a whole taxonomy into question.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 80 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 20 thousand years
- Era
- Early Pleistocene, Quaternary
Beneath a medieval town in the Caucasus lie the oldest well-dated hominins outside Africa: small-bodied, small-brained individuals with Oldowan tools, dated to about 1.85 to 1.77 million years ago. Skull 5, found in 2005, has the smallest braincase and the largest face of the group. Because all five were deposited in the same place within a geological instant, they must be one population — and their range of variation spans what elsewhere has been split into habilis, rudolfensis and erectus. One individual survived years with no teeth, which implies help.