The tooth was discovered near the village of Orozmani, which is about 60 miles southwest of Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, and is near Dmanisi, where 1.8-million-year-old human skulls were found in the late 1990s and early 1990s. 2000. The Dmanisi findings were the earliest such discovery anywhere in the world outside of Africa and changed scientists’ understanding of early human evolution and migration patterns. The latest discovery at a site about 12 miles away provides even more evidence that the mountainous region of the South Caucasus was probably one of the first places to be settled by early humans after migrating out of Africa, experts said. “Orozmani, together with Dmanisi, represents the center of the earliest distribution of old humans – or early Homo – in the world outside of Africa,” said the National Research Center of Archeology and Prehistory of Georgia. The excavation site near Orozmani. Photo: David Chkhikvishvili/Reuters Giorgi Bidzinashvili, the scientific head of the excavation team, said he thought the tooth belonged to a “cousin” of Zezva and Mzia, the names given to the people whose nearly complete 1.8-million-year-old fossilized skulls were found at Dmanisi. Jack Peart, a British archeology student who found the tooth at Orozmani, said: “The implications not only for this site but also for Georgia and the history of people who left Africa 1.8 million years ago are huge. It cements Georgia as a really important place for paleoanthropology and human history in general.” The oldest Homo fossils anywhere in the world date back to about 2.8 million years ago – a partial jaw discovered in modern Ethiopia. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Scientists believe that the first humans, a hunter-gatherer species called Homo erectus, probably began migrating out of Africa about 2 million years ago. Ancient tools dating back some 2.1 million years have been discovered in modern China, but the Georgian sites are home to the oldest remains of early humans yet recovered outside of Africa.
