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TBILISI, Georgia - Archaeologists in the former Soviet republic of Georgia have unearthed a skull they say is 1.8 million years old — part of a find that holds the oldest traces of humankind's closest ancestors ever found in Europe. The skull from an early member of the genus Homo was found Aug. 6 and unearthed Sunday in Dmanisi, an area about 60 miles southeast of the capital, Tbilisi, said David Lortkipanidze, director of the Georgian National Museum, who took part in the dig. In total, five bones or fragments believed to be about the same age have been found...

Friday, 10 January, 2003, 11:20 GMT Georgian skull's link to our past The skull is thought to be 1.8 million years old By Robert Parsons in Dmanisi, Georgia The moment is indelibly burned into Dato Zhvania's memory. It had been a day like any other - a day of back-breaking, painstakingly meticulous work. A day of throbbing, enervating heat. But as he sifted gingerly through the baked patch of ground before him, his fingers touched something different. The team celebrates their find His pulse quickened. The archaeological site at the medieval town of Dmanisi, 80 kilometres (50 miles) south-west of...

Not long ago, most paleoanthropologists thought that intercontinental travel was reserved for hominids who were big of brain and long of limb. Until very recently, the fossil evidence suggested that early humans did not journey out of Africa until they could walk long distances and were smart enough to invent sophisticated tools. Then, 2 years ago, a team working at Dmanisi, Georgia, shook up those ideas. It reported finding two small skulls dated to a surprisingly ancient 1.75 million years ago and associated with only primitive stone tools (Science, 12 May 2000, p. 948). Now, on page 85 of this...

Turkey is confronting what amounts to a strategic nightmare as bombs explode in its cities, its enemies encroach on its borders and its allies seemingly snub its demands. As recently as four years ago, Turkey appeared poised to become one of the biggest winners of the Arab Spring, an ascendant power hailed by the West as a model and embraced by a region seeking new patrons and new forms of governance. All that has evaporated since the failure of the Arab revolts, shifts in the geopolitical landscape and the trajectory of the Syrian war. Russia, Turkey’s oldest and nearest rival,...

The first sequencing of ancient genomes extracted from human remains that date back to the Late Upper Palaeolithic period over 13,000 years ago has revealed a previously unknown "fourth strand" of ancient European ancestry. This new lineage stems from populations of hunter-gatherers that split from western hunter-gatherers shortly after the 'out of Africa' expansion some 45,000 years ago and went on to settle in the Caucasus region, where southern Russia meets Georgia today. Here these hunter-gatherers largely remained for millennia, becoming increasingly isolated as the Ice Age culminated in the last 'Glacial Maximum' some 25,000 years ago, which they weathered...

Stone man. This partial skull of a 500,000-year-old human was found in a slab of travertine from a quarry like this one in Turkey.Credit: John Kappelman/University of Texas, Austin Workers at a travertine factory near Denizli, Turkey, were startled recently when they sawed a block of the limestone for tiles and discovered part of a human skull. Now, it appears they unwittingly exposed fossilized remains of a long-sought species of human that lived 500,000 years ago, researchers say. Although only four skull fragments were found, the fossil also reveals the earliest case of tuberculosis. The Middle East has long been...

After more than a week of sustained protests over increasing electricity prices, Armenian activists have demonstrated a new sense of empowerment in the face of an increasingly embattled government. But it is actually the broader implications of this unrest in Armenia that is much more significant, for two distinct reasons. First, although this wave of protests is clearly rooted in a set of underlying problems reflecting the unique socioeconomic and political conditions of Armenia, the discontent and dissent in Armenia have already reverberated well beyond the borders of this small, landlocked country. More specifically, the trajectory of the protests have...

In this fiercely pro-Western nation that fought a brief war with Russia in 2008, few thought the Kremlin could ever regain a toehold. But with the West backing away from Georgia’s path to E.U. and NATO membership after a year of conflict in Ukraine, pro-Russian sentiments are on the rise. The former Soviet nation’s leaders are warning that Russia may yet prevail if Georgia is shut out from Western clubs. Wary of further provoking Russia, Western politicians have quashed talk of NATO and the European Union expanding eastward any time soon. Russia has stepped into the vacuum, increasing its presence...

(Aug 2, 2012) POLISH officials have unveiled a statue of former President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II, honouring two men widely credited in this Eastern European country with helping to topple communism 23 years ago. The statue was unveiled in Gdansk, the birthplace of Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement, in the presence of about 120 former Solidarity activists, many of whom were imprisoned in the 1980s for their roles in organising or taking part in strikes against the communist regime. The bronze statue, erected in the lush seaside President Ronald Reagan Park, is a slightly larger-than-life rendering of the...

Soviet Communism, the dark tyranny that controlled nearly 40 nations and was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 100 million victims during the 20th century, suddenly collapsed 20 years ago without a shot being fired. In just two years--from 1989 to 1991--the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and Marxism- Leninism was dumped unceremoniously on the ash heap of history. There was dancing in the street and champagne toasts on top of the Brandenburg Gate. For 40 years, the United States and the West had been following a policy of containment, détente, accommodation. Ronald Reagan decided it was...

Davit Saganelidze, the leader of the parliamentary majority the Georgia's parliament, has expressed his sympathy to the people of Ukraine over Mikhail Saakashvili's appointment as governor of Odessa, calling the appointment a "serious mistake" by Ukrainian authorities. Speaking to journalists on Saturday, Saganelidze noted that "this is a very serious mistake on the part of Ukrainian authorities." "I sympathize with the Ukrainian people, who are very near and dear to my heart, and especially to the people of Odessa," Saganelidze added, commenting on Saturday's announcement by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that he had appointed Saakashvili governor of the southern region....

...During NATO's 2008 summit in Bucharest, Romania, the issue was discussed and, after opposition from France and Germany, a decision was made to offer neither Ukraine nor Georgia a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) — essentially a path for Ukraine to receive membership — at that moment. Vague promises of NATO membership in the future were made, but the United States later appeared to drop its support for NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. Russia's brief war with Georgia in August 2008 helped underscore the decision's importance, but NATO and Ukraine held further talks in December. Again, however, no specific...

We have heard repeatedly about Americans and Europeans fighting for ISIL, but little attention is being devoted to the Russian-speaking foreign fighters that make up the group. Their numbers are estimated at 500 or more. Omar al-Shishani is usually described as a prominent Islamic State fighter who is Chechen. In fact, he was born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia and was trained there. Some reports suggest these fighters are opposed to the Russian-backed Assad regime in Syria and Russia itself. But if this is the case, then why is Russia opposed to U.S. bombing of these terrorists? NBC...

Perhaps we can try another once he's in Kiev... or Riga As previously noted here, thinking all at the table are negotiating in good-faith (when dealing with serially-dishonest former KGB agents who want to take things from you) is probably not a very good idea- when what we ought to be doing is arming the Ukrainians to the teeth and putting troops in Poland to exhibit (residual) NATO resolve. The Russians' completely ignoring the latest Minsk accord and continuing to slaughter Ukrainian citizens in the name of 'Novorossiya' without pause should be all the evidence any thinking person would need to...

Hopefully, Russians realize that our House of Representatives often passes thunderous resolutions to pander to special interests, which have no bearing on the thinking or actions of the U.S. government. Last week, the House passed such a resolution 411-10. As ex-Rep. Ron Paul writes, House Resolution 758 is so "full of war propaganda that it rivals the rhetoric from the chilliest era of the Cold War." H. R. 758 is a Russophobic rant full of falsehoods and steeped in superpower hypocrisy. Among the 43 particulars in the House indictment is this gem: "The Russian Federation invaded the Republic of Georgia...

President Obama has opened a new front in his hard line against the incoming Republican Congress by releasing more detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, against lawmakers' objections. The Pentagon announced Thursday that four al Qaeda fighters from Yemen, including a senior figure who facilitated travel to Afghanistan for Arab extremists, and a Tunisian extremist would be transferred to Slovakia and Georgia. The transfers leave 143 detainees at Guantanamo, which Obama has vowed to close. Republican lawmakers, who have been pressing the administration to stop releasing detainees amid reports that some former prisoners had joined the Islamic State of Iraq and...

It was more than six years ago when a tank force from the Georgian army’s 42nd Mechanized Infantry Battalion fought its way overnight through Tskhinvali, South Ossetia. The tanks were in trouble. They were moving too fast, outrunning their infantry support and taking losses to South Ossetian irregulars scattered throughout the city. Only hours into a war which would last five days, they had to keep moving before Russian reinforcements could arrive to bolster the pro-Russian, breakway Georgian province.

A new study suggests that Homo erectus, a precursor to modern humans, was using advanced toolmaking methods in East Africa 1.8 million years ago, at least 300,000 years earlier than previously thought. The study, recently published in Nature, raises new questions about where these tall and slender early humans originated and how they developed sophisticated tool-making technology. Homo erectus appeared about 2 million years ago, and ranged across Asia and Africa before hitting a possible evolutionary dead-end, about 70,000 years ago. Some researchers think Homo erectus evolved in East Africa, where many of the oldest fossils have been found, but...

September 20, 2006 · Scientists in Ethiopia have discovered the skeleton of a 3.3 million years old child, the oldest child fossil on record. The fossil is known as the Dikika child, after the region where it was found. Though not a human, the apelike creature could walk upright. The child is from the same species as the famous fossil Lucy, which was also discovered in Ethiopia over 30 years ago. It was probably female, and about three when it died. The child lay within a sandstone tomb for over 3 million years. Six years ago, an Ethiopian scientist saw...

Abstract The description of a new skull (D4500) from the Dmanisi site (Republic of Georgia) has reopened the debate about the morphological variability within the genus Homo. The new skull fits with a mandible (D2600) often referred as ‘big’ or ‘enigmatic’ because of its differences with the other Dmanisi mandibles (D211 and D2735). In this report we present a comparative study of the variability of the Dmanisi mandibles under a different perspective, as we focus in morphological aspects related to growth and development. We have followed the notion of modularity and phenotypic integration in order to understand the architectural differences...