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Packed in cotton: Orozmani's tooth
Photo: David Chkhikvishvili / REUTERS
Archaeologists have found a 1.8-million-year-old tooth belonging to an early human species in Georgia.
According to the researchers, the Caucasus region is thus confirmed as one of the oldest prehistoric human settlement sites, possibly the oldest outside of Africa.
The tooth was found near the village of Orozmani, around 100 kilometers southwest of the Georgian capital Tbilisi.
Human skulls were found in nearby Dmanisi in the late 1990s and early 2000s and have been dated to be 1.8 million years old.
The Dmanisi finds were the oldest such discovery outside of Africa.
This changed the scientific understanding of the evolution and migration patterns of early humans.
"Orozmani, together with Dmanisi, forms the center of the oldest settlement of early humans in the world outside of Africa," said the National Research Center of Archeology and Protohistory of Georgia on Thursday, announcing the find of the tooth.
Giorgi Bidzinashvili, the excavation team's research director, said he believed the tooth belonged to a "cousin" of Zezva and Mzia.
These names were given to the bearers of the fossilized skulls almost completely preserved in Dmanisi.
The British archeology student Jack Peart, who discovered the tooth in Orozmani, spoke of "far-reaching conclusions" - "not only for this deposit, but for Georgia and the history of the people who left Africa 1.8 million years ago".
He told Reuters news agency, "This cements the status of Georgia as an important place for paleoanthropology and human history in general."
The world's oldest known human fossil has been dated to be 2.8 million years old: a partially preserved jaw found in Ethiopia.
Scientists assume that the early human species Homo erectus left Africa as hunter-gatherers around two million years ago.
Tools as old as 2.1 million have been found in China.
However, the Georgian finds remain the oldest human remains outside of Africa.
ak/Reuters