Overview
Dmanisi sits on a promontory above the Mashavera and Pinezauri confluence in southern Georgia. The visible ruins are a medieval fortress-town and bishop's seat. Beneath and beside them, a Pleistocene pipe of ash and alluvium trapped hominin bones, stone tools, and fauna. Georgian and international teams led by David Lordkipanidze have excavated since the 1990s.
Five skulls and associated postcrania date to about 1.85-1.77 million years ago. Skull 5 (D4500/D2600) combines a small braincase with a massive face; the series as a whole is often classified as early Homo erectus (or Homo erectus georgicus). The fossils show that a single dispersing African-derived population could look more variable than older textbooks allowed. Oldowan-style tools accompany the bones.
Compare Olduvai Gorge for the East African source landscape and Atapuerca for later European hominins. Dmanisi is not a UNESCO World Heritage site (nearby Mtskheta is a different inscription).
