Dmanisi Hominid Exhibition

Exhibition of Dmanisi hominid fossils — among the oldest human ancestors found outside Africa

The Georgian National Museum's Dmanisi exhibition presents some of the most important fossils in the history of paleoanthropology. The Dmanisi archaeological site in southern Georgia has yielded skulls and bones of hominids who lived 1.8 million years ago — the earliest known humans to have left Africa.

The exhibition includes casts of the key fossils and detailed explanations of their significance. The real skulls are kept in the main Simon Janashia Museum collection. For anyone interested in human evolution, this is genuinely important material: the Dmanisi finds rewrote the timeline of human dispersal and raised fundamental questions about what constitutes a distinct species.

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The Dmanisi fossils, found in southern Georgia, represent hominids that lived 1.8 million years ago — the oldest human ancestors found outside Africa. The 2013 discovery of a nearly complete skull (Skull 5) challenged prevailing theories about early human evolution by showing that individuals of dramatically different physical appearance lived in the same community, suggesting early Homo species were far more variable than previously thought.

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