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Scientific American

November 1, 2003

1 min read

Stranger in a New Land

Stunning finds in the Republic of Georgia upend long-standing ideas about the first hominids to journey out of Africa

By Kate Wong

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The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins. Second edition. Richard G. Klein. University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Earliest Pleistocene Hominid Cranial Remains from Dmanisi, Republic of Georgia: Taxonomy, Geological Setting, and Age. Leo Gabunia, Abesalom Vekua, David Lordkipanidze et al. in Science, Vol. 288, pages 1019¿1025; May 12, 2000.

The Environmental Context of Early Human Occupation in Georgia (Transcaucasia). Leo Gabunia, Abesalom Vekua and David Lordkipanidze in Journal of Human Evolution, Vol. 38, No. 6, pages 785¿802; June 2000.

A New Skull of Early Homo from Dmanisi, Georgia. Abesalom Vekua, David Lordkipanidze, G. Philip Rightmire et al. in Science, Vol. 297, pages 85¿89; July 5, 2002.

Kate Wong is an award-winning science writer and senior editor at Scientific American focused on evolution, ecology, anthropology, archaeology, paleontology and animal behavior. She is fascinated by human origins, which she has covered for more than 25 years. Recently she has become obsessed with birds. Her reporting has taken her to caves in France and Croatia that Neandertals once called home, to the shores of Kenya's Lake Turkana in search of the oldest stone tools in the world, to Madagascar on an expedition to unearth ancient mammals and dinosaurs, to the icy waters of Antarctica, where humpback whales feast on krill, and on a "Big Day" race around the state of Connecticut to find as many bird species as possible in 24 hours. Kate is co-author, with Donald Johanson, of Lucy's Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins. She holds a bachelor of science degree in biological anthropology and zoology from the University of Michigan. Follow Wong on X (formerly Twitter) @katewong

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Scientific American Magazine Vol 289 Issue 5This article was originally published with the title “Stranger in a New Land” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 289 No. 5 ()
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