Archeologists continue to uncover evidence that the Armenian Highlands were among the earliest sites of human civilization.2 Recent excavations in the Armenian Highlands (now Southern Georgia) have unearthed 1.7-million-year-old fossil human skulls exhibiting African ancestry. These fossils are believed to be the remains of the first migration of the human species from Africa, roughly 100,000 years after the emergence of the species 1.8 million years ago.3 Earlier excavations in the Armenian Highlands have turned up stone tools and the skeletal remains of human beings and animals, such as the hippopotamus, elephant, rhinoceros, tiger, horse, camel, and ox dating to the Pleistocene age, more than 500,000 years ago. The rich variety of volcanic stones, such as obsidian, and metals, such as copper, tin, arsenic and iron, encouraged the early development of tool making, metallurgy, and ceramic pottery. From 4,000 BC to 1,000 BC, tools and trinkets of copper, bronze and iron were commonly produced in the Armenian Highlands and traded in neighboring lands where those metals were less abundant. |