Stone Age Institute brings scientist at forefront of anthropology for lecture

With a passion for crime stories, David Lordkipanidze, general director of the Georgian National Museum in the Republic of Georgia, reconstructs a 1.8 million-year-old scene with ground-breaking discoveries on the earliest human migration from Africa.\n"Everything started with this jaw," Lordkipanidze said as he presented a slide of the prehistoric fossil at the annual Leighton A. Wilkie Distinguished Lecture in Human Origin Studies Wednesday.\nThe lecture was co-hosted by the Stone Age Institute, a local non-profit organization researching human origins, and the Center for Research into the Anthropological Foundations of Technology at IU. The organizations invited Lordkipanidze to speak about his world-renowned research and presented him the Outstanding Research Award in Human Origins.\nKathy Schick, professor of Anthropology and co-director of the Stone Age Institute, said the goal of the lecture series is to bring to IU people on the forefront of anthropology who find critical evidence and push the envelope.\nThe complete skull of an early hominid Lordkipanidze found at the Dmanisi archaeological site in his native country was one of the most substantial pieces of evidence investigating when and why early humans left Africa.\n"(Dmanisi) is one of the most important sites in paleoanthropology," Schick said.\nBuried over the ages, Dmanisi was discovered under the ruins of another medieval archaeological site. A rhinoceros bone that does not coincide with modern Eurasian ecology initiated further investigation into what other Paleolithic treasures the site held.\nThe first skull was discovered in 1991, coinciding with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Georgia began to define itself not only as its own republic but also as an epicenter in archaeology, amassing more than 400 sites throughout the country.\nThe Dmanisi excavation has revealed a wealth of fossils, including animal bones that help date the site, stone tools and human bones providing considerable evidence to push back in time by almost one million years the previous theory of when humans first left Africa.\n"This is enormous luck for our work and our workgroup," said Lordkipanidze, whose discoveries have been featured in multiple publications, including National Geographic Magazine.\nHe and his team have been working at the site for the past 15 years and have turned up four complete skulls along with dozens of other bones and thousands of stone tools. The scientist said only five percent of Dmanisi has been revealed.\nSome of the most substantial findings Lordkipanidze has unearthed lie within the prehistoric skull itself. Theories on the adaptations necessary for human migration from Africa required large brains and body size and an advanced culture.\nOn the contrary, Lordkipanidze's research has found that such shifts in ecology and anatomy did not necessarily occur, requiring neither large brains nor sophisticated stone tools to disperse from Africa.\nDespite how primitive these early people were, with brains only half the size of modern humans, community might have sustained them.\nOne of Dmanisi's most intriguing findings is a jaw whose owner lived without teeth for two years before dying, being cared for and fed by others. Lordkipanidze said he believes there was a social relationship suggesting a respect for elders in the Dmanisi people.\nRecent IU graduate Michael Glasgow attended the lecture and said the findings of the skull with no teeth and the questions it brings up about compassion in early humans is what interests him about Lordkipanidze's work.\nSchick said the site helps explain how the group is turning into a population, and the density of fossils in one site and quality of preservation make Dmanisi a valuable anthropological site.\n"It's amazing," she said. "With this rich fossil site we can start to talk about prehistoric human biology"