Georgia is believed to be the home of one of the earliest prehistoric human settlements in Europe, and possibly anywhere outside Africa, thanks to the discovery of a 1.8m-year-old tooth by archaeologists.
The tooth was found near the village of Orozmani, which is about 60 miles south-west of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, and is near Dmanisi, where human skulls dating to the late 1990s and early 2000s were found.
The Dmanisi finds were the oldest such discovery in the world outside Africa.
The south Caucasus area is thought to be one of the first places early humans settled after moving out of Africa.
The National Research Centre of Archaeology and Prehistory of Georgia said that Orozmani and Dmanisi represent the center of the oldest distribution of old humans outside Africa.
The leader of the dig team thinks the tooth is from a cousin of Zezva and Mzia, the people whose skulls were found at Dmanisi.
Jack Peart, a British archaeology student who found the tooth at Orozmani, said: "The implications not just for this site but for Georgia and the story of humans leaving Africa is enormous." Georgia is an important place for paleoanthropology.
The oldest Homo fossils in the world are found in Ethiopia.
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The Homo erectus, a hunter-gatherer species, probably migrated out of Africa about 2m years ago, according to scientists. The Georgian sites are home to the oldest remains of early humans yet recovered outside Africa, despite the fact that ancient tools have been found in China.
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