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Reflection Paper
Dmanisi Discoveries
H.P. Lovecraft once remarked that the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the
oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. In a world that has been dated to be existing
for more than 4 billion years old, the existence of humans, and in consequence, our ancestors, seem
diminutively short but pivotal. Modern humans have only been posited to have been existing for
250,000 years prior and yet weve succeeded to effect change in our environment, may it be positive or
negative; gather and make sense out of the planets complex system; establish interactive and illusory
borders, be it physical, hypothetical and/or socio-cultural; and ultimately, pave the path in which we
have been existing upon. Mankind, as early the Classical Ages and into the Middle Ages, have been
extending efforts to comprehend who we are as a species. From Herodotus, Tacitus, to Marco Polo and
Richard Harvey stemmed a budding field of questioning that saw to the need to fill in gaps in the
rationale behind human development. Anthropological efforts have been playing a crucial part in
uncovering so much of both what is yet to be known and what is already known; it is a thrust towards
understanding how we came to be, how we have been evolving and how we, as a people, have been
A notable anthropological and archaeological endeavor set in 2007 proved to be one of these
information regarding the assumptions of when the aforementioned species set out for the African
exodus. In addition to that how these humans should have or must have looked or developed;
otherwise they would not have been able to survive the migration. Nonetheless, the discoveries of
fossils in Dmanisi proved to serve as a contradiction to these tacit assumptions: they were physically
small, and had small brains. Also, these pioneers were armed with primitive stone tools, and thus did
not possess the well-developed tool-making techniques researchers had expected (Georgia National
Having formally opened its UP Diliman leg of its tour around universities in the Philippines last
August 8 at the UP Diliman Albert Hall, the Dmanisi traveling exhibit entitled The Journey of
Mankind: The First Humans Out of Africa featured casts/models of 3 homo erectus skulls [estimatedly
dated to be around 1.8 million years old] found in the site located in Dmanisi, Georgia. Also featured
are a set of 5 stone tools, skulls of a sabre-toothed cat and the wolf Canis etruscus, and an elephant
molar that date back to the time of the Dmanisi hominids (Encarnacion, 2016, n.p.).
I had the pleasure to visit the exhibit located in the Albert Hall lobby last August 23. Although
considerably small in size, the exhibit packed a punch in terms of delivering pertinent and valued
information. Spending give-or-take a few minutes to an hour to acquaint myself to the answers to the
posited questions (i.e. Why are the Dmanisi hominids important? How do this specie differ from
other Hominins? What is the relevance of these discoveries to the assumed system of hominin
dispersal?), I learned much with relation to the genus Homo, the African exodus, varied challenged
long-standing assumptions, and even the effects of the geography of a place (in this case, Dmanisi,
Georgia) to the preservation of petrified remains. It was truly an experience, albeit something whose
assumptions, and to always be accepting of facts and corrections. I would not dramatize the exposure
further than how I actually immersed myself in it. The exhibit reminded me of both the simplicity and
the complexity of human life and that, for me, is enough. The experience was humbling, as it normally
is when faced with the clear-cut facts of age and evolution. The narrative is unmistakable, the timeline
of human evolution still remains incomplete, leaving room for speculation. Regardless, the uncertainty
of life and its entirety remains one of its defining aspects and we, as humans, cannot stay afraid of not
knowing, rather we must strive to understand what we can and work from there. As Donald Johnson
remarked, Where we are going as a species is a big question. Human evolution certainly hasn't
stopped. Every time individuals produce a new zygote, there's a reshuffling and recombination of
genes. And we don't know where all of that is going to take us [but that is to be expected and that is at
Encarnacion, A. D. (2016, August 17). The Journey of Mankind comes to UP Diliman [web article].
University of the Philippines: Shaping minds that shape the nation. University of the Philippines:
to-up-diliman/
Georgia National Museum. (2013). Importance of Dmanisi [web article]. About Dmanisi. Retrieved
from http://www.dmanisi.ge/page?id=2&lang=en