Georgia Through the Millennia

Most people know Georgia only as a country lying somewhere in Central Asia—one of the 15 former republics of the U.S.S.R. and the birthplace of Joseph Stalin. But the nation of Georgia has a long and illustrious history that predates the rise of the Soviet Union.

A tiny mountainous country about the size of West Virginia, Georgia lies just north of Turkey, between the Black and Caspian seas. Situated at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, the nation is composed of several smaller, culturally distinct regions and is home to more than 100 different ethnic groups (including Sunni Muslims, Armenians and Jews). Georgia’s relatively mild climate, fertile soil and abundant natural resources attracted settlers as early as the fifth millennium B.C.

Archaeological evidence suggests that three Neolithic, proto-Georgian tribes (the Svans, the Megrels-Chans and the Karts) controlled the area until around 500 B.C., when most of what is now Georgia was colonized by the Ionian Greeks. The Greeks divided the country up into two distinct principalities, the kingdom of Iberia in the east, and the kingdom of Colchis in the west. Both of these kingdoms then fell under the sway of the Roman Empire in 63 A.D., and the Romans later helped establish Christianity throughout the region. (Christianity became the official religion of most of Georgia in 330 A.D.) Following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, the Byzantine and Persian empires vied for control of both Iberia and Colchis, and the two kingdoms were eventually conquered by the Arabs in the seventh century A.D.