Early farmers of the South Caucasus; the world's earliest evidence of winemaking.
-6000
Shulaveri-Shomu is a Neolithic archaeological culture of the South Caucasus (roughly the 6th–5th millennia BC), spread across the Kura and Araxes valleys, above all in Kvemo Kartli in southern Georgia.
Its people were among the region's earliest farmers and herders: they grew wheat, barley and grapes, kept livestock and lived in round mud-brick houses that, accumulating, formed settlement mounds (Georgian «gora»).
It was here, at Shulaveris Gora and Gadachrili Gora, that the world's earliest evidence of winemaking was found, traces of tartaric acid in pottery about 6000 BC old.
The key sites (Shulaveris Gora, Imiris Gora, Khramis Didi Gora and Arukhlo) have yielded pottery, stone and bone tools and clay figurines; they have been studied since the mid-20th century.