Village of Golden Towers

A young girl plays in the streets in a isolated region of Svaneti where people live in towers lined with gold. These "tribal worlds" in the mountainous, coastal areas south of the Caucasusís in Georgia have changed little in the past 3300 years. Simple, physical geography has preserved these unique societies.<br /> The area is called . Here people put sheepskins in glacial runoff to gather gold dust thus the Golden Fleece. The people still speak Kartvelian, a proto language that hasn't changed for over 5000 years.<br /> Svans live in 12th century medieval towers and still perform pagan animal sacrifice on 8th century stone alters, another part of life that Jason and the Argonauts saw when they arrived around the fifth century BC.<br /> Civilization likely began in the Caucasus even before it did in Mesopotamia. Mountainous terrain preserves miniature tribal worlds lost to time.
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