Why is the Caucausus region anthropologically so significant?

Question

This is not a homework question by the way (I'm way too old for that!). Why did this tiny region give its name to a race of people? Is it true that for some reason as humans evolved out of Africa they stopped moving and stayed in the Caucausus region for a hundred thousand years or so? Maybe the Caucausus was a good place to wait out an Ice Age?

Answer 1

Because Meiners found the "perfect skull" here. Since the skull resembled other German skulls he had studied he erroneously conjectured that Europeans originated in the Caucasus Mountains. And now we know that "Caucasians" aren't even a race. Whoops!

Answer 2

Being that the earliest hominin remains found outside of Africa, dating to 1.7 million years ago (H. erectus, Georgia), were found there, puts it at the Hub of all subsequent human migrations!

It became the Transcontinental Highway, bridging Africa to China, and the Black Sea (which was then a freshwater lake) became the preferred avenue to Europe, when early migrants had a genetic split 40,000 years ago, dividing the Mongoloids from the Caucasoids (Cro-Mags)!

Good Question!