Georgian National Museum

For 1,000 years it sat, nature slowly reclaiming it, until 1930 when the first archeological team came in to investigate.

Fast-forward to 1973 when the Anglo-Georgian Expedition began, a program combining the universities of Winchester, Cambridge, and the Georgian National Museum.

But fast-forward again to 2022, and I was a part of the team, supervising in two trenches for a month.

We found a burial, a series of post holes, and plenty of signs of that destruction in 736 CE.

So the-- there was a very strong-- and this is confirmed by archaeology.

You can go to the Georgian National Museum and see the, uh, archaeological, uh, exhibits and artifacts confirming this.

So- There was very strong Western influence, but of course there were Persians, uh- Arabs, Turks, you know, Mongols ... various, var- var- various ethnicities.

Um, and of course there was, there were Western, Eastern influences too.