"In the 1880s, when Dmitry Ermakov, the photo chronicler of the Caucasus walked with a mule convoy over the remote mountain valleys to take thousands of photos on their inhabitants living in archaic conditions, another photo expedition passed through the Caucasus, too." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"Ernest Chantre, the director of the museum of Lyon had geology and archaeology as his main subjects. He was primarily interested in the relics of the transition from the neolithic period to metal-working, and as contemporary European scholarship considered the Caucasus as the cradle of metal-working, he intended to organize an expedition there. Together with three of his colleagues he started from Beirut in the spring of 1881, passed through Syria and Anatolia to Tiflis, and from there to the Northern Ossetian Koban, where they excavated a unique Bronze Age necropolis." - Mark H