Ten years ago, I stood in a cave in the Republic of Georgia holding a spear thrower made from wood, stone, and sinew.

Minutes earlier, I had used that weapon - a 40,000-year-old technology called an atlatl - to hunt a wild boar in the forests of the Caucasus Mountains.

That moment changed how I understood human history.

But what I didn’t know then was that Georgia would continue to shape the next decade of my life in ways I never could have predicted.

Because years later, that same country would lead me to something just as ancient and just as powerful:

The birthplace of wine.

Dr Bill Schindler hunting with an atlatl during The Great Human Race in Georgia

Bill in Cave in Georgia during Episode 6 — Bill in the cave in Georgia during Episode 6

Ten Years After The Great Human Race

Ten years ago today, Episode 6 of The Great Human Race aired on National Geographic. This was my favorite episode. It was called “Cave,” and it was filmed in the Republic of Georgia, a place that, at the time, I knew mostly through archaeology textbooks and academic conversations. I had no idea then that this episode, and this country, would become such an important thread running through the next decade of my life and work.

Looking back now, that moment feels like the beginning of a story that is still unfolding.

The Great Human Race followed me and my-co star Cat Bigney as we attempted to live through key chapters of human evolution using only the technologies and knowledge available to our ancestors. Each episode forced us to confront the realities of prehistoric life finding food, making tools, building shelter, and navigating landscapes relying only on the technologies of the time periods we were recreating.

One of my primary roles on the show was replicating the technologies our ancestors relied upon. This included stone tool technologies, hunting weapons, prehistoric ceramics, and even brain tanning and sewing. In preparation for filming, I spent over 400 hours making clothes from brain-tanned hides, stitching them together using animal tendons, sinew, as thread.

Episode 6 brought us to the rugged mountains and forests of the Caucasus. We were recreating life 40,000 years ago, a time when modern humans were spreading across Eurasia while our close relatives, the Neanderthals, were disappearing from the archaeological record.

Our mission in this episode was to prepare ourselves for a journey across the Caucasus Mountains attempting to outrun a glacial advance that some archaeologists believe may have played a role in Neanderthal extinction.

During the episode, I built an atlatl, a spear-throwing technology that predates the bow and arrow by tens of thousands of years. I crafted composite projectile tips using a 40,000-year-old blade and core technology, embedding stone blades into antler and bone points using hide glue and pine resin.

Using that weapon, I hunted a wild boar.

Carrying that animal back to the cave, I remember feeling something powerful and difficult to articulate. It wasn’t just the success of the hunt. It was the realization that this technology, simple wood, stone, and skill, had fed human families for tens of thousands of years.

Moments like that have a way of changing how you see the world.

Back at the cave, we rendered the fat into lard, preserved the meat, and prepared for the journey over the mountains, one that some researchers believe Neanderthals may not have made, perhaps becoming trapped by advancing ice.

Turning a Television Episode into an Experience

When the episode was finished and scheduled to air, we decided not to simply watch it.

We decided to experience it.

At the time I was a professor at Washington College, and we organized an entire weekend of events around the episode’s release. A few days before the official airing, we hosted a public screening on campus, but the screening itself was only the culmination of something much bigger.

For the entire weekend, the campus became a living exploration of the prehistoric world.

My parents and friends and colleagues from the archaeology and primitive technology communities came to help create an immersive experience. Students and members of the community could watch flintknapping demonstrations and learn how to make stone tools themselves. There were opportunities to throw atlatls, and we even held an atlatl throwing contest. We organized foraging walks around Chestertown, exploring the edible plants that grow all around us but are so often overlooked.

And then there was the dinner.

The dining hall created a themed meal inspired by the episode, served after the screening, including wild boar, a nod to the hunt that had taken place in the forests of Georgia. Plus we started the weekend at our house with the crew making - you guessed it - PIZZA!

After the screening, we invited several members of the National Geographic production team onto the stage for a Q&A session. The audience got to ask questions not just about archaeology and survival, but about what it takes to actually make a show like this. Our showrunner, Pete Delasho, joined us along with members of the crew, the medic Todd Curtis, the drone operator Jovan Sales, and the sound technician, Burt Gregory. The conversation ranged from ancient technologies to the realities of filming in remote landscapes.

It was one of those rare evenings where curiosity, community, and storytelling all came together.

At the time, it felt like a celebration of a television episode. Looking back now, I realize it was something more important.

It was a glimpse of the kind of work I would spend the next decade pursuing.

The Seed of Something Bigger

Filming The Great Human Race changed the way I approached research and teaching.

As an archaeologist, I had spent years studying ancient tools, foodways, and technologies. But the experience of actually living those systems, even briefly, revealed something powerful: understanding the past is fundamentally experiential.

In fact, Cat and I are the only people ever to have lived, even briefly, across all of the major periods of our evolutionary past in this way. It truly felt like stepping into a time machine.

You can read about an atlatl in a book. You can study it in a museum. You can even throw one.

But relying on it to feed yourself is something entirely different.

The same is true for food.

And this is where something deeper began to crystallize for me: food and drink are some of the most powerful storytellers we have.

The act of eating and drinking is one of the most sensual things humans do. When we eat and drink, we engage all of our senses, taste, smell, sight, sound, and touch. Few experiences connect us to the world around us as completely.

Eating that wild boar, an animal I had hunted using a 40,000-year-old technology, connected me to people who lived tens of thousands of years ago in a way that no book or lecture ever could.

For a brief moment, the past wasn’t abstract.

It was alive.

Returning to Georgia

Two years ago, Christina, Brianna, and I returned to Georgia, this time not for television, but for research.

We went back to visit the cave where we had lived during the filming of The Great Human Race. Standing there again, years later, brought back a flood of memories. But this time our focus was different.

Brianna, Christina & Bill enjoying a supra in Georgia

Georgia is not only home to some of the oldest winemaking traditions in the world it also has very ancient cheesemaking traditions. We spent time learning about traditional dairy practices like Tenili, visiting and learning from cheesemakers who continue to work in ways deeply connected to the past.

At the same time, we began to understand Georgian wine culture in a much deeper way.

For 8,000 of years, Georgian winemakers have fermented grapes in large clay vessels called qvevri, buried underground. These wines ferment spontaneously, meaning no commercial yeast is added. Many producers still work with heirloom grape varieties, farm regeneratively, ferment naturally, and avoid artificial additives or preservatives.

In many ways, this wine represents something extraordinary.

It is the closest thing we have today to the wine our ancestors were drinking thousands of years ago.

We realized how very different this wine was from practically all other modern wine. We fell in love with it, not just the wine itself, but the culture and traditions surrounding it.

Our New Friend, Mamuka

When we returned home, we were introduced to Dr. Mamuka Tsereteli, founder of the Georgian Wine House of Greater Washington. Through both public and private initiatives, Mamuka has spent more than two decades promoting Georgian wine in the United States.

Mamuka eventually traveled to the Modern Stone Age Kitchen and led one of the most memorable wine tastings we have ever experienced.

That afternoon changed everything.

The wines aligned perfectly with our philosophy around food: traditional methods, minimal intervention, deep cultural roots, and practices that honor both people and land. There is no biological need for wine in the human diet, however, if you are going to drink wine this is the safest and most nourishing wine to drink.

Shortly after that tasting, we made the decision to transition entirely to Georgian wines at Modern Stone Age Kitchen.

That decision also began our friendship and collaboration with Mamuka.

Ten Years Later: Georgia Returns Again

And then, just a few days ago, almost exactly ten years after that episode aired, Georgia appeared once again in my life. Christina and I traveled to Philadelphia to attend and speak at the Ghvino Forum, organized by Mamuka and held at the Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania. The forum celebrated 8,000 years of Georgian wine culture, widely recognized as the earliest evidence of winemaking anywhere in the world. The event also honored the life and legacy of the late Dr. Patrick McGovern, a molecular archaeologist whose groundbreaking research helped establish Georgia as the birthplace of wine.

For thousands of years, Georgians have been fermenting grapes in clay qvevri buried underground. These wines ferment naturally, on their skins, without additives, in a process that has remained remarkably consistent for millennia.

Think about that for a moment. An 8,000-year-old food technology that is still practiced today. As someone who studies ancestral foodways, it is difficult to imagine a more powerful example of living cultural continuity.

During the forum I had the honor of participating in a panel discussion about presenting Georgian wines to American audiences. Sitting there talking about the history, culture, and significance of Georgian wine felt deeply meaningful—not just academically, but personally.

Because Georgian wine represents something rare. It is one of the closest things we have today to the wines our ancestors drank. And when you drink a wine like that, fermented naturally in clay vessels buried in the earth, using techniques passed down through countless generations, you are doing more than drinking wine.

You are tasting history.

In many ways, that experience felt remarkably similar to eating the wild boar I had hunted ten years earlier.

Both moments connected me directly to the past. One through a 40,000-year-old hunting technology. The other through an 8,000-year-old fermentation tradition. Both reminding me that food and drink are among the most powerful bridges we have between past and present.

A Full Circle Moment

Ten years ago, Georgia was the place where I hunted a wild boar with an ancient weapon and slept in a cave while trying to understand how our ancestors survived.

Last week, Georgia was again at the center of the story - this time through wine, culture, and an unbroken tradition that stretches back eight millennia.

In both cases, the lesson was the same.

The past is not something locked away in museums or buried in archaeological sites.

It is something that continues to live through people, landscapes, and traditions.

Sometimes it lives in a hunting technology like the atlatl.

Sometimes it lives in a clay vessel buried underground, quietly fermenting grapes.

And sometimes it lives in the communities and cultures that have carried those traditions forward for thousands of years.

The Journey Continues

Christina & Brianna enjoying wine and a supra

Looking back now, that episode of The Great Human Race feels less like a finished chapter and more like the beginning of a journey, one that continues today through our research, our teaching, and the work we do at Modern Stone Age Kitchen.

If there is one thing the past ten years have reinforced for me, it is this:

The most powerful way to understand human history is to experience it.

To make the tools.
To cook the food.
To ferment the wine.
To walk the landscapes where these traditions were born.

Ten years later, the lesson remains the same.

The past isn’t gone.

If we are willing to engage with it - to taste it, touch it, and live it - it is still very much alive.

And beyond their incredible nourishment, traditional foods and drinks have another role to play in our lives:

They tell stories.

They connect us to the people who came before us.

And if we are paying attention, they remind us that we are still part of that story today.

Dr. Bill explains the Modern Stone Age at the Ghvino Forum (March 2026)

Modern Stone Age Kitchen is a sourdough bakery, restaurant, and coffee shop dedicated to ancestral cooking techniques and traditional food preparation. Through the Modern Stone Age Food Lab, Christina Schindler and Dr. Bill Schindler research and teach food traditions from cultures around the world, including fermentation, wild sourdough baking, and traditional dairy and wine practices.

From Atlatls to Qvevri: How Georgia Shaped Dr. Bill Schindler’s Journey from Ancient Hunting to Ancient Wine