GEORGIA, FLAG OF

national flag consisting of a red field with a canton horizontally divided black over white. The flag's width-to-length ratio is 3 to 5. Historically there had been a number of independent kingdoms in the Caucasus Mountains that eventually united to form Georgia, but all of them made use of the colours white, black, and cherry (or carnelian) red for their flags. Most of these banners were carried by military forces or used by royalty, since modern national flags did not exist. Queen Tamara, or Tamar (11841213), the most famous ruler in Georgian history, used a white flag with a dark red cross and a star, according to tradition. All these flags were suppressed in 1801 when Georgia was annexed by Russia. Following World War I, an independent Georgian Democratic Republic was proclaimed on May 26, 1918. The national flag, designed by Jakob Nikoladze, had been first hoisted on March 25, 1917, and it continued to be displayed until Soviet forces crushed Georgian independence in 1921. The flag was cherry red with a canton of black and white stripes. Cherry red is considered the national colour; black stands for the tragedies of the past, white for hopes for the future. Under the Soviet regime, various flags were used before the adoption of a distinctive Georgian flag on April 11, 1951. Its background was red, and its canton was blue with red rays surrounding a red hammer, sickle, and star; from the canton a blue horizontal stripe extended to the end of the flag. The 191821 flag was readopted on November 14, 1990, and independence was again proclaimed on April 9, 1991. Whitney Smith U.S. state flag consisting of a blue field (background) with the state seal above a banner carrying five small historical flags. The so-called Bonnie Blue Flaga white star in the centre of a blue fieldwas flown in Georgia in 1861, as was a flag of white with a red star. Neither is known to have had any official standing, however. Georgia also used a flag featuring three pillars supporting a pediment and arch, a design element taken from the state seal, but there is no indication that the flag was used after the Civil War (186165). The first official state flag was established on October 17, 1879. It resembled the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy in having three equal red-white-red stripes, but instead of a canton there was a vertical blue stripe along the hoist. That design continued in use until 1905, when the state seal was added to the blue stripe. The state seal (and consequently the flag) of Georgia underwent a number of variations. State flag of Georgia, U.S., from July 1, 1956, to January 31, 2001. On July 1, 1956, a distinctive new flag was adopted. It retained the seal and blue stripe at the hoist, but the Confederate Battle Flag was substituted for the three horizontal stripes. Opponents of the design claimed that it recalled black slavery and other racist policies and was therefore offensive, while its proponents argued that it was a symbol of Southern heritage. During the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, the state flag was rarely visible, and Governor Zell Miller led an unsuccessful campaign to replace it with an entirely different design. On January 24, 2001, however, Georgia's House of Representatives adopted a new flag design that had been created largely behind closed doors. It incorporates the state sealthe design of which includes the words constitution, wisdom, justice, and moderationand a scroll that bears the phrase Georgia's History above two historical flags of the United States and three of Georgia (including the 19562001 flag). Underneath the small flags is the motto In God We Trust. The flag was legalized on January 31. Whitney Smith The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica History The latest findings of archaeology make it possible to trace the origins of human society on the territory of modern Georgia back to the early Paleolithic and Neolithic periods. A number of Neolithic sites have been excavated in the low-lying Kolkhida (Colchis) Lowland, in the Khrami River valley in central Georgia, and in South Ossetia; they were occupied by settled tribes engaged in cattle raising and agriculture. The cultivation of grain in Georgia during the Neolithic Period is attested by finds of saddle querns and flint sickles; the earth was tilled with stone mattocks. The Caucasus was regarded in ancient times as the primeval home of metallurgy. The start of the 3rd millennium BC witnessed the beginning of Georgia's Bronze Age. Remarkable finds in Trialeti show that central Georgia was inhabited during the 2nd millennium BC by cattle-raising tribes whose chieftains were men of wealth and power. Their burial mounds have yielded finely wrought vessels in gold and silver; a few are engraved with ritual scenes suggesting Asiatic cult influence. Origins of the Georgian nation Early in the 1st millennium BC the ancestors of the Georgian nation emerge in the annals of Assyria and, later, of Urartu (Armenia). Among these were the Diauhi (Diaeni) nation, ancestors of the Taokhoi, who later domiciled in the southwestern Georgian province of Tao, and the Kulkha, forerunners of the Colchians, who held sway over large territories at the eastern end of the Black Sea. The fabled wealth of Colchis became known quite early to the Greeks and found symbolic expression in the legend of Medea and the Golden Fleece. Following the influx of tribes driven from the direction of Anatolia by the Cimmerian invasion of the 7th century BC and their fusion with the aboriginal population of the Kura valley, the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era witnessed the growth of the important kingdom of Iberia, the region that now makes up modern Kartli and Kakheti, with Samtskhe and adjoining regions of southwestern Georgia. Colchis was colonized by Greek settlers from Miletus and subsequently fell under the sway of Mithradates the Great, king of Pontus. The campaigns of Pompey led in 66 BC to the establishment of Roman hegemony over Iberia and to direct Roman rule over Colchis and the rest of Georgia's Black Sea littoral. History Prehistoric period The first inhabitants of what is now Georgia found their way into the area during the period from 10,000 to 8000 BC. A migratory hunting people equipped with finely worked flint projectile points, these so-called Paleo-Indians appear to have built small, seasonally occupied camps as they followed the movements of their large animal prey. Members of the culture that arose between 8000 and 1000 BC, known as Archaic, developed a more diversified food supply but continued the seasonal migration of their ancestors. Permanent or semipermanent village settlement in Georgia came with the emergence of the Woodland culture in the period 1000 BC to AD 900. Small, widely dispersed, permanently occupied villages were inhabited by the Woodland agriculturalists, who supplemented their harvests with a variety of wild foods. Georgia Woodland Indians left their most lasting mark in the form of large mounds built of thousands of basketfuls of clay and earth. Some mounds contained human burials and elaborately worked jewelry, pottery, and figurines. Other mounds did not contain burials but were built in the shape of animals. The best-known of these is the Rock Eagle in what is now Putnam county, a large complex of quartz rocks laid out in the shape of a bird. Spanish exploration By the time Hernando de Soto led the first European expedition into the area about 1540, the Mississippian culture, so called after the river valley in which it flourished, had established its influence across the Southeast, with the Creek and Cherokee groups predominating in what is now Georgia. De Soto found a population of master farmers whose large permanent villages were built around enormous earthen temple mounds resembling the flat-topped pyramids found in Central America. Their reliable and productive system of agriculture, based on corn, beans, squash, pumpkin, and tobacco, provided surpluses in most years. Directly or indirectly, the Spanish expedition was disastrous for the Indians. In addition to the hundreds they killed or enslaved, the explorers were ultimately responsiblethrough the diseases they introduced, such as measles, smallpox, and whooping coughfor the deaths of thousands and the final decline of Mississippian culture in Georgia. In 1565 the Spanish, responding to a French attempt to settle on the southeastern coast, began their occupation of Florida. From the stronghold at St. Augustine, Spain began to exert an increasing influence on the Indians of Georgia. A line of Roman Catholic missions and associated military posts were established on the barrier islands along the Georgia coast. The lives and settlement patterns of the coastal Indians were profoundly changed as they were converted to Christianity and persuaded to adopt a sedentary life-style in compact villages. Known to the Spanish as Guale, the Georgia coastal zone remained under the mission-presidio system for a century. In the second half of the 17th century increasing pressures from the British in South Carolina eventually led to the withdrawal of the Spanish missions from Guale. As Spanish power waned and British power grew, the area of modern Georgia came to be known as the Debatable Land. The South Carolinians began to build an Indian trade monopoly in the area but were slow to attempt permanent settlement south of the Savannah River.