At the cross-roads of Eurasian historic civilizations and has the richest global, historic metallurgical records. The region has a unique and recoverable variety of palaeo-climate and environmental records (e.g. ice cores, peat bogs, lake and river sediment records) and associated archaeological remains. It exclusively captures  the long-term atmospheric circulation patterns of the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea regions. It has one of the highest biodiversity in Eurasia..

• Timing is everything: faced with the imminent loss of our most high-resolution historic climate and pollution archives, since the Caucasus glaciers hold at least 10,000 years of linked climate and human macro-societal records at annual-resolution.

• Lack of high-resolution data: Caucasus is currently lacking assessment of regional climate variability in the past, and how such variability may also impact us today.

• Need for integrated multi-disciplinary approach: need for accelerated data-collection and new climate-environment-archaeological research projects as soon as possible – global warming may make in a near term the last opportunity for Caucasus glaciochemical records.

• Archaeology and Literary sources: from Near East (Assyrian/Babylonian, Urartu) to the Classical (Greek, Latin, Armenian, Syriac), Medieval and Modern (Georgian, Russian)