By Erla Zwingle, Photographs by  Randy Olson
SOURCE: magma.nationalgeographic.com
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Once upon a time in Turkey and Georgia, blood sacrifice to the gods really mattered. People still live that way along this isolated stretch of Black Sea coast.

Get a taste of what awaits you in print from this compelling excerpt.

No trees. No telephones. No Jesus. The higher you travel into the mountains barricading the Black Sea coast of Turkey and on into Georgia’s Caucasus, the less there is. In remote valleys and along steep stony tracks now forced to serve as roads, familiar components of life fall away one by one. What remains is the immensity of the sky, gaunt slopes scrubby with thistles and wild grasses, the roar of glacial torrents in dark ravines, and the powerful pull of the first gods ever feared by men. In the 14th century B.C. a young Greek named Jason built a boat called the Argo and summoned 50 warriors to join him in a voyage from Greece to the edge of the known world: Colchis, a territory that in the past covered much of the western part of modern Georgia and stretched along the Black Sea coast from the Caucasus to Trabzon. Here a golden fleece hung on an oak tree guarded by a serpent that never slept, and the Argonauts swore to take it, one way or another, from Aektes, the Colchian king. What it took to fulfill this vow, the oaths and offerings and fatal magic spells, became one of the ancient world’s best known myths. 

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Only life on the narrow strip of plain along Turkey’s eastern Black Sea coast, connected by land and sea with the world beyond, has kept up with the calendar, modernized along with its roads, vehicles, and general outlook. Otherwise the rugged mountain hinterland of both eastern Turkey and Georgia belongs to an unusual degree to the past. Regardless of variations in language and dress, from the Laz, Hemsin and Gepni, and Rum of Turkey to the Svan, Tush, and Khevsur in Georgia, the people share roots that strike deep into history. Theirs is still the world of sacred honor, blood sacrifice, revenge, the tending of animals, the grinding toil of women.

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