Khaldi

Khaldi (or Khalib/Halyb) people was one of the oldest west-Georgian tribes (4th to 2nd millennia BC), oldest indigenous population of the South-Eastern embankment of Black Sea (now territory of Turkey). Modern name of this ethnographical group of Georgian people is "Chani". Absolutely other was Babylon's Chaldea, which have nothing in common with Khaldi.

Khaldi (Khalib/Halyb) were one of the inventors of iron making.

Main sources of the history of Khaldi are: well-known works of Homer, Strabo and Xenophon, old Georgian chronicles of "Kartlis Tskhovreba" ("History of Georgia"), old Armenian geographical work of the 8th century AD, etc.

Homer knew about the existence of Aea-Colchis and west-Georgian (Colchian) tribes. In the Iliad (II, 856), Halysones, a Pelasgo-Colchian tribe is mentioned for the first time. "Halysones came from the eastern silver-making town of Halyb''".

Strabo identifies the tribe of Halysones with the tribe of Halyb (Khalib).

Literature

• Giorgi Melikishvili. "For the HIstory of ancient Georgia" (a monograph), Tbilisi, 1959, 507 pp (in Russian)
• Giorgi Kvirkvelia. "Foreign scientists about metallurgy of the ancient Georgian tribes" (a monograph), Tbilisi, 1976, 90 pp (in Georgian, Russian summary)
• Akaki Urushadze. "The Country of the Enchantress Medea", Tbilisi, 1984, 25 pp (in Russian and English)