High in the mountains of the Georgian Republic, between the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in a valley surrounded by 5,000-meter peaks, is Svanetia (also known as Svaneti). The old men of this valley say that the Svans are the descendants of Sumerian slaves that escaped their bondage and fled north to the Caucasus, where they worshiped the sun god Lile’. Because of this, in all my journals, I called them: “The Children of the Sun.”

I first stumbled into Svanetia on October 20, 1998, with my first camera and a backpack full of black and white film. It was the most beautiful and isolated place I had ever traveled. But beyond the obvious beauty of the place, what