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Archeologists have identified what might be
the world's oldest known jewelry. It consists of 100,000-year-old shells
from the Middle East with holes bored in their centers. If the shells were
used as beads for personal decoration, it means symbolic human thinking
and the first signs of culture are much older than previously
thought.
When we adorn our bodies with rings, necklaces,
coloring or some other decoration, we behave in a way that University of
California archeologist John Bower says is uniquely human.
"Self adornment is a very important and perhaps the only really
convincing archeological evidence that we have of self recognition, and
self recognition is fundamental to the emergence of the kinds of behavior
that we call human culture," he said.
Until recently, researchers believed that the first signs of modern
human culture appeared about 40,000 years ago when anatomically modern
humans arrived in Europe.
But two years ago, scientists pushed that date way
back when they found 75,000-year-old perforated
shells from Blombos cave in South Africa. They
said the type of holes and the wear patterns around the holes showed they
were clearly worn as beads.
Now, the same team has found even older perforated shells - 25,000
years older - two of them from Skhul in Israel and a third from an
Algerian site named Oued Djebbana.
The three shells are from the same tiny snail-like creature they had
excavated in South Africa in 2004, but these specimens were dug up by
other scientists in the 1940s and were hidden away in London and Paris
museums.
University College London researcher Marian Vanhaeren and colleagues
came across them in the museums and analyzed crusted dirt that stuck to
the Israeli shells. Vanhaeren told Science magazine, where the research
appears, that the dirt came from the same layer in Skhul that had yielded
human skeletons at least 100,000 years old, meaning the two shells from
there are also that old.
"This find indicates the anatomically modern humans from Africa and the
Near East created beadwork traditions well before their arrival in Europe,
and that there were modern human cultures in Africa quite early in time,"
Vanhaeren said.
As for the single shell from Algeria, the researchers say it could be
up to 90,000 years old based on the style of tools found there.
But the sample size from both locations is very
small and the origin of the holes is not nearly as obvious as those on the
shells they had found in South Africa. Vanhaeren argues that Skhul and
Oued Djebbana are so far from the sea that the shells were probably
brought there intentionally, most likely for beadworking
.
By studying modern specimens of the shells, her team also determined
that the chances the holes occurred naturally are extremely small.
"Unfortunately, the state of preservation of the Skhul and Oued
Djebbana sites is such that we cannot reach a definite conclusion as to
the human origin of the wear," Vanhaeren said. "In other words, our
argument for the symbolic use is based on the remoteness from the sea and
the presence of unusual perforations."
Stanford University archeologist Richard Klein is not satisfied. He did
not accept the earlier findings from Blombos Cave in South Africa,
suggesting that the holes in the shells and wear patterns could have been
caused by soil compacting over time. He supports the view that modern
human culture and the use of symbolism exploded 40,000 years ago in
Europe. Klein told Science magazine that the newest evidence showing
otherwise appears weak.
But John Bower of the University of California is more accepting of the
evidence, although he acknowledges its shortcomings.
"It is a reasonable argument for the so-called beads to not be
occurring naturally in the places where they are found. These are not
creatures that can travel 200 kilometers across desert conditions to an
archeological site," he said. "They must have been transported there some
how, most likely by human beings, although it is not impossible to rule
out transport by, for example, birds."
But Bower says a larger question remains. How quickly did anatomically
modern humans acquire culture and symbolic expression? Was it rather
suddenly or much more slowly over tens of thousands of years?
"That is a major problem in paleoanthropology that this article
contributes toward, but is a long way from resolving," he said.
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