Shells from Israel, Algeria may be oldest known beads: researchers

Three shells with holes bored into their centers, excavated from sites in Israel and Algeria, may be the oldest known evidence of personal decoration, researchers report in the June 23 issue of journal Science.

New findings suggest that the shells are 100,000-year-old beads, and that beadworking may have been widespread long before explosion of modern culture in Europe.

"Our paper supports the scenario that modern humans in Africa developed behaviors that are considered modern quite early in time, so that in face these people were probably not just biologically modern but also culturally and cognitively modern, at least to some degree," said study co-author Francesco d'Errico of national center of scientific research of France.

Until recently, researchers generally believed that the first signs of modern human culture appeared 40,000 years ago, when anatomically modern humans arrived in Europe. The cave paintings, musical instruments, jewelry and other artwork preserved from this time period indicate that humans were capable of symbolic thinking.

Jewelry probably conveyed many aspects of people's social and cultural identities, and most archaeologists agree that personal decoration was one of the most important expressions of modern human culture.

In a previous study, d'Errico and co-author Marian Vanhaeren reported the discovery of perforated shells from Blombos cave in South Africa. These beads were dated to about 75,000 years ago.

They wanted to find beads from more than a single site, however, in order to firmly establish that beadworking was underway earlier than was previously thought. And they searched through museum collections and found bead-like shells from the sites of Skhul, in Israel, and Oued Djebbana, in Algeria. The shells were the same genus as those found at Blombos and were perforated in a similar way.

"It's very important to establish the chronology of these modern types of behaviors, and this paper constitutes we think a significant advancement," said d'Errico.

Source: Xinhua