There are three pieces of jewelry that have been found that are between 90,000 and 100,000 years old. The two are from Skhul Cave and the Oued Djebbana. The research is described in the journal Science. The shells were probably parts of necklaces or bracelets as they have similar holes which would have allowed them to be strung together into a necklace or bracelet, the researchers believe.
As per the experts, these pieces of jewelry express an early expression of modern behavior in archaeological records. Jewelry has been always a way of expression. It expresses power, status, wealth, sexuality, community, etc. They are not just decorative they as per the researcher it has social meaning. (Source)
Location
Chemical and elemental analysis of sediments stuck to one of the shells from Skhul showed that it came from ground layers dated to 100,000 years ago.
The style of equipment at Oued Djebbana shows the particular specimen from this open-air site is probably as much as 90,000 years vintage.
The authors’ case for the shells having been used as beads is based totally on the remote area of the sites wherein they have been observed and the character of the perforations in them.
“The reality they’re there in any respect means they had been transported with the aid of human beings to [Skhul] cave; these are seashells and the ocean is no way that near the cave,” Professor Stringer instructed BBC Radio 4’s Leading Edge program. Similarly, Oued Djebbana has positioned approximately 200km (one hundred twenty miles) from the Mediterranean Sea.
“We’re confident those were artificially made. The function of the holes is exactly where human beings drill shells like this even as they are making necklaces.”
The items offer a clear example of the complicated, symbolic behavior that might appear to set our species apart from the animals.
Modern Thinking
Up until these days, examples of contemporary behavior before 50,000 years past had eluded researchers, even though people with cutting-edge-looking anatomy are known within the fossil file from approximately 195,000 years in the past onward.
This had led a few researchers to advise that modern-day anatomy and present-day behavior no longer evolve in tandem. Instead, they argued, a fortuitous mutation inside the human brain may also have precipitated an explosion in human creativity 50,000 years in the past, leading to a surprising appearance of private embellishes, skilfully-crafted art, novel gear, and guns.
The discovery of 75,000-yr-vintage Nassarius shell beads at Blombos Cave in South Africa challenged this idea. These beads even bore traces of pink ochre, used as a pigment. Now the dates for beads from Skhul and Oued Djebbana in addition weaken the “cultural explosion” scenario, says Stringer.
Professor Alison Brooks, an expert in African archaeology at George Washington University, US, stated the study was”thoroughly researched”.
“I am no longer amazed due to the fact I have the idea that the huge sort of bead that we see at some point of the Upper Palaeolithic in Europe needed to have an antecedent. And this way of life is a totally logical antecedent,” she informed the BBC News website.
“It helps my notion that there are not any terrific revolutions in the evolution of cutting-edge human behavior – it’s miles a sluggish procedure.”
Cooking Up
But the obvious antiquity of symbolic behavior increases questions about the time it took for modern-day humans to make bigger into the rest of the world.
“There turned into an extended length where present-day human beings survived in the African global and into a part of the Near East, however by no means extended into western Europe,” Professor Ofer Bar-Yosef of Harvard University, US, advised the BBC News website.
“I suppose you have a cooking or ‘brewing’ period. Otherwise, you need to provide an explanation for, as an example, why the economic revolution in England passed off around 1850 and hastily increased across the channel to Europe after which throughout the Atlantic to America.
“In reality, we understand from historic information that the development of clinical strategies and the development of equipment took about 2 hundred years earlier than there was a ‘breakout’.
“The marine shells from Skhul are held through the Natural History Museum in London, at the same time as the shell bead from Oued Djebbana is held by the Museum of Man in Paris.
