Ahira's Hangar

Scientists find world's first jewelry
From correspondents in Washington
April 16, 2004

A COLLAR made of shell beads estimated to be 75,000 years old and found in a cave in South Africa is believed to be the oldest known jewelry, appearing 30,000 years before what had previously been considered the first signs of civilization, researchers said.

Archaeologists discovered 41 beads the size of peas with holes bored in them in the Blombos Cave on the Indian Ocean coast, according to an article in the journal Science.

The discovery was made in a layer of sediment dating from the middle of the Stone Age, researchers said.

The beads were made from the shells of a mollusk native to nearby waters, and contained traces of red ochre, indicating they were colored with pigment.

The discovery reinforces the theory that civilization developed earlier than first believed, said Christopher Henshilwood, program director of the Blombos Cave Project and professor at the Centre for Development Studies of the University of Bergen in Norway.

"The Blombos Cave beads present absolute evidence for perhaps the earliest storage of information outside the human brain. Once symbolically mediated behavior was adopted by our ancestors it meant communication strategies rapidly shifted, leading to the transmission of individual and widely shared cultural values - traits that typify our own behavior," Henshilwood said.

"If the dates hold up we now seem to be seeing a trail of representational objects that is increasingly older as we move back into Africa," Randall White of New York University said in another article on the discovery.

Agence France-Presse


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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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