82,000 year old jewellery found in Morocco

[Al-khiyal]

June 5, 2007 -- Archaeologists from Oxford have discovered what are thought to be the oldest examples of human decorations in the world.

The international team of archaeologists, led by Oxford University's Institute of Archaeology, have found shell beads believed to be 82,000 years old from a limestone cave in Morocco.

Institute director Prof Nick Barton said: "Bead-making in Africa was a widespread practice at the time, which was spread between cultures with different stone technology by exchange or by long-distance social networks.

"A major question in evolutionary studies today is 'how early did humans begin to think and behave in ways we would see as fundamentally modern?' "The appearance of ornaments such as these may be linked to a growing sense of self-awareness and identity among humans and cultural innovations must have played a large role in human development."

The handmade beads were found at the Grotte des Pigeons, Taforalt, in Eastern Morocco during a four to five year excavation in the region.

Prof Barton said the finds suggest that humans were making purely symbolic objects 40,000 years before they did it in Europe.

The beads themselves comprise 12 Nassarius shells - Nassarius are molluscs found in warm seas and coral reefs in America, Asia and the Pacific - which had holes in them and appeared to have been suspended or hung. They were covered in red ochre.

Similar beads have been found at sites in Algeria, Israel and South Africa which are thought to date back to around the same time or slightly after the finds from Taforalt.

The team, which includes archaeologists from Morocco, France and Germany as well as the UK, believe that similar shells are present in other sites in Morocco.

Dating results from the shells are still awaited, but the team believe some may be even older than those found in Taforalt.

The team has recently secured funding for a further four to five years of research in the area from the Natural Environment Research Council. Further research will look at early humans in Africa and how they spread around the world.

A paper on the team's findings is featured in this month's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published today.

82,000 year old jewellery found in Morocco

[Al-khiyal]

June 5, 2007 -- The world's oldest bling has been unveiled by scientists, dating back 82,000 years.

Pea-sized shell beads found in North Africa showed signs of wear and were probably used on a necklace.

They may not compare with today's diamond-encrusted trinkets but are of far greater value in the archaeological record as the earliest example of modern behaviour when humans began wearing items to stand out from the crowd.

The 12 handmade beads recovered from a cave at Taforalt in Eastern Morocco all have similar holes which would have allowed them to be strung together to form a primitive piece of jewellery.

The shells from a tiny scavenging marine snail known as Nassarius were probably selected for their size and were deliberately perforated in their centres with a sharp flint tool.

They suggest humans were fashioning purely symbolic objects in Africa 40,000 years before they did it in Europe and modern behaviour such as language developed earlier than was previously thought.

Traces of red ochre on the shells also indicate the beads were coated with the iron oxide pigment like other less ancient beads found at sites in Algeria, Israel and South Africa which probably date back about 75,000 years.

Speaking from Morocco archaeologist Prof Nick Barton said: "They are beautifully preserved - I call them my Fox's Glacier Mints because that is what they look like!

"You can even see the wear pattern where they have rubbed against the fabric of whatever the person was wearing.

"The shells were taken from the beach which is about 30 miles away and had holes deliberately punched in them so they could be hung on some sort of string or sewn into clothing.

"They were also dipped in red ochre to give them colour. This shows they were meant for display to distinguish the wearer either within or beyond the group."

He said the objects provide a clear example of the complex symbolic behaviour that sets our species apart from the animal world.

Prof Barton, of Oxford University, said the beads were dated by analysing sediments they were sandwiched between and comparing them with other artefacts discovered in the cave.

The necklace string would have been made out of some sort of organic material such as plants or animal hide which has long since decayed.

Prof Barton, whose findings are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said: "Bead making in Africa was a widespread practice at the time which was spread between cultures with different stone technology by exchange or by long-distance social networks.

"A major question in evolutionary studies today is 'how early did humans begin to think and behave in ways we would see as fundamentally modern?'

"The appearance of ornaments such as these may be linked to a growing sense of self-awareness and identity among humans and cultural innovations must have played a large role in human development."

Up until recently examples of modern behaviour before 50,000 years ago had eluded researchers - even though humans with modern-looking anatomy are known in the fossil record from about 195,000 years ago onwards.

Many researchers believe the use of decorative objects such as jewellery grew out of the need to identify individuals - to determine which social group a person belonged to or their status within that group.

Preliminary work by Prof Barton and his international team of colleagues has also shown the shell beads are not isolated but are present at various other sites in Morocco.

The researchers are waiting for the dating results for these - but they may turn out to be even older than the discovery at Taforalt.

Until recently researchers generally believed the first cultural signs emerged 40,000 years ago when modern humans appeared in Europe.

Jewellery and other forms of personal decoration were one of the most important early expressions of human culture.

The 82,000 year old bling

[Al-khiyal]

Some of the twelve shell beads, dated to 82,000 years ago, discovered in Morocco

[Cheba_Mami]

wow, that's really nice. Since humans excist i think decoration is used

[Bent_Bladi]

I love reading about different culture's idea of beauty... be it piercings, tattoos, plumpness, or other seemingly strange things ....... it's always fascinating to learn about what is beautiful in the eyes of others

[Cheba_Mami]

it is what was expected and now prooven too

[Al-khiyal]

Dating from 82,000 years ago, these beads are thought to be the oldest in the world.
(Credit: Copyright Marian Vanhaeren & Francesco d'Errico / CNRS 2007)

Science Daily, June 18, 2007 — The discovery of small perforated sea shells, in the Cave of Pigeons in Taforalt, eastern Morocco, has shown that the use of bead adornments in North Africa is older than thought. Dating from 82,000 years ago, the beads are thought to be the oldest in the world. As adornments, together with art, burial and the use of pigments, are considered to be among the most conclusive signs of the acquisition of symbolic thought and of modern cognitive abilities, this study is leading researchers to question their ideas about the origins of modern humans. The study was carried out by a multidisciplinary team made up of researchers at CNRS, working with scientists from Morocco, the UK, Australia and Germany.

It was long thought that the oldest adornments, which were then dated as being 40,000 years old, came from Europe and the Middle East. However, since the discovery of 75,000 year-old carved beads and ochers in South Africa, this idea has been challenged, and all the more so with the recent discovery in Morocco of beads that are over 80,000 years old. The discoveries all indicate the presence of a much older symbolic material culture in Africa than in Europe or the Middle East.

Dated at 82,000 years old, the beads, which were unearthed by archaeologists in the Cave of Pigeons in Taforalt, north-east Morocco, consist of 13 shells belonging to the species Nassarius gibbosulus. The shells have been deliberately perforated, and some of them are still covered with red ocher. They were discovered in the remains of hearths, associated with abundant traces of human activity such as stone tools and animal remains. The mollusks were found in a stratigraphic sequence formed of ashy sediments. They were dated independently by two laboratories using four different techniques, which confirmed an age of 82 000 years.

Led by Abdeljalil Bouzouggar, researcher at the National Institute of Archaeological and Heritage Sciences (INSAP, Morocco)and Nick Barton of the University of Oxford (UK), a multidisciplinary team has been carrying out an in-depth study of the site for the past five years. Two CNRS researchers have been especially involved in the study of the shells: Marian Vanhaeren and Francesco d'Errico, belonging respectively to the 'From prehistory to the present: culture, environment and anthropology' unit (PACEA, CNRS / Université Bordeaux 1 / INRAP / Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication) and the 'Archaeologies and sciences of Antiquity' unit (ArScAn, CNRS / Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication / Universités Paris 1 and 10).

They were thus able to reveal that the shells had been gathered when dead, on the beaches of Morocco, which at that time were located over 40 km from the Cave of Pigeons. By taking into account the distance of the coast at that time and the comparison with natural alteration of shells of the same species on today's beaches, the two scientists inferred that prehistoric humans had selected, transported and very probably perforated the shells and colored them red for a symbolic use. Moreover, some shells showed traces of wear, which suggests that they were used as adornments for a long time: they were very likely worn as necklaces or bracelets, or sewn onto clothes.

Noticing that the beads belong to the same species of shell and bear the same type of perforation as those uncovered in previous excavations at the paleolothic sites at Skhul in Israel and at Oued Djebbana in Algeria, Marian Vanhaeren and Francesco d'Errico were thus able to confirm the validity of these two discoveries. Everything therefore seems to indicate that 80,000 years ago the populations of the eastern and southern Mediterranean shared the same symbolic traditions. To back up this hypothesis they point to other sites in Morocco where Nassarius gibbosulus beads from the same period are also found.

In addition, the two researchers point out that there is a remarkable difference between the oldest beads from Africa and the Near East on the one hand, and from Eurasia on the other. Unlike Africa and the Near East, where only one or two types of shell are found, in Eurasia from the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic onwards tens or even hundreds of different types of beads have been described.

Reference: 82,000-year-old shell beads from North Africa and implications for the origins of modern human behavior, Abdeljalil Bouzouggar, Nick Barton, Marian Vanhaeren, Francesco d'Errico, Simon Collcutt, Tom Higham, Edward Hodge, Simon Parfitt, Edward Rhodes, Jean-Luc Schwenninger, Chris Stringer, Elaine Turner, Steven Ward, Abdelkrim Moutmir, and Abdelhamid Stambouli. PNAS, 4 Juin 2007, 10.1073.

Additional information

1) Among the stone tools associated with the shells there are sharp biface points that are typical of Aterian technology in North Africa. They were probably used as spearheads. The animal bones were left-over food remains and are mainly identified as wild horses and hares.

2) A stratigraphic sequence is a sequence of strata.

3) These beads were attributed by the same authors to archeological strata at the site dating back 100,000 years, based on geochemical analysis of material stuck to the shells. However, the date of the first digs at the site (which were carried out in the 1930's) made it impossible to formally prove the stratigraphic provenance of the objects. This study resulted in an article in Science in June 2006.

4) The bead found at this site came from an archeological stratum more than 40,000 years old, and was dated thanks to stone tools found in the same location: the tools are typical of the period dating from 60,000 to 90,000 years before the modern era.

Discovery of the oldest adornments in the world