75,000 year old "jewelry" beads

[Ivan Seeking]

I never knew about the spelling of "jewellery". :rolleyes:

The oldest pieces of jewellery made by modern humans have emerged in Africa

Shell beads found in Blombos Cave on the southern tip of the continent are 75,000 years old, scientists say.

The pea-sized items all have similar holes which would have allowed them to be strung together into a necklace or bracelet, the researchers believe.

Christopher Henshilwood and his team have told Science magazine the find is probably one of the first examples of abstract thought seen in our ancestors.

"The beads carry a symbolic message. Symbolism is the basis for all that comes afterwards including cave art, personal ornaments and other sophisticated behaviours," Professor Henshilwood, of the University of Bergen, Norway, told BBC News Online.

"Even in today's world, where you're talking about computers - it's about storing information outside of the human brain. The evidence from Blombos Cave is that humans were using symbolism 75,000 years ago." [continued]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3629559.stm

[hitssquad]

Interestingly, this area of Africa is as far from the equator as Japan is.

[Kerrie]

very cool! i am a "jewellry" maker myself with thousands of beads in my collection...

[Monique]

Interestingly, this area of Africa is as far from the equator as Japan is.
Or Italy, or California.. that would be interesting because?..

[FZ+]

Does anyone have an idea as to how they dated these beads?

[hitssquad]

They dated them with optically stimulated luminescence (OSL).



Here (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/304/5669/404.pdf) we report on 41 perforated tick shell
(Nassarius kraussianus) beads (Fig. 1) recovered
from the Middle Stone Age (MSA) levels
at Blombos Cave, a site located on the southern
Cape shoreline of the Indian Ocean (4). Phase
M1, in which 39 beads were found, was dated
to 75.6 ± 3.4 ka, by optically stimulated
luminescence (OSL) signals from both single
aliquots and 4800 individual quartz grains.
Thermoluminescence dates for five burnt lithic
samples from the same phase provide a mean
age of 77 ± 6 ka (5). Two beads that may be
intrusive come from the top of the underlying,
and still undated, phase M2.

The MSA tick shells cannot derive from
the cave walls, are too small to be leftovers
from human food, and were not brought to
the site accidentally by animals, because their
only known predator is a gastropod (Natica
tecta) that lives, like N. kraussianus, only in
estuarine environments. If the tick shells had
been accidentally brought to the cave site
from 20-km-distant estuaries in wracks of
dead Zostera capensis, a grass used for bedding
by Later Stone Age (LSA) huntergatherers,
all age classes would have been
present, whereas Blombos Cave MSA beads
include shells of adults only (fig. S1)....

Small objects may easily be displaced
through archaeological layers, and perforated
tick shells were also recovered at Blombos
Cave from the more recent LSA layers. OSL
measurements on 1892 individual quartz
grains from the aeolian sand layer that separates
the LSA and MSA levels (6) indicates
no contamination by grains of different ages,
contraindicating downward percolation of
younger objects. Also, MSA beads are significantly
larger (P < 0.0001) than those from
LSA levels; the most common MSA perforation
type is present on < 1% of the LSA
shells; LSA beads do not have the wear facets
found on MSA specimens; and only 5% of
MSA beads have broken lips, compared to
52% of LSA beads, suggesting that the latter
were strung in a different way. MSA beads
are dark orange or black, whereas those from
the LSA are white or pale beige (fig. S1).
MSA shells were found in clusters of 2 to 17
beads, with each group clustering in the same
or neighboring 50-by-50-cm quadrates. Within
a group, shells display a similar size,
shade, use-wear pattern, and perforation size.
Each cluster may represent beads coming
from the same beadwork item, lost or disposed
during a single event.


4. C. S. Henshilwood et al., J. Archaeol. Sci. 28, 4 21
(2001).
5. C. S. Henshilwood et al., Science 295, 1278 (2002).
6. Z. Jacobs, A. G. Wintle, G. A. T. Duller, J. Hum. Evol.
44, 613 (2003).

[hitssquad]

I never knew about the spelling of "jewellery".

Main Entry: jew·el·lery
Pronunciation: -lri

chiefly Britain
variant of JEWELRY

[Ivan Seeking]

Blimey! :eek:

Those silly Brits. When are they going to learn English?

[Overdose]

Check this out (also on the bbc web-site) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3197402.stm
is it just me or does that look like something out of babalon 5? (not that ive ever watched it *ahem)

[selfAdjoint]

Could be in the eye of the archaeologist beholder?

[motai]

Check this out (also on the bbc web-site) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3197402.stm
is it just me or does that look like something out of babalon 5? (not that ive ever watched it *ahem)

They say it looks like an "expressive face", but the face looks like a mole's face to me. Then again, there are lots of stuff like this out there... "Hey! This onion ring looks like Jesus/Elvis/Lenin/Gorbachev/Superman"

I agree with the bottom of the article that its probably just a byproduct of the earths rock cycle.

[recon]

Blimey! :eek:

Those silly Brits. When are they going to learn English?

And, believe me, the Brits say the same thing about Americans. My English teacher is a Brit, and she wouldn't let me spell color as color. It has to be colour. Of course, our country was once a British colony, so British spelling is still more prevalent, although the Internet is starting to change that. I personally have no qualms as to how words are spelled, as long as they're right in either American or British spelling.