New inquiry has revealed that former man in the Middle Paleolithic gather shells with naturally occurring holes in them so that they could string them into decorative necklace . The lovely discovery ( who does n’t like to cerebrate of antiquated human race being huff with their calcium carbonate bling ? ) is publish in the journalPLOS ONE .
hatful of shells with natural perforations have long been associated with other human living quarters , with examples date back as far as 160,000 years ago in expanse of North Africa , South Africa , and the Eastern Mediterranean . To establish if these assembling were gather for decorative use as necklaces , lead researchers Daniella Bar - Yosef Mayer of Tel Aviv University and Iris Groman - Yaroslavski of the University of Haifa , Israel collected perforated clamshells ( Glycymeris ) and used various technique including sand , leather , and stone to copy the consequence of wear over fourth dimension as well as stringing them on uncivilized flax . They were looking for index number that they could potentially name in ancient shells that would unwrap they had also been strung in this way .
They compare their address shells to some find in the Qafzeh Cave , a Mediterranean Paleolithic site date to 120,000 old age ago that contained lots of naturally penetrate shell . Microscopic depth psychology of the Qafzeh Cave ’s five best - preserve shells discover traces uniform with the shells that had been superficially regale in the simulation , argue impinging with both twine and scale - to - shell contact that suggest the racing shell were attend near together . Of the five shells , four also showed traces of ochre , which was sometimes used as acoloring treatment by former humans .
Evidence that the shells were hung on a string does n’t mean we can determine the exact emblematical meaning of these shell beads , but bivalve shell include the dollar bill from the Qafzeh Cave are a frequent hallmark across Paleolithic situation , which the researchers state argue they held some importance . The inclusion of flax train also suggest that it was important that the shells were worn rather than just being a feature of the cave .
" Modern human race amass unperforated cockle shells for symbolic determination at 160,000 years ago or earlier , and around 120,000 they started compile perforated shell and wearing them on a drawstring , ” say Mayer in astatement . “ We conclude thatstrings , which had many more applications , were fabricate within this time frame . "
