A recent discovery of ancient beads pegs them as being roughly 150,000-year-old, making them the world's earliest known jewelry, The Daily Mail reported over the weekend.
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Archaeologists and anthropologists from the University of Arizona in Tucson told the British daily that the jewelry – 33 shell beads discovered between 2014 and 2018 at the mouth of Bizmoune Cave off Morocco's Atlantic coast – may have been worn as earrings or on a necklace.
According to the report, the beads date to between 142,000 and 150,000 years ago. "Ancient beads from North Africa are associated with the Aterian, a Middle Stone Age culture known for its distinctive stemmed spear points, whose people hunted gazelles, wildebeest, warthogs and rhinoceros, among other animals."
Paleolithic archaeologist Steven L. Kuhn, told the daily that the find "represents the earliest known evidence of a form of nonverbal human communication and hints at the origin of our cognitive skills."
"They were probably part of the way people expressed their identity with their clothing and … show that humans were interested in communicating to bigger groups of people than their immediate friends and family."
The beads uncovered by Kuhn and his collaborators were made from sea snail shells, and each measures roughly 0.5 inches long. They have holes in their center, indicating that they were hung on strings or from clothing, Kuhn said.
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