Posted on 06/04/2007 10:43:44 AM PDT by blam
82,000 year old jewellery found
By Fran Bardsley
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.
At work in the caves
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.
GGG Ping.
The oldest ever found at 82,000 years YET the expert says “Bead-making in Africa was a widespread practice at the time”. Shouldn’t there be more examples?
....and only 3 more payments due!........
Richard Blackwell has already prounounced them as "awfully austentacious, barely suitable for a cavewoman of mediocre means."
.
How convenient.
" The team has recently secured funding for a further four to five years of research in the area from the Natural Environment Research Council."
It's this easy folks!
"NERC funds world-class science in universities and our own research centres that increases knowledge and understanding of the natural world. We are tackling the 21st century's major environmental issues such as climate change, biodiversity and natural hazards. We lead in providing independent research and training in the environmental sciences.
Oh how lucky the British tax payer.
Of all the skeletons found at the cave, it is Shanidar IV which provides the best evidence for Neanderthal burial ritual. The skeleton of an adult male aged between 30-45 years was discovered in 1960 by Ralph Solecki and was positioned so that he was lying on his left side in a partial foetal position.
Routine soil samples which were gathered for pollen analysis in an attempt to reconstruct the palaeoclimate and vegetational history of the site from around the body were analysed eight years after its discovery. In two of the soil samples in particular, whole clumps of pollen were discovered in addition to the usual pollen found throughout the site and suggested that entire flowering plants (or at least heads of plants) had entered the grave deposit.
Furthermore, a study of the particular flower types suggested that the flowers may have been chosen for their specific medicinal properties. Yarrow, Cornflower, Bachelor’s Button, St. Barnaby’s Thistle, Ragwort or Groundsel, Grape Hyacinth, Joint Pine or Woody Horsetail and Hollyhock were represented in the pollen samples, all of which have long-known curative powers as diuretics, stimulants, astringents as well as anti-inflammatory properties.
This led to the idea that the man could possibly have had shamanic powers, perhaps acting as medicine man to the Shanidar Neandertals. However, recent work into the flower burial has suggested that perhaps the pollen was introduced to the burial by animal action as several burrows of a gerbil-like rodent known as a Persian jird were found nearby.
The jird is known to store large numbers of seeds and flowers at certain points in their burrows and this argument was used in conjunction with the lack of ritual treatment of the rest of the skeletons in the cave to suggest that the Shanidar IV burial had natural, not cultural origins.
The sub-article on Shanidar 1 is interesting too form this perspective on possible early spiritual founding within the human psyche.
This guy was old for a Neanderthal and had sustained quite a few injuries that most likely would have done him in were it not for aid and assistance he got form his group.
...this has been used to infer that Neanderthals looked after their sick and aged, denoting implicit group concern.
Add this to Shanidar 2 who was evidently given quite a send-off by his group which involved his "mourners" evidently getting somewhat drunk at his "funeral".
This type of attention says a little more to me than good comradeship. All these things taken together point to an "expectation" of something beyond this life "reinforced" by how they treated each other, outside of certainly any written or even societal code to be "enforced" within it.
Why would they have done it beyond even "friendship" which otherwise would have seemed to come to an end with their deaths but for that "something" which would seem to give "continued" coherence to "the group"?
Given this sense makes me suspect that that the flowers were actually placed there for Shanidar 4 and not a result of rodent activity later on.
When did humans really sense the "neshama" within themselves?
Very interesting indeed.
Thanks again, and Best to You And Yours.
ping
‘Oldest Sculpture’ Found In Morocco (400K Years Old)
BBC | 5-23-2003 | Paul Rincon
Posted on 05/23/2003 8:52:37 AM EDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/916512/posts
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That’s what I thought.
This only makes me sad. How I wish the Oxford University Institute of Archaeology would find the $20K worth of jewelry stolen from my house last year.
There are certain constants through out history, we love our parents and older relatives, women want to look smokin' and provocative when they are young (Gene advertisement),and men do the heavy lifting and get no credit (Gene Advertisement).
I don’t think I can answer that question. Oft times, I’m guilty of the same.
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