Shell beads point to dawn of modern human behaviour
A new study by an international team of researchers from France, South Africa, Germany, Israel and the UK has confirmed that 80,000-year-old shell beads found in caves in North Africa represent some of the earliest evidence of the use of personal ornamentation.
The new research shows the shell beads were common across North Africa until they fell out of use around 70,000 years ago. Previously, the shells were known from only a few scattered examples. ‘We are no longer looking at isolated or one off events.’ says Professor Nick Barton of the University of Oxford, one of the authors of the study. ‘We can now document the shells at a number of different locations in North Africa all of about the same age’ he adds.
Shell beads 80k years old. Then, 70k years ago, they “fell out of favor”.
I’m thinking it wasn’t a sneering article in the NYT fashion section that killed shell beads as adornment after 10k years.
Is “fell out of favor” the same as “nobody lived here after that”? Or, “we don’t have a clue why their fashion sense changed after ten thousand years”?
Was there a replacement in the bling?
Did climate change kill off the showier shells?
Seems like a big question about human behavior here, considering these folks were h. sap.
Comment by Richard Aubrey — August 27, 2009 @ 8:46 am