Ancient humans deliberately collected perforated shells in order to string them into beads.
Shells are one of the oldest decorations and expressions of human beings. Some examples of deliberately collected shell combinations were found in North Africa, South Africa and the eastern Mediterranean 65,438+600,000 years ago. Shells from the Paleolithic site Qafzeh Cave in the Mediterranean Sea (dating back to 654.38+200,000 years ago) are naturally perforated (contrary to the unperforated shells found in nearby Misria Cave), which indicates that these shells were deliberately collected and connected in series into beads.
In order to investigate the possibility of deliberately hanging shell beads, Bar-Yosef Mayer and Groman-Yaroslavski collected the same kind of perforated clam shells (glycerin shells), and simulated the potential use and wear of the original shells: firstly, the shells were systematically ground into different materials such as leather, sand and stone to generate a catalogue of wear patterns, and then the shells were hung on a rope made of wild flax to identify the wear patterns of a specific belt suspension. Then, they compared these wear patterns with the original Kafz cave shells.
The microscopic analysis of the five best preserved Kafz caves shows that the contact with the rope is consistent with the traces produced in the simulated shells, and the contact traces between shells (indicating that the shells are closely connected). Four of the five primitive shells also showed traces of purplish red.
Although it is impossible to determine the exact symbolic significance of the shell bead chain in Kafze cave, the fact that double shells are frequent signs of Paleolithic sites is very touching. In addition, the existence of strings seems to indicate that it is not only the shell set that is important? It is also meaningful to be able to show the shell to others. As one of the earliest perforated objects hanging on strings, Qafzeh cave shells also let us get closer to understanding the origin of string-making technology160-120,000 years ago.
Bar-Yosef Mayer added: "Modern humans have collected about 1.6 million rooster shells that are not too long or earlier. They began to collect perforated shells and put them on the rope. Our conclusion is that more application strings were invented in this time frame.