Ice Age humans loved bling too: 30,000-year-old jewelry found

They didn’t go to Jared, or even Kay Jewelers.

Indonesian scientists have unearthed remarkable pieces of jewelry, art and handcrafted artifacts 30,000 years ago, around the last ice age, according to a new study.

Some of the world’s first known “rock artists” created the objects. The objects, found in a cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, include beads made from the tooth of a babirusa, also known as a deer-pig, and a pendant made from the bone of a finger of a ‘a bear. The two animals are only found in this region.

These early examples of art and jewelry shed new light on the human culture and symbolism of the Ice Age, according to the study. The artifacts also imply that the spiritual beliefs of modern humans may have changed when they discovered new forms of animal life on their journey from Asia to Australia, the researchers say.

“Sulawesi, in particular, is renowned (…) for its extremely high rate of species ‘endemism’ – virtually all land mammals on the island, except bats, do not occur anywhere. elsewhere on Earth, ”said lead author of the study, Adam Brumm, archaeologist. at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia.

“This may indicate that the conceptual world of these people has changed to incorporate exotic animals,” Brumm said.

Archaeologists also found evidence of rock art production at the site, including discarded pieces of ocher, ocher stains on tools, and a bone tube that could have been a blowtorch to create stencil patterns. by hand.

This discovery comes in addition to the 2014 discovery of 40,000-year-old rock art in Sulawesi, which contains some of the oldest known art objects in the world.

“Scientists have long been curious about the cultural life of the early Homo sapiens to inhabit the lands immediately north of Australia sometime before 50,000 years ago, which is part of the great movement of our species out of Africa, ”said Brumm.

The study appeared Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed journal.