Mammoth ivory pendant is oldest decorated jewellery found in Eurasia

A pendant carved with mysterious dots and unearthed successful a Polish cave is thought to beryllium implicit 40,000 years old

Humans 25 November 2021

By Alison George

The pendant is decorated with dots successful an asymmetrical loop pattern

Antonino Vazzana - BONES Lab

A pendant carved from mammoth ivory is the oldest known ornate jewellery made by humans successful Eurasia. The find is shaking up our knowing of the emergence of alleged symbolic behaviours successful the region.

The oval-shaped pendant, 4.5 centimetres agelong and 1.5 cm wide, was unearthed successful Stajnia cave successful Poland. It has 2 holes drilled into it, presumably to beryllium utilized for thread, and is decorated with a series of much than 50 tiny indents successful a looping curve.

“It’s a beauteous portion of past enactment from Homo sapiens, an astonishing portion of jewellery,” says Sahra Talamo astatine the University of Bologna, Italy, who led the squad that analysed the pendant.

Using a caller radiocarbon dating technique, the researchers discovered that the pendant was created 41,500 years ago, making it the oldest of its benignant recovered successful Eurasia. “We were rather shocked,” Talamo says.

This predates different objects and idiosyncratic ornaments with punctured dot motifs recovered successful France and Germany by 2000 years. It besides highlights Poland arsenic an important portion for creator innovation for the archetypal question of modern humans successful Europe who developed caller types of decoration for their bodies arsenic a marker of idiosyncratic oregon taste identity.

The pattern of dots connected the ivory forms an asymmetrical loop, but precisely what they mean is inactive an unfastened question, says Talamo. “The astir beauteous mentation is that it is simply a lunar calendar,” she says.

The motif is akin to the 1 recovered connected the Blanchard plaque from France, an engraved bony dated to astir 30,000 years ago, which has been postulated to beryllium a hunting tally to number the fig of animals killed, oregon a marker of the presumption of the satellite implicit time.

The excavations astatine the Stajnia cave besides uncover however modern humans were successful Poland astir 10,000 years earlier than antecedently thought. “Poland was not expected to person Homo sapiens determination astatine this time,” says Talamo.

Journal reference: Scientific Reports, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-01221-6

More connected these topics:

• archaeology
• past humans