The first jewellery
Perforated shells strung and worn — objects whose only function is to be seen.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 25 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 10 thousand years
- Era
- Late Pleistocene, Quaternary
Nassarius shells with deliberate perforations and wear from stringing appear at sites in Israel, Algeria and Morocco from about 100,000 years ago, some coated in ochre. They are carried far from the coast. A bead has no practical use: it signals something about the wearer to other people, which requires both a shared code and an audience. It is among the earliest unambiguous evidence for symbolic behaviour, and it predates figurative art by tens of thousands of years.