OUR ancient ancestors liked their bling as much as we do. And they probably liked talking about it too. The discovery of 100,000-year-old shell beads in what are now Israel and Algeria suggests that human language was already well advanced, and so must have developed earlier than thought.
Jewellery can indicate social or marital status, says Francesco D’Errico, at the Institute of Prehistory and Geology of the Quaternary in Talence, France. “But you need to have a complex system of language behind that.”
D’Errico and colleagues examined shell beads from Skhul in Israel and Oued Djebbana in Algeria. Each shell has a hole in the…
