National Geographic News, Reporting Your World Daily

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Photo: Oldest Jewelry Found in Morocco Cave


Email to a Friend	<< Back to Full Story

Deliberate holes and a coating of red coloring are evident on four tiny snail shells recently found in a cave in Morocco. At 82,000 years old, the shells are the oldest known examples of human jewelry, researchers say, surpassing previous confirmed reports of ancient beads by about 10,000 years.

Photograph courtesy Ian Cartwright, Institute of Archaeology, Oxford University