World’s oldest bling made out of eagle bones

Scientists have found evidence that Neanderthals may have created the world’s oldest jewelry using eagle talons and phalanx.

 

The talons and phalanx were found at the Krapina site back in 1899, part of the world’s richest collection of Neanderthal fossils. The site was discovered by Croatian palaeontologist Dragutin Gorjanovic-Kramberger. However, the possibility that the talons and phalanx might have been jewelry only occurred to Davorka Radovcic, a curator at Croatia's Natural History Museum, in 2013.

 

"While reviewing eight, white-tailed eagle talons and an associated phalanx, on the latter I noticed numerous cut marks and a revelation just struck me—they were made by a human hand," Radovcic told Agence France-Presse. “I simply had a fresh eye.”

 

Radovcic noticed the markings while she was reviewing collection after she had taken over it.

 

Radovcic, along with Croatian colleagues Ankica Oros Srsen and Jakov Radovcic, and American anthropology professor David Frayer from the University of Kansas, conducted the research into the jewelry. They couldn’t figure out the symbolic value of the eagle jewelry, but they found evidence that the Neanderthals collected eagle remains.

Predating modern humans
 

The talons date back to approximately 130,000 years ago, 80,000 years before modern humans appeared in Europe. Four of the talons have edge-smoothed cut marks, eight show polishing facets and abrasions, and three of the largest talons have small notches in roughly the same spots.

 

The researchers suggested that these features mean that the talons were mounted on a necklace or bracelet, countering the idea that Neanderthals were primitive brutes that lacked the cognitive ability to understand symbolism.

 

"This is, at least for the time being, the world's earliest jewellery," Radovcic said. "This is an example of abstract thinking. It proves that Neanderthals possessed a symbolic culture.”

 

Previously, the oldest jewelry was thought to be 11,000 years old and linked to anatomically modern humans. They were made of shell beads and found at a site in Israel.

 

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE. — TJD, GMA News