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In what is quite an amazing discovery, scientists have confirmed that a bracelet found in Siberia is 40,000 years old. This makes it the oldest piece of jewelry ever discovered, and archeologists have been taken aback by the level of its sophistication.
The bracelet was discovered in a site called the Denisova Cave in Siberia, close to Russia's border with China and Mongolia. It was found next to the bones of extinct animals, such as the wooly mammoth, and other artifacts dating back 125,000 years.
The cave is named after the Denisovan people — a mysterious species of hominins from the Homo genus, who are genetically different from both Homo sapiens and Neanderthals.
[...] Strangely, however, DNA evidence also suggests that, at some point, the Denisovans must have interbred with an as yet unknown and undiscovered species of humans beings.
Skeletal remains show that the Denisovans were probably far more robust and powerful than modern humans, and were, until now, assumed to be a more primitive, archaic type of humans than us.
But, the discovery of the bracelet suggests this was far from true. Amazingly, the skill involved in making this adornment shows a level of technique at least 30,000 years ahead of its time.
It is an astonishing find, having been exquisitely crafted 30,000 years before the Stone Age, which is considered to have begun 10,000 years ago. It is like discovering a 747, made a thousand years before the Wright Brothers ever flew...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @02:15PM (2 children)
It is like discovering a Tesla, made a thousand years before the Model T ever drove.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 17 2017, @02:52PM
Theres not really all that much, so if you went to the landfill and came back with two random items, even if carbon dated and identified correctly, the narrative might not make any sense. I donno if you dug up a 1930s console vacuum tube radio and my old pruning shears? Of course that makes things even weirder in that American high tech culture in 1930 made that radio whereas my old pruning shears were Chinese light industry culture in 1990 so maybe subculturally speaking the radio was ahead of time.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Wednesday May 17 2017, @03:12PM
It's like discovering a very old bracelet. Made by individuals now understood to be able to shape a stone into roundish form, and drill them to pass a fiber through.
It is, we are told, considerably older than the previously-current assumptions would have allowed for.
This conclusion may be in error, as dating things that old is not all that easily done, and found-context isn't what it might be hoped to be, as animals, including humans, move things around, dig things up, and bury them, with great disregard for the convenience of future archeologists.
That's what it's like once you discard all the bullshit.
I should start a science site. Of course, no one would come for factual headlines like "Archeologists find broken bracelet, think it might be old." So perhaps not. :)