Researchers are establishing a theory that Neanderthals possibly have adorned the first jewelry somewhat around 130,000 years ago after inspecting a primitive piece of jewelry entailed with 8 white-tailed eagle talons.
This piece has been discovered in Krapina, Croatia and it suggests that our earliest ancestors have been far more visionary and creative than we thought of them all this time.
Lead study author, David Frayer of University of Kansas said, “It’s really a stunning discovery. It’s one of those things that just appeared out of the blue. It’s so unexpected and it’s so startling because there’s just nothing like it until very recent times to find this kind of jewelry.”
The anthropologist of University of Kansas explains that it seems the talons have been made into symbolic jewelry sometime around 80,000 years prior to emergence of modern humans in the European region.
Frayer discusses that these eagle talons are now the most primitive artifact ever to have been identified with cut marks on human bones. Frayer also noted the “obvious signs of cut marks and manipulation on the eagle talons.”
He further discusses that “Neanderthals are often thought of to be simple-minded mumbling, bumbling, stumbling fools, but the more we know about them the more sophisticated they’ve become,” noting that “People often argue that Neanderthals were mimicking modern humans instead of coming up with ornamental things on their own. In this case, there’s no doubt: There were only Neanderthals there, and only Neanderthal tools.”
Lastly, he says, “These talons provide multiple new lines of evidence for Neanderthals’ abilities and cultural sophistication. They are the earliest evidence for jewelry in the European fossil record and demonstrate that Neanderthals possessed a symbolic culture long before more modern human forms arrived in Europe.”
The findings of this research paper have been published in the journal Public Library of Science One.
