2004 — The Blombos Cave Beads

On April 16, 2004, researchers reported that tiny shell beads found in Blombos Cave on South Africa's southern coast were roughly 75,000 years old. The drilled shells, strung as a necklace, were then the oldest known human jewelry. In a cave above the sea, someone had pierced shell after shell and worn them, tens of thousands of years before any written record.

The beads were proof that symbolic behavior began in Africa long before humans left the continent. A necklace is never only a necklace: it is meaning made visible. At Blombos, that human impulse was already alive, and already adorned, in deep time.