Prehistoric artists used exotic beasts

• Autores: Alice Klein
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3120, 2017, pág. 12
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Stone Age style was all about the latest animal necklaces and bracelets. Some of the first humans to cross the ocean from Asia to Australia fashioned jewelry from the bones, teeth and shells of the unfamiliar creatures they found on islands along the way. The finding adds to evidence that early inhabitants of Australasia had symbolic practices that were just as rich as those of their European counterparts. A team led by Adam Brumm and Michelle Langley at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, has dug up three ancient ornaments created from the bones and a tooth of native animals on the island of Sulawesi, north-west of Timor. One is a pendant made from the finger bone of a bear cuscus (Ailurops ursinus), a tree-dwelling marsupial. A hole drilled in the top suggests it was strung from a necklace or bracelet. The other two are beads made from the tooth of an odd-looking pig known as a babirusa or pig deer (of the genus Babyrousa). The ornaments--between 22,000 and 30000 years old--were found in an inland cave