Several necklaces and bracelets made of small pierced shells colored with red ocher have been unearthed by researchers near Essaouira. According to the Moroccan Minister of Culture, these jewels dated from 142,000 to 150,000 years will provide valuable information on “the first civilizations” which possessed them.
Ornaments 142,000 to 150,000 years old have been discovered in Morocco, in the cave of Bizmoune, not far from the seaside resort of Essaouira (southwest), government officials and paleontologists announced Thursday (October 18th). The researchers thus unveiled several necklaces and bracelets formed from small pierced shells colored with red ocher. “They constitute the oldest objects of adornment in the world”, declared Abdeljalil Bouzouggar, a teacher at the National Institute of Sciences of Archeology and Heritage (INSAP).
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The research was carried out by an international team made up of INSAP in Rabat, the University of Arizona (Tucson, United States), and the Mediterranean Laboratory of Prehistory Europe Africa (CNRS and University Aix-Marseille). This is a “major discovery for Morocco and for humanity”, rejoiced the Moroccan Minister of Culture, Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid, stressing that it provided information on “the first civilizations that left us the heritage discovered today”.
Communication tool
In total, around thirty shells were identified which formed necklaces and bracelets. They are “the oldest known in the world”, explained the researcher, stressing that these shells would also have served as a communication tool. “This is the first time that humans will use their body as a support, either to communicate with each other or with members of other groups, more or less distant from their place of origin,” he explained.
According to Mr. Bouzouggar, these humans went to collect seashells on coastal beaches. “There are a lot of species of shells but they went to look for the same species here in Morocco, in Algeria in a site dated 35,000 years old, in South Africa on a site dated 75,000 years ago or in Israel. in a site dated 135,000 years ago,” he notes.
In his eyes, “it means that these people shared something with each other. Perhaps there was a language” that had emerged. “They are symbolic objects, and symbols, unlike tools, can only be transmitted through a language,” said the researcher, who recalled that Morocco was the site where “one of the oldest Homo Sapiens in the world”: five individuals dating from around 315,000 years old, discovered in 2017 in Jebel Irhoud by the team of French researcher Jean-Jacques Hublin.
