TY - JOUR
T1 - Early Middle Stone Age personal ornaments from Bizmoune Cave, Essaouira, Morocco
AU - Sehasseh, El Mehdi
AU - Fernandez, Philippe
AU - Kuhn, Steven
AU - Stiner, Mary
AU - Mentzer, Susan
AU - Colarossi, Debra
AU - Clark, Amy
AU - Lanoe, François
AU - Pailes, Matthew
AU - Hoffmann, Dirk
AU - Benson, Alexa
AU - Rhodes, Edward
AU - Benmansour, Moncef
AU - Laissaoui, Abdelmoughit
AU - Ziani, Ismail
AU - Vidal-matutano, Paloma
AU - Morales, Jacob
AU - Djellal, Youssef
AU - Longet, Benoit
AU - Hublin, Jean-jacques
AU - Mouhiddine, Mohammed
AU - Rafi, Fatima-zohra
AU - Worthey, Kayla Beth
AU - Sanchez-morales, Ismael
AU - Ghayati, Noufel
AU - Bouzouggar, Abdeljalil
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved;
PY - 2021/9/22
Y1 - 2021/9/22
N2 - Ornaments such as beads are among the earliest signs of symbolic behavior among human ancestors. Their appearance signals important developments in both cognition and social relations. This paper describes and presents contextual information for 33 shell beads from Bizmoune Cave (southwest Morocco). Many of the beads come as deposits dating to ≥142 thousand years, making them the oldest shell beads yet recovered. They extend the dates for the first appearance of this behavior into the late Middle Pleistocene. The ages and ubiquity of beads in Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites in North Africa provide further evidence of the potential importance of these artifacts as signals of identity. The early and continued use of Tritia gibbosula and other material culture traits also suggest a remarkable degree of cultural continuity among early MSA Homo sapiens groups across North Africa.
AB - Ornaments such as beads are among the earliest signs of symbolic behavior among human ancestors. Their appearance signals important developments in both cognition and social relations. This paper describes and presents contextual information for 33 shell beads from Bizmoune Cave (southwest Morocco). Many of the beads come as deposits dating to ≥142 thousand years, making them the oldest shell beads yet recovered. They extend the dates for the first appearance of this behavior into the late Middle Pleistocene. The ages and ubiquity of beads in Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites in North Africa provide further evidence of the potential importance of these artifacts as signals of identity. The early and continued use of Tritia gibbosula and other material culture traits also suggest a remarkable degree of cultural continuity among early MSA Homo sapiens groups across North Africa.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85115798805&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1126/sciadv.abi8620
DO - 10.1126/sciadv.abi8620
M3 - Article
C2 - 34550742
SN - 2375-2548
VL - 7
JO - Science advances
JF - Science advances
IS - 39
M1 - eabi8620
ER -