Adventure Ausrama Blog

Bracelet is made 40,000 years ago by Denisovan who used a tool like a drill to make holes of the same diameter in the jewelry. It was obviously made by a master craftsman. The bracelet is made of chlorite a silicate mineral usually green in color. Chlorite is the name of a group of common sheet silicate minerals that form during the early stages of metamorphism. Most chlorite minerals are green in color, have a foliated appearance, perfect cleavage, and an oily, soapy feel. They are found in igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks. The body jewelry was found in the Denisovan cave in Siberia - the cave that the premodern hominids were named after. They were close enough genetically to Homo sapiens for inter-breeding to occur producing fertile offspring. The term "human" is now loosely used to include this species and back to Homo erectus. This find puts Denisovans ahead of Homo sapiens technologically. Denisovans were much older than Homo sapiens leaving Africa

It was believed that early humans painted the cave art in Europe. Scientists are leaning toward associating this art with Neanderthals. The old theory surmised that humans created cave art soon after they moved into Europe from Africa. New tests show the paintings are older than first thought. They are now known to go back 41,000 years. This puts them clearly in the era of Neanderthals. Art was not a sudden achievement. It developed slowly over tens of thousands of years. The age of cave paintings was established by U-series dating. Samples of calcite that directly covered the paintings were taken. Paintings in El Castilo Spain were dated specifically to 40,800 years ago. Art in other Spanish caves were pushed back in time from 17,000 to 35,000 years. At this time humans were new to Europe but Neanderthals had been for there much longer. Early jewelry and use of ochre were part of Neanderthal culture. http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.