Archaeologists have discovered an almost 13,000-year-old artifact they say is the oldest known bead found in the Americas.
The tube-shaped bone bead, which has been described in a study published in the online journal Scientific Reports, was found at the La Prele Mammoth site located in Converse County, eastern Wyoming.
The site, situated along La Prele Creek near its confluence with the North Platte River, preserves the partial remains of a Colombian mammoth killed or recovered by prehistoric Native Americans, as well as a related campsite occupied about 13,000 years ago when the sacrificed animal.
Colombian mammoths (Mammuthus columbi) were a species of mammoth that once lived in vast expanses of the Americas, stretching from what is now the northern United States to Costa Rica.
The Colombian mammoth, which reaches about 14 feet tall, is thought to have gone extinct about 12,000 years ago, at a time when most other giant mammals in North America were also disappearing.
The record-breaking pearl described in the new study was discovered in a prehistoric camp domain at La Prele Creek, about 36 feet from the mammoth’s remains.
To determine the pearl’s origin, the researchers, led by Todd Surovell, a professor of archeology at the University of Wyoming, extracted a type of protein called collagen and then subjected it to mass spectrometry, an analytical strategy for identifying chemicals in a objective medium. The team also analyzed the pearl using micro-CT, a three-dimensional imaging strategy that uses X-rays to see the inside of an object, slice after slice.
The team’s research revealed that the bone came from a hare. This is the first “sure proof” of the use of hares in the time of Clovis. This era owes its origin to the Clovis culture, a prehistoric Native American people who lived about 13,000 years ago. Known for its unique stone artifacts, this culture owes its name to the archaeological site of Clovis in New Mexico, where archaeologists first found evidence of it.
The maximum widely cited age diversity for the Clovis culture places it in a short period of time, approximately 13,050 and 12,750 years ago.
“Others have noted that we probably haven’t discovered and will never locate the first Clovis sites because they’re so rare, so the early end of diversity is probably an underestimate. Based on that perception and some ancient radiocarbon dates, some would push the origin of the plant to be around 13,500 years old,” Spencer Pelton, an archaeologist from the state of Wyoming, told Newsweek.
For the study, researchers dated the pearl, which measures about 7 millimeters long, to about 12,940 years ago.
While the use of hare bones was a common practice in western North America during the Holocene (the extant geological epoch, which began about 11,700 years ago), the origins of this practice now go back even earlier, to the late Pleistocene. . era.
Beads were used by prehistoric Native Americans as personal ornaments, likely decorating their bodies and/or clothing. The production and use of personal ornaments, such as beads, are important indicators of increasing cultural complexity among prehistoric humans. But the new study provides the earliest evidence of the use of such beads in the Americas.
“Archaeologists were pretty sure that the first North Americans made and wore beads because their ancestors in Asia definitely did starting as early as 35,000 years ago and we have beads from later time periods in North America,” Pelton said. “However, direct evidence for beads in the Clovis record had thus far eluded us prior to La Prele. This field discovery sealed the deal that Clovis foragers wore beads.
“The discovery that the bead is made of hare bone is, in some ways, more significant than the discovery of the object itself. The Clovis sites are predominantly related to the hunting of giant animals such as mammoths and bison, not hares or snowshoe hares. that this bead is made of hare bones. Hare Bone revisits our concepts of how Clovis spent his time hunting.
The authors suggest that the bead is among the oldest known ornaments found in the Americas to date, if not the oldest, with one possible exception.
In 2023, a team of researchers published a study from the Santa Elina rock shelter in central Brazil, claiming to have discovered 3 pendants or beads made from the crushed bones of giant sloths that are more than 20,000 years old.
“Given their age, context and really unique characteristics, we’re skeptical that those elements are actually transformed by humans,” Pelton said. “Those finds deserve further examination before being declared as archaeological or definitive evidence of sloth bone beads prior to the Last Glacial Maximum. “
The researchers considered as an option that the bone count was not created by humans, but was the result of the fact that the hare had been eaten and digested by a predator. The doors of the artifact imply that it was crafted by prehistoric humans.
Update 2/14/24, 15h47. ET: This article has been updated to include more comments from Spencer Pelton.
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about archaeology? Let us know via [email protected].
Aristos is a Newsweek science reporter with the London, U.K., bureau. He reports on science and health topics, including; animal, mental health, and psychology-related stories. Aristos joined Newsweek in 2018 from IBTimes UK and had previously worked at The World Weekly. He is a graduate of the University of Nottingham and City University, London. Languages: English. You can get in touch with Aristos by emailing [email protected].