一个由多国考古人员组成的研究小组日前在摩洛哥发掘出了一些用贝壳制成的饰品，经检测它们已有约8万年的历史。考古人员认为，这说明人类在约8万年前就已经具备了思想，能够制作饰品。
法国国家科研中心8月29日发表公报说，这项研究由该中心与摩洛哥、以色列和德国的学术机构合作完成。考古人员在摩洛哥的4处考古点发掘出了一些贝壳类的饰品，其中有些埋藏在距今8.5万年到7万年的特殊地层中。
考古人员随即对它们进行了研究，注意到以下几个特点：首先，发现贝壳的地点距离海岸至少有40到60公里，因此不可能是被自然的力量带到此地的；其次，贝壳上有穿孔染色的痕迹；最后，这些贝壳都保存完好，尽管表面上有细微的磨损，但那应该是在佩戴时造成的。在对以上几点进行分析后，他们认定，这些贝壳都是被当时人类刻意雕琢的饰品，而并非随意撒落在该地的贝壳。
考古人员表示，能够制作饰品标志着当时的人类已经具有思想。在很长一段时间里，人们只在欧洲和中东地区发现过距今4万年的饰品，但近10年来，考古人员在非洲北部和南部不断发现更为古老的饰品，这说明人类更早地具备了这一本领。
这项研究成果已经发表在最新一期美国《国家科学院院刊》（PNAS）上。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原始出处：
PNAS August 28, 2009, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0903532106
Additional evidence on the use of personal ornaments in the Middle Paleolithic of North Africa
Francesco d'Erricoa,b,1, Marian Vanhaerenc, Nick Bartond, Abdeljalil Bouzouggare, Henk Mienisf, Daniel Richterg, Jean-Jacques Hubling, Shannon P. McPherrong and Pierre Lozoueth
aCentre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 5199, De la Préhistoire à l'Actuel: Culture, Environnement et Anthropologie, University of Bordeaux, Talence 33405, France;
bInstitute for Human Evolution, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2050 WITS, South Africa;
cEthnologie préhistorique, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Unité Mixte de Recherche 7041, Archéologies et Sciences de l'Antiquite, Nanterre 92023, France;
dInstitute of Archaeology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 2PG, United Kingdom;
eInstitut National des Sciences de l'Archéologie et du Patrimoine, Hay Riad, Madinat Al Irfane, 10 000 Rabat, Morocco;
fNational Natural History Collections, Berman Building, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 01904, Israel;
gDepartment of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig 04103, Germany; and
hCentre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unité Propre de l'Enseignement Supérieur Associee 8044, Laboratoire de Biologie des Invertébrés Marins et de Malacologie, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris 75005, France
Recent investigations into the origins of symbolism indicate that personal ornaments in the form of perforated marine shell beads were used in the Near East, North Africa, and SubSaharan Africa at least 35 ka earlier than any personal ornaments in Europe. Together with instances of pigment use, engravings, and formal bone tools, personal ornaments are used to support an early emergence of behavioral modernity in Africa, associated with the origin of our species and significantly predating the timing for its dispersal out of Africa. Criticisms have been leveled at the low numbers of recovered shells, the lack of secure dating evidence, and the fact that documented examples were not deliberately shaped. In this paper, we report on 25 additional shell beads from four Moroccan Middle Paleolithic sites. We review their stratigraphic and chronological contexts and address the issue of these shells having been deliberately modified and used. We detail the results of comparative analyses of modern, fossil, and archaeological assemblages and microscopic examinations of the Moroccan material. We conclude that Nassarius shells were consistently used for personal ornamentation in this region at the end of the last interglacial. Absence of ornaments at Middle Paleolithic sites postdating Marine Isotope Stage 5 raises the question of the possible role of climatic changes in the disappearance of this hallmark of symbolic behavior before its reinvention 40 ka ago. Our results suggest that further inquiry is necessary into the mechanisms of cultural transmission within early Homo sapiens populations.
