Is this gold necklace the first evidence of
elite society in the Americas
Posted on 04/01/2008 1:00:00 AM PDT by bruinbirdman
This elegant gold necklace looks as if it was only made yesterday.
In fact the nine inch necklace is four thousand years old and marks the oldest known worked gold artifact ever uncovered in the Americas, also representing the earliest evidence of an elite emerging among the simple people who lived there.
Is this gold necklace the first evidence of
elite society in the Americas
In short, it marks the very early steps towards the appearance of royalty in the region, along with politics and luxury.
The nine bead necklace, found near Lake Titicaca in southern Peru, is described by Prof Mark Aldenderfer of the University of Arizona, Tucson, and colleagues.
They found the necklace surrounding the remains of what was presumably its owner, the jawbone of an adult skull of indeterminate sex in a burial pit next to a primitive dwelling at Jiskairumoko, a tiny hamlet that was settled from 3300 to 1500 BC.
Radiocarbon dating of nearby material places the necklace's origin at roughly 2100 BC, around a millennium earlier than existing finds.
The people who made the necklace, which was probably strung using wool, were nomadic hunter gatherers who moved from place to place as their source of food changed with the seasons.
The necklace's discovery at a transient settlement of seasonal hunter-gatherers shows that the use of gold jewellery to distinguish wealthy and important people began before the appearance of more complex societies in the Andes, the researchers say. This undermines the idea that only sedentary societies could create more material wealth than they could consume.
"The gold seems to be a simple adornment," says Prof Aldenderfer, "although quite a lavish one compared to the other adornments of the time, which were usually bone beads, beads of non-precious metals like specular haematite, or various kinds of turquoises, sodalites, or lapis lazuli. The beads themselves show no signs of engraving, etching, or markings."
They report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the cylindrical beads of the necklace appear to have been cold-hammered from gold nuggets from the Andes, first flattening them and then curling them into cylinders, which backs the idea that the earliest metalworking in the region was experimentation with native gold.
Many later, more complex societies, including Chavín, Moche, Chimú, and Inca, made great use of gold.
Until today, the earliest published sites with gold artifacts or evidence of gold-working technology are Mina Perdida in the Lurín Valley (1410 to 1090BC) and Waywaka in the central Andean highlands in Andahuaylas (1500 to 1000BC)
It’s beautiful.
Hmmm those “apes” had some skill after all.
LOL!
GGG Ping.
Very interesting. Thanks for posting.
Does it have “Made in China” stamped on the clasp??
Clearly Pre-American Indian. When do they come forward wanting their land back and reparations?
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Hmmpphhhh ... I made one just like it in plumbing shop class.
re: Elites in the culture.
Why is it that these 'researchers' try and apply todays culture on ancients?
Is it all possible it was just a fisherman lucky enough to find a gold nugget and took the time to work it up into a wear-pretty?
Okay, let’s just play pretend here.
If there were skeletal remains from which DNA could be extracted, and DNA tests show there are direct descendants to this person, hence the necklace, could direct decedents put claims on these artifacts?
Bling Ping???
LOL!!!!
"Why is it that these 'researchers' try and apply todays culture on ancients?"
This puts the Marxist dialectic into historic perspective, don'tcha know.
It is the historic nature of man.
"Well, we will just have to change human nature." -- Hillary Clinton
yitbos
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