A study by an international team of researchers has uncovered the oldest known ivory pendant from Eurasia. The ornament was found in the Stajnia Cave in Poland and radiocarbon dating revealed it to be 41,500 years old.
Stajnia Cave is a natural shelter and the site has been studied since 2006. During the excavations, a number of Neanderthal remains, animal bones and other artifacts were discovered. The findings were published last week in Scientific Reports.
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In 2010, excavators found two fragments of an ornate ivory pendant and an awl fragment. The pendant has an oval shape with rounded edges. It also has two perforated holes and decorations with sequential perforation patterns.
The largest piece of the pendant is 4.5cm long and 1.5cm wide, while the awl measures 68.33mm long. The team used digital methodologies such as micro-tomographic scans and 3D reconstruction.
Mass spectrometry analysis revealed that the pendant was made from mammoth ivory and the awl from horse bone.
Co-author Andrea Picin of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig added that the pendant ages from ivory and the bone borer finally demonstrate that the dispersion of Homo sapiens in Poland occurred already in Central Europe and Western.