Key Points
Inside a Siberian cave that has been an archeological treasure trove, an elk's canine tooth - pierced to become a pendant - was unearthed by scientists with care to avoid contaminating this intriguing artifact made roughly 20,000 years ago...
Scientists on Wednesday said a new method for extracting ancient DNA identified the object's long-ago owner - a Stone Age woman closely related to a population of hunter-gatherers known to have lived in a part of Siberia east of the cave site in the foothills of the Altai Mountains in Russia...
Objects used as tools or for personal adornment - pendants, necklaces, bracelets, rings and the like - can offer insight into past behavior and culture, though our understanding has been limited by an inability to tie a particular object to a particular person...
"I find these objects made in the deep past extremely fascinating since they allow us to open a small window to travel back and have a glance into these people's lives," said molecular biologist Elena Essel of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature...
The oldest-known objects used as personal adornments date to about 100,000 years ago from Africa, according to the University of Leiden's Marie Soressi, the study's senior archeologist...
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The pendant is 20,000 years old. Ancient DNA shows who wore it
05, May, 23Inside a Siberian cave that has been an archeological treasure trove, an elk's canine tooth - pierced to become a pendant - was unearthed by scientists with care to avoid contaminating this intriguing artifact made roughly 20,000 years ago.