World’s oldest social network was based on ostrich eggshell beads

By Gwyn Wright via SWNS

The world’s oldest social network connecting cultures has been discovered by researchers – using ostrich eggshell beads.

The beads reveal a 50,000-year-old social network linking Stone Age people in Southern and East Africa, anthropologists in Germany have found.

The beads are the world’s oldest fully manufactured ornaments, and humans completely transformed the shells to make beads.

Different prehistoric cultures produced different types of beads, giving researchers a way of tracing connections between cultures.

The anthropologists took more than a decade to make the world’s largest-ever database of ostrich eggshell beads including 1,500 beads from the last 50,000 years, dug up at 31 sites across Southern and East Africa.

By comparing the diameter and shell thickness of the beads, they found people in Eastern and Southern Africa were using beads that were almost identical.

The findings suggest a long-distance social network once connected people living 3,000 kilometers apart, the oldest social network ever identified.

Signs of the network had disappeared by 33,000 years ago, which is likely to have been triggered by dramatic climate change.

Around the time the network broke down at the end of a wet period in the continent’s history, rainfall in East Africa fell sharply as the tropical rain belt moved south.

This led to more rainfall around the Zambezi River, which may have caused floods that disrupted the network.

"Humans are social creatures, but little is known about when, how, and why different populations connected in the past,"said lead study author Dr. Jennifer Miller.

“Answering these questions is crucial for interpreting the biological and cultural diversity that we see in human populations today.

“DNA is a powerful tool for studying genetic interactions between populations, but it can’t address any cultural exchanges within these ancient meetings.

“It’s like following a trail of breadcrumbs. The beads are clues, scattered across time and space, just waiting to be noticed.

"These tiny beads have the power to reveal big stories about our past.

"We encourage other researchers to build upon this database, and continue exploring evidence for cultural connections in new regions.’’

Study co-author Dr. Yiming Wang added: "The result is surprising, but the pattern is clear.

"Throughout the 50,000 years we examined, this is the only time period that the bead characteristics are the same.

“Through this combination of paleoenvironmental proxies, climate models, and archaeological data, we can see the connection between climate change and cultural behavior.”

The findings were published in the journal Nature.