Fashion first as Middle East links to earliest humans

Middle Easterners are known for their beautiful adornments and fascination with fashion and jewelry.  Some things never change. Evidence has been found linking the earliest modern humans to the Middle East. And in this case, the link has been made through shell beads found in Lebanon.

It is likely due to central location that early humans used the Middle East as a crossroads between Africa, Europe and Asia. It is in this area that scientist found beads made from shells that may have been used as jewelry or to decorate clothing.  These beads were found in the layer designating it as 42,400 to 41,700 years old. This evidence was provided by researchers at Oxford University.

This find could help researchers understand migrant patterns of early human population.

“It is possible that instead of the Near East being the single point of origin for modern humans heading for Europe, they may also have used other routes too”, said Oxford archaeologist Katerina Douka.

"This is a region where scholars have been expecting to find early evidence of anatomically and behaviorally modern humans, like us, leaving Africa and directly replacing Eurasian Neanderthal populations that lived there for more than 150,000 years," she said.