Jewelry News
The World's Oldest Gold Necklace
Jewelry.com, 04/24/2008
An anthropologist in Peru has found a gold necklace that dates back 4,000 years. Is it the world's oldest golden jewel?
If you think your great-grandmother's gold necklace is an 'antique' piece of jewelry -think again. A necklace created a century ago is just a mere infant according to the latest jewelry timeline. A ring dating back to medieval times - a pre-teen at best. A bracelet from biblical times, a college sophomore compared to a recent find by an anthropologist in Peru.
Mark Aldenderfer from the University of Arizona has uncovered a gold necklace made nearly 4,000 years ago near a burial site by Lake Titicaca in Peru. He says it appears that a nugget of raw gold, which occurs near the area, was pounded flat in a stone mortar and pestle. The gold was then wrapped around a piece of wood and pounded until it was folded into a tube.
Researchers at the site restrung the necklace, alternating nine small gold tubes with a series of round stones, identified as either greenstone or turquoise, with holes in them that were found in the same grave.
Before this discovery, the oldest gold ornaments unearthed in this hemisphere were also Peruvian in origin, though some 600 years younger.