The world's oldest social network was found by scientists and spanned thousands of miles across Africa.
The ancient web of social bonds used a more mundane medium. One of the oldest forms of personal adornment is the sharing and trading of beads made of eggshells.
More than 1,500 of these beads were studied by scientists in Germany, who dug up more than 30 sites across southern and east Africa. Careful analysis suggests that people who made the beads were exchanging them over vast distances, helping to share symbolic messages and strengthen alliances.
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The last hunter-gatherer tribe is in pictures.
Hadza is the last hunter-gatherer tribe in Tunisia.
The lead author of the study said it was like following a trail of crumbs. The beads are clues that are waiting to be seen.
The study compared beads found at 31 sites in southern and eastern Africa, which spanned more than 1,800 miles. The scientists discovered that people in eastern and southern Africa started to make beads out of eggs about 50,000 years ago.
The existence of a long-distance social network that stretched over thousands of miles suggests that these groups and communities were separated by vast distances. Yiming Wang, one of the study's authors, said the result was surprising but the pattern was clear.
Some of the oldest forms of self-decoration found in the archaeological record include eggshell beads. Scientists think that men and women started wearing beads about 75,000 years ago.
The earliest form of jewellery known to archaeology was the manufacture of the first ostrich eggshell beads, which took off about 50,000 years ago in Africa. This was the world's first "bling" and its use represents one of humanity's longest-running cultural traditions. Miller said that the tiny beads have the power to reveal big stories.
The beads are made from an egg shell. The majority world/universal images group.
Bling is valuable because it tells us something about the person who wore it. The archaeological record has more bling. Traded bling tells us who was talking to whom.
Humans began to shape the shells directly and create opportunities for variations in style to develop, which is the crucial point about ostrich eggshell jewellery. The patterns gave the researchers a route through which they could trace cultural connections, though it is not clear if the knowledge of how to manufacture eggshell beads was traded between groups or if it was knowledge of how to make them. Most evidence supports the latter.
The world's first social network didn't last. The pattern of bead-wearing abruptly changed about 33,000 years ago, and they disappeared from southern Africa while continuing in east Africa. The oldest social network on the planet ended after 17,000 years, according to Miller and Wang.
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