Ancient humans had piercings, archeologists in Turkey find
STORY: Archeologists say stone ornaments found at an 11,000-year-old burial site in Turkey prove humans have been piercing their bodies since prehistoric times.
The items were found close to a skeleton's ears and lips... allowing experts to conclude for the first time they would definitely be used as piercings, says Emma Louise Baysal, an archeology professor at Ankara University and co-author of an article on the ornaments.
"I think it shows we share similar concerns with the way that we look and that these people were also thinking hard about how they presented themselves to the world. What we're trying to understand is exactly how that worked.”
Stone ornaments have been found on several digs in the Fertile Crescent, but it's not been clear what they were used for.
The discovery was made at the Boncuklu Tarla site in modern day eastern Turkey.
It was established around 11,000 years ago by a group of hunter-gatherers who gradually settled.
The facial ornaments are associated with people who are adults, Baysal says, and might have been used as a rite of passage or initiation into a different role in the community.
Wear on the lower teeth of the skulls indicates some would have had lip piercings while they were alive.
“It solves a problem that everybody was unsure about, which is what exactly these things were used for. So now everybody in the whole area can reinterpret their materials." // "So it's always a kind of large scale effort in archeology. I think that's the importance, putting everything together like a giant jigsaw puzzle."
