The Nishapur mine: the world’s finest turquoise has come from this deposit. The ancient Persians mined the occurrences from at least 5,000 BC (7,000 years ago).

The Beginnings Of Jewelry

Jewelry has captivated humanity across countless generations as both an emotive work of artistry and a pragmatic tool for self-expression. The human drive to adorn ourselves with ornamentation reaches back over 100,000 years to when our early Homo sapiens ancestors first began decorating their bodies using natural objects and the materials around them. In South Africa’s Blombos Cave, archeologists have discovered prehistoric shells dating back over 100,000 years that had been purposefully perforated and worn as pendants or necklaces. These are considered the first known examples of jewelry.

Other African sites have also revealed early jewelry artistry, including deliberately shaped, polished, and pierced animal bones, teeth, tusks, claws, shells, stone, wood, and ivory worn by tribespeople for personal adornment. These accessories likely started as practical ways to pin, tie, or secure clothing and pouches. However, over generations, the innate human creative drive transformed bone beads, teeth pendants, shell necklaces and more into artistic pieces and symbolic communicators worn for aesthetic and cultural reasons. Even 150,000+-year-old sites in Morocco’s Iberomaurusian culture reveal pierced marine shell beads, suggesting our deeply rooted prehistoric penchant for self-decoration.

When modern Homo sapiens migrated from Africa into Europe approximately 40,000 years ago during the Upper Paleolithic era, jewellery and personal accessorizing travelled with them. In particular, artistry within the Cro-Magnon civilization demonstrates advanced artistic development in mediums like bone, antler, shell, amber, and stone carved, engraved, or pierced into pendants, beads, bracelets, necklaces, clothing pins, and other decorations. The intricacy of the jewel-work reveals not just developed tool use but also meaningful cultural symbolism in the animal motifs and materials frequently incorporated. As tribes spread throughout the continent into Asia, more localized jewelry fashions and innovations incorporated regional wildlife like mammoth ivory, bear teeth, or seashells.

Around 7,000 years ago, metallurgy revolutionized jewelry across cultures, introducing malleable yet durable new materials. As civilizations learned to smelt and alloy to utilize naturally occurring copper, gold, silver and more, jewelry forms flourished into finely wrought torcs, coronets, amulets, bracelets, rings, sacred idol embellishments, and status display pieces made locally or traded through expanding cultural networks. From the Mediterranean, Middle East and Asia to the Indian subcontinent, East Asia, and North and South America, ancient jewelry forms reveal the innate human drive toward beauty and communication.

In particular, the sophisticated jewelry innovations of ancient Egypt over 3,000 years ago exemplify how precious metals and rare colourful gemstones were imbued with spiritual iconography and significance. Extravagant collars, pectorals, beads, pendants, crowns, headpieces, bracelets, rings and amulets were hand-fabricated with techniques still admired today. Crafted in gold, electrum, and sterling silver, set with semi-precious stones like lapis lazuli, carnelian, or emeralds, specific shapes, symbols, and gem colours connected with gods or traits wished upon the wearer. Pharaohs were mummified and entombed wearing splendid bejewelled burial masks such as the famous solid gold death mask of King Tutankhamun.

In ancient Mesopotamia, over 4,000 years ago, jewelry similarly gained a status for its artistry, iconography, and materials. Family cylinder seals were engraved with designs personal to the wearer. Colourful imported stones from Asia were incorporated into lavish necklaces of the time. And expert Sumerian and Babylonian jewelers established advanced techniques still employed in jewelry-making circles today, like filigree, granulation, sheet metal stamping, cut stone bead drilling, and complex soldering.

From ancients in Britain, China, India, and North and South America to Mediterranean cultures like the Greeks, Etruscans, and later Romans absorbing Egyptian and Middle Eastern influences, jewelry styles diversified across civilizations but unified in underlying purpose: creative ornamentation supporting self-identity. Materials and methods varied by region and era, but the innate calling toward personal decoration and cultivated beauty persists through all cultures across history.

While today jewellery has expanded again with modern technologies and globalization, its origins remind us of shared human values that are still relevant: creative expression, skilful artistry, status display, iconographic communication, and the deeper desire to embody meaning in ourselves, whether in bone, shell, gold or beyond. By respecting this historical and unifying perspective, we can thoughtfully appreciate diverse past and present jewelry traditions worldwide.

If you prefer to listen instead of read, we are excited to introduce you to the Turquoise Uncovered Podcast, now available on YouTube.

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