Scientists Found 15,000-Year-Old Fingerprints from a Lost Civilization

3 min readHere’s what you’ll find when you read this story:Scientists discovered fingerprints on ancient clay beads that reveal them to be some of the earliest ornaments crafted by Neolithic people.Strung and worn, the beads mimicked the designs of plants grown and eaten by the ancient Natufian culture.Children, as evidenced by the fingerprints, engaged in the bead-making process as part of a cultural tradition.As small as they are, 142 ancient clay beads studied by a team of researchers are making big changes to world history. New discoveries about the beads, which are roughly 15,000 years old, pushes back—by thousands of years—our understanding of when Neolithic cultures first started making ornamental objects.In a study published in Science Advances, a team of international researchers uncovered how the oldest examples of unbaked clay used for ornamentation—even older than the use of clay for crafting bowls or jars—were made by Natufian hunter-gatherers in what is now Israel. In many ways ancient precursors of our own jewelry or other personal decorations, the beads represent the first known example of a practice that later became widespread across Neolithic Eurasia.Researchers found the 142 personal ornaments at five sites in Israel that range in age from 15,000 to 11,650 years old. Evidence from the beads also showed that those crafting the beads also encompassed a bit of an age range. “Both children and adults participated in crafting these items, which reflect newly emerging symbolic expressions, some inspired by plant forms,” the study authors wrote. “These findings offer original insights into the social organization of craft production and the rise of symbolic practices at the dawn of sedentism, which ultimately shaped the Neolithic transition in Southwest Asia.”A statement from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said that long before pottery or agriculture, people in the Levant molded clay with their hands. “This discovery completely changes how we understand the relationship between clay, symbolism, and the emergence of settled life,” Laurent Davin, postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Archaeology at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said in the statement.The team found the ornaments across four sites that were inhabited by the Natufian people, one of the world’s first cultures to largely settle permanently in one place. Each of the finds features unbaked clay that fits easily in the palm of a hand, shaped into cylinders, discs, and ellipses. Many of the examples featured a red ochre coating, a technique known as engobe, where a thin layer of liquid clay gets smoothed onto the surface—the first known use of this coloring technique anywhere in the world.Researchers said the beads show that a “symbolic revolution” began earlier than anyone believed, when communities were still hunting, gathering, and just beginning to live in permanent settlements. “These objects show that profound social and cognitive changes were already underway,” professor Leore Grosman said in the statement. “The roots of the Neolithic lie deeper than we once thought.”This wasn’t a one-time event, rather a sustained tradition that predated the use of clay for functional uses. The team identified 19 distinct bead types, often mimicking the plants prominent in Natufian life, including wild barley, einkorn wheat, lentils, and peas. Traces of plant fibers preserved on some beads illustrated how they were strung and worn, suggesting the plant world held a deep cultural meaning.The team discovered 50 fingerprints belonging to children, adolescents, and adults preserved across the beads while offering archaeologists the first opportunity to directly identify the makers of the ancient ornaments. Some of the items were likely designed for children, including a tiny clay ring not even half an inch wide.The researchers wrote that “the findings suggest that making ornaments was a shared, everyday activity, one that played a role in learning, imitation, and the transmission of social values from one generation to the next.”Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. He covers stadiums, sneakers, gear, infrastructure, and more for a variety of publications, including Popular Mechanics. His favorite interviews have included sit-downs with Roger Federer in Switzerland, Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, and Tinker Hatfield in Portland.