Beads
“Personal ornaments are a powerful tool of communication,” says Francesco D’Errico at the Institute of the Prehistory and Geology of the Quaternary in Talence, France, one of the team that studied the beads. “They can indicate social or marital status, for example. But you need to have a complex system of language behind that. To me [these beads] are very powerful archaeological evidence that these people were able to speak like us.”
Rain makes a cave of the air. It doesn’t mean to fall, any more than the thrush means to sing such an ache into the heart. Tell me what your tongue tastes like — blood? Metal? Your reflection in running water? This is how it happens. When the first bone drill pierces a nugget of shell, something round as the day can suddenly admit a saving loop of hide: time can be savored. The world’s first belt or necklace divides the waters from the waters like a movable wound, like a smile full of teeth when the others see.