Flashback thousands of years ago, people all over the world loved and admired jewelry. It showed status, social + official rank, religious or political affiliation and of course for personal enjoyment. Even during prehistoric times, our ancestors found a way to create many types of custom jewelry made with many types of materials such as hair, feathers, bones, wood, shells, minerals and later gold, silver, platinum and colored stones. Their ingenuity grew with each passing generation, and advancements in technology and gathering of available resources gave birth to the creation of some of the most iconic and beautiful jewelry designs. Today we look back at those ancient times and remember them not only for their accomplishments, but as a moment when the entire industry of metal smiths and colored stone processing became formed and the lessons they learned became basis of many modern processes.
The first pieces of jewelry were being made during the same time that African ancestors started making clothes and tools. The oldest surviving prehistoric pieces of jewelry were decorative sea shells from over 110.000 years ago! They give solid proof that the human race used jewelry even before they departed Africa and spread across the entire world.
Even though the old world produced their own versions of simple accessories during those prehistoric times, sudden rise of technology in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia proved to be a dynamic moment in which jewelry finally started gaining shape of modern items that are used today. Ability to mold and bend bronze and copper 6 thousand years ago into many shapes finally enabled the creation of highly detailed jewelry that carried designs of animals and people, something that could never be done before. Discovery of gold a few thousand years later influenced even more varied designs, and Egyptians quickly took advantage of the softness of gold to create timeless pieces of jewelry that were saved to this day but deeply buried Pharaoh burial chambers.
