To understand Mal’ta properly is to understand that the distance between us and them is measured in time, not in humanity.

How The Beads Were Made

It is worth dwelling on the manufacturing process that produced the more than 120 beads found in the Mal’ta burial, because the process itself tells us important things about the people who performed it.

Upper Paleolithic beads from across Eurasia have been analyzed by archaeologists interested in the specific techniques used to produce them.

The drilling of holes in small, hard objects — bone, ivory, shell, soft stone — without metal tools requires specific techniques.

The stone borers used for this purpose were pointed stone tools, typically made from flint or a similar fine-grained stone, that were rotated against the surface of the material while being pressed downward.