The 24,000-Year-Old Boy Buried With 120 Beads And A Mammoth-Ivory Tiara — And The DNA Test That Revealed A Hidden Source Of Native American Ancestry
Upper Paleolithic bead-making required the selection of appropriate raw material — bone, in this case — and the careful drilling of a hole through the center of each bead using stone borers.
Archaeological experiments in which researchers attempt to replicate Paleolithic bead-making using replica tools have produced estimates ranging from roughly half an hour to several hours per bead, depending on the material, the quality of the borer, and the skill of the maker.
Even at the optimistic end of this range, 120 beads represents sixty hours of sustained skilled labor.
At a more typical estimate, the investment approaches two hundred hours.
Two hundred hours.
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