Ancient bling changes how we see Neanderthals

The world's earliest jewellery made some 130,000 years ago shows that Neanderthals possessed the capacity for a complex cognitive thinking. Photo: AFP

The widely-held vision of Neanderthals as brutes may need a stark rethink after research found they crafted the world’s earliest jewellery from eagle talons 130,000 years ago, long before modern humans appeared in Europe.

“While reviewing eight, white-tailed eagle talons and an associated phalanx, on the latter I noticed numerous cut marks and a revelation just struck me – they were made by a human hand,” says Davorka Radovcic, a curator at Croatia’s Natural History Museum.