Stone Age pendant reveals ancient secrets

A view of the entrance to the Denisova Cave in southern Siberia, where scientists recovered the DNA of a woman from an elk tooth used as a pendant 19,000 to 25,000 years ago. — Reuters

INSIDE a Siberian cave that has been an archaeological treasure trove, an elk’s canine tooth – pierced to become a pendant – was unearthed by scientists with care to avoid contaminating this intriguing artefact made roughly 20,000 years ago.

The pristine collection of the pendant from Denisova Cave paid dividends. Scientists said a new method for extracting ancient DNA identified the object’s long-ago owner – a Stone Age woman closely related to a population of hunter- gatherers known to have lived in a part of Siberia east of the cave site in the foothills of the Altai Mountains in Russia.