Decorated snail shell in a cave in Iraq could be first evidence of Paleolithic bling

4/6. The inner side of the plaque showing incisions (1000 microns = 1 mm). Chris Hunt

... Since 2014 a joint UK-Kurdish team, led by Graeme Barker, Tim Reynolds and me, with members from Cambridge, Liverpool John Moores, Birkbeck, Queen’s Belfast and the Kurdish Antiquities Department, have been re-investigating the cave. We aim to clarify the sequence of deposits, work out the age of the Neanderthal remains, establish whether they were indeed buried and whether flowers were involved. During this work, our small but careful excavations have yielded large quantities of cultural debris as well as new Neanderthal remains.

One of our more important finds is a shell plaque from Upper Palaeolithic layers. The local Upper Palaeolithic stone tool industry is called the Baradostian, dating from about 36,000BC – and elsewhere in the region this industry is associated with the remains of anatomically modern humans. [...] theconversation.com