Paleolithic Age

As a species, we like to adorn ourselves with jewelry, makeup, hair accessories. We do it now to further improve our looks, to draw in a mate and since it just makes us feel better about ourselves. Some varieties of adornment are symbolic – like wedding rings. Or they’re used to come up with a statement about our lifestyle, like multiple piercings and earrings. 

Have you ever wondered what are the origins are of such self-decoration? Was there a meaning behind it? Or did we only start wearing beads, necklaces and earrings as our awareness of self increased so that as we evolved?

We know how the earliest jewelry of items of bones, shells as well as other personal adornments appeared in graves about 40,000 years ago. The concept there was an afterlife, along with the belief in spirits both negative and positive, gave rise to the ways to attract the great spirits and fend off the bad ones. 

People protected themselves from evil spirits with adornments as necklaces or bracelets, and pierced themselves with the same bones and shells to have these amulets on their persons constantly. Right now people also started painting their own health with red ochre, that is considered the first type of makeup. In addition , they started lining their eyes with kohl to guard themselves up against the force known as the “Evil Eye.”

As soon as possible, much jewelry takes the sort of amulets. People wear crosses around their necks, or the Star of David, or wear a Claddagh ring – all to attract good fortune or reduce the chances of misfortune. You can even find more throwbacks for this earliest type of magic, such as a lucky rabbit’s foot, or maybe a lucky penny. Or we quite often have less well known, more personal amulets which have a meaning to us alone, but they are still worn of the same quality luck charms and amulets.