GREEN REVOLUTION
Scientists found that green beads (like the ones shown) emerged in large numbers with agriculture some 11,000 years ago.National Academy of Sciences, PNAS
Fledgling farmers in the Middle East treasured ornamentation as much as irrigation. These ancient villagers traveled great distances to obtain green stone for making beads and pendants that held special meaning for them in a brave new agricultural world, a new study finds.
Bead-making began by 110,000 years ago in what’s now Israel. But an emphasis on green beads emerged only about 11,000 years ago in concert with the agricultural revolution, say archaeologist Daniella Bar-Yosef Mayer of the University of Haifa in Israel and geologist Naomi Porat of the Geological Survey of Israel in Jerusalem.
“Because beads in white, red, yellow, brown and black colors had been used earlier, we suggest that the occurrence of green beads is directly related to the onset of agriculture,” Bar-Yosef Mayer says.
Green jewelry mimicked the color of young leaf blades, thus signifying a wish for successful crops and fertility, in her view. Green beads remain popular in agricultural groups today. Based on meanings attributed to these ornaments over the past few centuries, green beads originally served not only as fertility charms but as amulets to ward off the evil eye, the researchers propose online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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