Unstrung History
Beads tell civilizations story - fact
'The earliest, made from shells as early as 100,000 years ago, are evidence - like cave paintings - of abstract thought. During the Bronze Age, cities saw trade of stone beads, prized for the technology that produced them and for their raw materials, such as carnelian. Around 2300 b.c., artisans worked glass into imitation stone beads. Four millennia later, Venetians created glass trade beads that Europeans carried to the ends of the Earth, exchanging for food, land, furs and slaves'. Source - Karen E. Lange
Photograph - Dana Romanoff
Graphic - National Geographic Society