Researching the evolutionary origins of beauty and adornment a few months back, Jolique scratched her head, wondering, When did we start wearing jewelry? Why do we wear make-up? If you've read anything about our evolution, no doubt you'll agree that our history is filled with fascinating stuff. This week, Jolique offers her reader a little lesson in adornment's prehistory. But before she begins, a brief recap of the last million years or so (!) will help put this essay into context:

• About one million years ago, some of the earliest hominids (weird anthropology term used to describe humans before we were really humans; at this point, we were hairy, two-footed Homo erectus) began migrating from Africa into Europe, Arabia and Asia. Not all of us migrated; some of us stayed in Africa and continued to evolve there.

• Several hundred thousand years later, some of these hominids evolved into Neanderthals and Heidelbergers, two of the earliest forms of humans (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens heidelbergensis). Neanderthal remains have been discovered in Iraq, parts of Russia, and many parts of western and eastern Europe. Heidelberger remains have been discovered in many parts of Africa, Europe, China and India. As the weather warranted, these early humans constructed garments made of fur skins to keep them warm. The first deliberate human burials also occurred around this time. Red ochre, a form of iron oxide, has been found at many of these early burial sites.
  
  
• About 100,000 years ago, the earliest humans (Neanderthals and Heidelbergers) slowly became extinct, and were replaced (killed? eaten?) by a new species: modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens). These modern humans expanded into Australia and China (about 60,000 years ago), Europe (about 40,000 years ago), northern Asia (35,000 years ago) and North America (about 15,000 years ago). 60,000 year-old Neanderthal grave sites in Iraq (Shanidar Cave) include flowers and a 28,000 year-old site in Russia (Sunghir) included thousands of ivory beads, each of which would have taken at least one hour to make.

Easy as pie, right? Well, even if you disregard all of the above, the most important thing to remember, from an adornment standpoint anyway, is the evidence of deliberate human burial. Although our early ancestors weren't the most mentally complex people, around 200,000 years ago, you could say we "got religion."

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Above: Venus figurine, Upper Paleolithic, Western Europe (1).