I know people who are self-taught in ways and skills which defy the ages. Who's to argue it did not happen earlier on?

L-

for a favorite child who was coming of age. Hunter-gatherer societies have a lot of down time.

My own favorite object is a hand axe, a beautifully ergonomic but utilitarian object until you look more closely. In the direct center is a fossilized shell embedded into the rock. It's obvious that this was designed to keep this special object not only in place, but in the center. An artist made this. The date is 250,000 years ago, before modern homo sap sap had appeared anywhere.

That's a mighty large claim, care to back it up? Your description of that object sounds like something that would completely upend modern understanding of early hominids, yet I can find zero mention of such an object.

It's in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge. The mention was brief but the object is beautiful. I would love to see it in person.

where the date was given as 300,000 years ago. There really isn't that much about it online and there should be, IMO.

Anthropology is opening things wide up, they're finding so much that shouldn't be there that early but indisputably is, like the copper axe found with the body of a 5500 year old corpse in the Alps some years ago or the megalith structure at Gobekli Tepe, dated to 12,000 years ago, several thousand years before people thought such refined stone work was possible.

Our ancestors might not have looked like much, but it seems they were a lot smarter than we've given them credit for.

Not Neanderthal but Homo altaiensis ... Denisovan Man


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan

a male for his "favourite woman".

Maybe it was made by a woman for herself. Or for her best friend.

All we know is that it's a bracelet that someone made.