Anthropology says the oldest known act of long-distance trade – the movement of a specific type of shell more than 300 kilometres from its source – occurred at least 100000 years ago and tells us something remarkable about prehistoric social networks
Imagine standing in a cave, holding a tiny, weathered seashell that clearly came from a coastline hundreds of kilometres away – and realizing the person who brought it there lived more than one hundred thousand years ago. That single object suddenly feels less like a trinket and more like a message from deep time: we ...









