5,000-Year-Old Necklace Made From Teeth Found in Poland

A Last-Minute Discovery
Funny enough, the team almost missed it entirely. Researchers from the Medical University of Wrocław were essentially wrapping up their work at the site when something caught their eye. Dr. Paweł Dąbrowski, one of the researchers on the project, described the moment they noticed the faint outline of a grave, with teeth laid out inside in a pattern that looked unmistakably like a necklace.

He said it was obvious right away that this wasn't some random arrangement. A closer look confirmed it: every single tooth had a small hole drilled through its root, clearly meant for stringing them together. The cord or string that once held the necklace together has long since decayed and disappeared, but Dąbrowski said there's no question the piece was deliberately crafted by human hands.

Whose Teeth Were They?
As for where the teeth came from, that's still something of a mystery. Dąbrowski explained that while most appear to belong to wolves, dogs, and bears, two of them look strikingly similar to human canine teeth. He noted that bear incisors, in particular, can closely resemble human front teeth, which makes visual identification tricky. Only a detailed dental analysis, he said, will confirm exactly which species the teeth in the necklace came from.

The necklace wasn't the only thing found at the site this summer. Inside the same burial mound, archaeologists also came across a nearly complete human skeleton, fragments from two separate skulls, beads made of bone and amber, a flint blade, and a stone battle axe. That axe turned out to be especially useful, since its distinct shape allowed researchers to date the burial to roughly 2900 B.C., making it the oldest find uncovered at this particular site so far.

Older Than the Rest of the Cemetery
What makes this discovery even more interesting is just how much older it is compared to everything else found nearby. The rest of the burial ground at this location had previously been dated to around A.D. 350 to 430, roughly 1,600 years ago. That means this newly discovered mound predates the surrounding graves by several thousand years.

Based on the evidence gathered so far, researchers believe the burial mound belonged to someone from the Corded Ware culture, an ancient European society that existed between roughly 2900 and 2300 B.C. This culture is best known for its distinctive pottery, often decorated with cord-like patterns, and a lifestyle centred around herding and pastoral living.

Work on identifying the exact origin of the teeth and other artifacts is still underway. Researchers are hopeful that their findings will eventually shed light on who exactly was buried at the site and offer a glimpse into daily life for the communities that once lived in what is now Lower Silesia, more than five millennia ago.