A gold necklace, which now constitutes the oldest known gold object discovered in the Americas, was found near Lake Titicaca in southern Peru. The radiocarbon dating method that was used to determine its age places its origin at about 4,000 years ago.

”The gold reflects a universal tendency for human beings to strive for prestige and status,” said study leader Dr Mark Aldenderfer of the department of anthropology at the University of Arizona, Tucson. As gold objects are usually seen as signs of well-developed societies, it now seems reasonable to suspect that the “hunter-gatherer society” of the time was in fact more advanced that originally thought.

The necklace was found next to the jawbone of an adult skull in the pit at Jiskairumoko, a hamlet believed to have been settled between 3,300 and 1,500 BC, in the Lake Titicaca basin. According to researchers, it may have been worn by an adult, possibly by an elderly female. It is believed that a stone hammer was used in the making of it.

Aldenderfer’s study on this region began in 1999. The project is supposed to bring light onto the way hunting and gathering cultures approached more sedentary life styles thus creating small villages.