Jewelry History

Men and women have adorned themselves with jewelry since long before the age of reason! Garlands of flowers, bracelets of woven grass, shells, and stone; such were the first decorations to beautify the human body.

Our ancestors may have been wearing jewelry as far back as 75,000 years ago - 30,000 years earlier than previously believed - according to a recent report by National Geographic News. Jewelry styles have transformed, modernized, and then often returned to their most basic forms and essential elements.

So, too, has the significance of jewelry evolved through the ages. Fundamentally, jewelry has always remained an adornment, but an adornment that variously transformed into a symbol of love, religion, wealth, prestige, rank, class, and sometimes authority.

In many cultures, at various times, jewelry and jewelry beads have been used as currency. Perhaps most memorably, in relatively recent history, in 1626, Native Americans accepted too few strings of European glass beads from a Dutch immigrant in trade for the island now known as Manhattan. Three centuries later, in 1916, the renowned jeweler Jacques Cartier traded just two pearl necklaces for a parcel of land in Manhattan - where he opened his first store.