This necklace is more than 20,000 years old –

A pendant was recently discovered in a Siberian cave that archaeologists believe was made some 20,000 years ago.

After being carefully removed from the cave, scientists were able to further examine the pendant and even discover that it belonged to a Stone Age woman related to a population of hunter-gatherers known to have lived in part of Siberia in the foothills of the Altai Mountains.

Objects such as these can help trace the culture and behavior of our earliest history. It is unknown if the woman who wore the necklace also made it, but scientists will continue to examine the artifact for some time and extract specific DNA to see what other information they can find.

Elena Essel, a molecular biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, said that when she touched the pendant , she was “transported back in time and imagined the human hands that had made and used it thousands of years ago.”

Thank you, Reuters.