1.1.1 Jewelry

No one knows when the countersink was first used, but for nearly 7000 years hole edges have been finished in traditional products. Jewelry was undoubtedly the first application for chamfering a hole, smoothing necklace beads at the edges to prevent cutting through necklace string or wire. Neanderthal man reportedly made beads as far back as 38,000 BCE but it is not clear he decided to countersink them. Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon men made needles from bones (Pinkstone 1974). Beads found in India date to 23,000 BCE (Jyetsna 1981). Bead making (shaping) with chert bits was well developed by the early Neolithic period (7000 5000 BCE). It became increasingly specialized in the Indian Chalcolithic period (ca. 4500 BCE) through the use of relatively long stone drills of chert or jasper (Jyetsna 1981). While an exact date for countersinking these kinds of products is not defined, by 4500 BCE it appears the bead makers knew how to chamfer the holes in the beads using the same crude tools they used to drill the holes.

Since 2500 BCE bead necklaces have been uncovered around the world. These elaborate necklaces of gold wire and polished beads were made of many designs. The beads were from wood, lapis lazuli, cornelian, and agate. The most highly studied beads include those from the Royal Tombs of Sumerian Ur dated 2500 BCE (Tait 1986, Rogers 1940, Brosh 1991). Prior to this era seashell beads (Cowie shells for example) probably required the same hole smoothing.

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