Africa is the cradle of humanity. Our species appeared in Africa and the evolution of its ancestors took place in Africa.

But now, researchers have found traces of one of the earliest Homo sapiens not in eastern or southern Africa, traditionally seen as the starting point of our evolution, but in the northwestern part of the continent, in Morroco.

"Perforated shells discovered in a limestone cave in eastern Morocco are the oldest adornments ever found and show humans used symbols in Africa 40,000 years before Europe," said the kingdom's government.

They are small oval Nassarius mollusk shells, some painted with red ochre, probably employed for making necklaces or bracelets 82,000 years ago.

"This classes the adornments in Pigeon's Cave at Taforalt as older than those discovered previously in Algeria, South Africa and Palestine. The find represents a big step in the understanding of cultural innovations and the role they played in human history," the Culture Ministry said in a statement.

A previous discovery was of shells that researchers said were as much as 100,000 years old but the dating of those artifacts was not very precise.

In Morocco many interesting prehistoric discoveries have been made, including one of the oldest-known dinosaur skeletons and ancient sharks, but regarding the human inhabitation of the place, little is known about people that inhabited the region before Berber tribes settled the area earlier than 2,000 years ago.

The shells were discovered and investigated by a mixed team of researchers from Morocco, Britain, France and Germany studying how climate and landscape change affected human populations between 130,000 and 13,000 years ago as a part of a broader approach concerning the following issue: if the Strait of Gibraltar dividing Africa from Europe (Morocco from Spain) was a corridor or a barrier for early humans spreading off Africa.