Earliest known gold necklace discovered in Peru

The earliest known gold jewelry made in the Americas has been discovered in southern Peru. The gold necklace, made nearly 4,000 years ago, was found in a burial site near Lake Titicaca, researchers reported in yesterday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The discovery "was a complete shock", said Mark Aldenderfer, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona. "It was not expected in the least," he said in a telephone interview. "It's always fun to find something and go, 'Wow, what is that doing here?'"

In the past, it had been assumed that a society needed to be settled to produce agricultural surpluses that can support activities such as making ornamental objects, he explained.