Jewelery
It’s interesting to think who first came up with the idea of using jewelery to decorate women. Jewelery was probably first used as some sort of magical power or as a charm to ward off evil, by men. At that time women probably looked at the charms longingly and wished she could get some for herself. This would have been prohibitive, either because all the jewelery was made by men who owned whatever tools were necessary for cutting the materials and drilling holes through it for threading onto some sort of fiber. Items such as animals’ teeth which would have been hunting trophies were hard to drill through and it must have been a painstaking task to drill the hole with apiece of flint.
It was probably a man who had the idea of putting a piece of jewelery in his mate’s hair or ears to ‘improve’ or simply to adorn her. However the jewelery business industry started, the competition must have been immediately fierce. At that stage the women were completely passive in the choice of their jewelery. Only when mirrors became available could women take an active interest in how their jewelery suited them, which items enhanced their looks and which detracted. Once gold became available the game would have changed completely and the advent of precious stones and diamonds must have brought another stunning change.