Initially 5,000 years ago, with Europe’s oldest know preserved human – a man named Ötzi, who was frozen in the Alps between circa 3300 BC and September 1991, his perfect preservation allowed archaeologists to speculate about our ancestors’ lives, they made another remarkable discovery – Ötzi’s ears were pierced with large holes, suggesting he’d worn heavy earrings for much of his life. This revelation placed the earliest known evidence of humans wearing earrings one thousand years earlier than first thought.