The History of Necklaces

THE HISTORY OF NECKLACES

The ancient history of the first necklaces is sketchy at best. The types of necklaces that would have existed anciently were made of the types of materials that would disintegrate leaving little or no evidence of their existence.

Most of the materials used to create necklaces are a matter of speculation. It would stand to reason that the stand of the necklace would be some sort of vine or leather hide strap. The types of pendants would be items from animals in most cases. These ancient necklace pendants would be bones, teeth or other solid animal by products.

As people learned to work with metal then it quickly became natural that people would create necklaces with metal. Because of the love affair mankind has had with precious metals like gold and silver they were quickly the adornment of the rich, the powerful and the religious icons.

Over time people were able to afford precious metal in their jewelry. Over time gold necklaces and silver necklaces were popular and somewhat common. It was discovered that pure gold or silver would loose its shape because the softness of the metal.

Metal workers came up with alloys that preserved the look of gold or silver but was harder and held its shape. That's why gold is referred to in karats, a measurement of how much pure gold verses how much alloy is mixed in with the gold.

The same is true for silver. Actually the alloy of sterling silver is far more simple than gold or any other precious metal alloy. The term sterling refers to an alloy where there is 92.5 % pure silver and 7.5% of other less precious metals like copper, nickel, platinum etc. The sterling standard doesn't concern itself with the 7.5% additives only that 92.7 is pure silver.

Also due to the consistent fact that gold is far more expensive than silver, sterling silver is far more popular among those who prefer fine jewelry. So the sterling silver necklace has been the most popular metallic and precious metal type necklace for over one hundred years.

Sterling silver necklaces cover just about any theme or genre that you might want in a sterling silver necklace.