Tool manufacture and use is often considered to be utilitarian, but it does not have to be for purely practical purposes. Human cultural expression includes the production and aesthetic significance of jewelry, clothing, and other items. At Santa Elina in Brazil, stone tools are intermixed with the fossils of the extinct ground sloth Glossotherium phoenesis, which grew 10 to 13 feet long and weighed 1.1-1.6 tons. These fossils include thousands of osteoderms, bones found in the skin similar to the armor on an armadillo. Three of these osteoderms had holes drilled into them by humans, which indicates they were pendants to be worn. The earliest human activity at this site, including these giant sloth bone pendants, dates to 27,000 years ago meaning that modern humans reached central Brazil prior to the last glacial maximum around 20,000 years ago. This study suggests modern human migration into the Americas is much older than previously accepted.

These findings were presented in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B on July 12th, 2023, by Thais Pansani and colleagues.