Some facts and folklore about the necklace.

• During a cave excavation in South Africa in 2004, scientists found forty one shell fish that may have been strung together for use as a necklace. These shell fish were estimated to be 75,000 years old, thus making this possibly the oldest example of a necklace known.
• Early necklaces were made from various items strung together, as is still done today. Shells, bones, rocks, beads, animal teeth, claws. You name it, someone probably made a necklace out of it.
• The earliest examples of gold used in necklaces dates back to 2500 B.C.E. These were found in royal graves in what is now Iraq.
• Both men and women in ancient Egypt wore necklaces. When Egyptian royalty died, their jewelry was buried with them to be used in the afterlife.
• Some Christians wear a crucifix or cross as a pendant on a necklace, but this did not begin until the 4th century, when Christianity became legal in Rome (soon to become the state religion) and the practice of crucifying was stopped.
• Like all forms of jewelry, the necklace lost its popularity for a time. After the fall of Rome, necklaces were seldom worn until the beginning of the 14th century.
• The Affair Of The Diamond Necklace in France during the reign of King Louis XVI helped further foment opinion against the monarchy before the French Revolution. Queen Marie Antoinette was implicated in the scandal, but she actually had no part in it. It was an intrigue by people in the king’s court to get possession of an expensive diamond necklace for their own profit.
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There is no organ more vital to the survival of a human life than the heart. The heart pumps blood through the arteries to all the various points of our body, carrying oxygen and nutrients to keep our body ticking. Without it, we’d simply be dead. It really is that clear-cut. But underneath this obvious function is a remarkable organ which is tremendously versatile and complex. In this article we’ll look at the whole process of respiration and distribution of oxygen around the body.

The human body functions in constant cycles. Blood is passed through the veins, arteries and capillaries by the heart, which is at the center of the whole process. Blood enters the heart from the lungs and is forced through the body until it is filtered back to the heart which then pumps the blood to the lungs to pick up more oxygen. This oxygen is the result of breathing, and allows bodily cells to function correctly. These cells emit carbon dioxide as a by-product, which we then exhale. From this perspective, the blood could easily be likened to a transport network - the infrastructure supporting the complex operation of the human body.

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