For much of human history, seashells have held a prominent place in our culture. They’ve been used as money, medicine, ornaments, and objects of art. They’ve been weighed, measured, sliced and cataloged by scientists. These natural wonders, strewn along beaches like jewels from the sea, are created by snails, clams, scallops, and other marine mollusks.

We humans wear our bony skeletons on the inside, while showing our softer sides to the outside world. Most mollusks, on the other hand, wear their skeletons on the outside to protect their soft inner bodies. These shells are often striking sitting on a beach; but the stories they tell can give you insight into the realm of the sea. They can also transport you back into the past.

Shells have had an important place in the history of various cultures. The cowry shell, for example, has been used as money, ornaments and charms. For example, to prevent sterility, women of Pompeii wore cowry shells. Cowries were worn by Cro-Magnon man, as indicated by cowry ornaments found in their caves. Archeological excavations of Saxon graves in Germany, as well as pit dwellers of prehistoric England and pre-dynastic Egypt have revealed the use of the shells. Prehistoric cemeteries in the northern slopes of the Caucasus mountains near the Caspian Sea have also contained large numbers of them. As late as the 19th century, cowries were used for money in Uganda and other parts of Africa.

Cowry shells were also important in burial rituals in ancient China. When the emperor of China was buried in those early times, his mouth was stuffed with nine cowries! Feudal lords had seven, high officers five, and ordinary officers three. Common people generally had their mouths stuffed with rice. But if a commoner had some wealth, the last molar of each side of the mouth was supported by a small money cowry. This was to ensure that the dead had plenty to eat and spend in the afterlife.

The shells of some snails were also important to our ancestors. In the 16th Century, natives of Central America dumped Purpura Patula snails into cauldrons and crushed them. The mashed snails oozed purple dye that could color cloth. By 1648, the natives had started producing this dye for export to Spain. Because of the high demand for the dye, they were forced to find ways to maintain their supply while not endangering the population of snails. By imposing conservation measures, they instead learned to pluck a snail off the rocks, gently blow into its shell and collect the dye that trickled out. The snail was then returned to the rocks unharmed.

And Central America wasn’t the only part of the world where clothes were dyed with mollusk juice. Mollusks in the Mediterranean also were used in this way. When Antony and Cleopatra sailed in the battle of Actium, their sails were colored “tyrian purple.” This famous color was derived from shellfish in the Murex family. They were used for this purpose over three and a half thousand years ago on the island of Crete and maybe even earlier by Neolithic Man.

In Babylon, idols were clothed in tyrian purple cloth. Rome’s emperor Nero was the only person in the empire allowed to wear cloth of the color. Dying clothes purple was costly. It took 300 pounds of the liquid dye to dye 50 pounds of wool. But it was long-lasting. Mummy wrappings in some museums, dyed with the purple dye, still show their colors after thousands of years.

Mollusks provided other rare finery for the ancient Mediterranean wealthy. Tufts of golden silk thread were plucked from the Noble Pen shell. They were used to manufacture gloves, stockings, caps, and other specialty clothing. The two foot long threads, called byssus, are fine and strong with a deep bronze gold coloring. They help anchor the pen shell face down on the sea bottom against currents and underwater swells. It’s thought that the Golden Fleece, sought by the legendary Greek hero Jason, was woven from pen shell threads.