Through any combination of the techniques discussed here, by filing, buffing, drilling, etching, or in any other way of shaping the metal to his design, the craftsman finally produces a work of art. As with other artistic endeavors, each culture and each century has left its legacy of jewelry which tells us much of the state of the art and the taste of its devotees. Remarkably, the oldest gold ornaments we know were found in Spanish caves where they were left by their Paleolithic tenants. The famous wall paintings in these caves, and the crude, hammered gold amulets found in the cave sediments, date from about 40,000 B.C. Certainly, gold jewelry was one of the first metals found by man. His copper and iron creations perished with use and age but the chemically inert gold persisted and so developed a place for itself as a special metal for special religious and secular purposes.