More on Oldest Pottery Fragments Found in China

From The New York Times

Remnants of an Ancient Kitchen Are Found in China

By SINDYA N. BHANOO
Published: June 28, 2012

Fragments of ancient pottery found in southern China turn out to date back 20,000 years, making them the world’s oldest known pottery — 2,000 to 3,000 years older than examples found in East Asia and elsewhere.

The ceramics probably consisted of simple concave vessels that were likely used for cooking food, said Ofer Bar-Yosef, an archaeologist at Harvard and an author of the study, which appears in the journal Science.

      

“What it seems is that in China, the making of pottery started 20,000 years ago and never stopped,” he said. “The Chinese kitchen was always based on cooking and steaming; they never made, as in other parts of Asia, breads.”

      

The crockery, found in Xianrendong Cave in Jiangxi Province, belonged to a group of mobile foragers, Dr. Bar-Yosef said. They were a hunting and gathering community; plant cultivation and agriculture probably did not arrive until about 10,000 years later.

      

On the other hand, plant cultivation in the Middle East arrived about 1,000 years before it did in China. Still, pottery was not used in the Middle East until much later, Dr. Bar-Yosef said.

      

“The kitchen of the Middle East was probably based on barbecues and pita breads,” he said. “For pita breads, you don’t have to have pottery — you can grind the seeds and mix it with water, and make it over the fire.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: June 29, 2012

An earlier version of this post described incorrectly the origins of pottery in the Middle East. Pottery was not used in the Middle East until much later than it was used in China, but Middle Eastern pottery developed more than 8,000 years ago — not “about 2,000 to 2,500 years ago.

A version of this article appeared in print on July 3, 2012, on page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: Remnants of an Ancient Kitchen Are Found in China.

China Yields Oldest Pottery Fragments

This significant discovery confirms an earlier discovery, also in China, that pushes the invention of pottery back to well BEFORE the invention of agriculture, which occurred more or less about 10,000-9500 BCE.  So, what were people doing with pottery nearly 10,000 years BEFORE actual "agriculture?"  Well, they were hunting and gathering, of course, darlings :)  People needed something to store collected berries, grains, etc. etc. -- something more "permanent" and mouse-proof than woven baskets, for sure!  They also needed something to cook stuff in - besides sticking stuff on top of a flat stone or sticks! 

Well, that's my take on it, anyway.  See what you think:

From Popular Archaeology
The Earliest Known Pottery
June 28, 2012

A team of scientists led by Dr. Xiaohong Wu of Peking University has recently dated sediment layers containing pottery fragments in Xianrendong Cave in China and found them to be approximately 20,000 years old, predating the earliest known pottery dates by about 2,000 years, and predating the advent of agriculture by about 10,000 years. The finding refutes the long-held view that pottery production coincided with the beginning of agriculture.

Pottery fragment from Xianrendong [Image courtesy of Science/AAAS]

Pottery has been considered an important invention in the evolution of human society, as ceramic containers are more effective devices for holding and storing food than other prehistoric human constructs, such as baskets and hide pouches. And unlike other devices used for collecting and storage, pottery was also useful for cooking, an important development in food processing and preparation. Prior to these latest finds, the most ancient pottery, dated to about 18,000 years ago, was also found in China and Japan. The 20,000-year-old fragments date to the time of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), which occurred about 25,000 to 19,000 years ago. Many of these early fragments showed burn or scorch marks, possible evidence of cooking.

States Gideon Shelach of the Hebrew University in his Perspective analysis of the discovery: "The period around the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), about 25,000 to 19,000 years ago, saw the advent of a new technological array that, in addition to pottery, included in many parts of China the production of small flake tools (or microliths) and grinding slab stones. It is widely held that the artifacts produced by these new technologies enabled exploitation of a wider range of plants and animals and more efficient extraction of their nutritional elements through grinding and intensive cooking". Moreover, he adds: "The proverb “necessity is the mother of all invention” not only assumes a direct functional explanation, but also assumes that conditions of stress (caused by external forces, such as climate change, or by internal social tension) force people to change their old ways of doing things. Such assumptions are embedded in the idea that the scarcity of resources during the LGM forced people to develop better ways of collecting and processing food".[1]

In other words, the harsh conditions served as a catalyst for spurring innovation necessary for survival. Humans had to "rise to meet the occasion". So they invented pottery, among other things.
But the extensive, widespread use of pottery as typically depicted within the context of the early human agricultural societies may not have come until perhaps thousands of years after its first use 20,000 years ago. Shelach, in his Perspective, makes this point using the archaeological evidence of grinding stones as an example: ".....The archaeological data suggest that grinding stones only started to be widely used toward the end of the last glacial age, ~13,000 years ago; ceramic production on a larger scale may have commenced even later. It is thus likely that these technologies initially had a much more limited set of functions, and that their full socioeconomic potential remained dormant until ecological and social conditions provided opportunities for the realization of this potential."[1]

The evidence supporting the suggestion that use of pottery significantly predates the development of agriculture could lead to a paradigm shift in the generally accepted scenarios of human socio-economic development. But it could also mean something else -- namely, that the evolution of human socio-economic development differed in different regions of the world. [Or not -- we just haven't found evidence -- yet -- of equally old pottery fragments elsewhere.  Keep looking, I think we'll all be amazed at what will eventually be uncovered as we get more sophisticated in our methodology and analysis :)]

Says Shelach: "More general issues awaiting serious consideration include, for example, whether the fact that in East Asia pottery predates agriculture by some 10 millennia, whereas in the Levant it postdates the transition to agriculture, signifies a fundamental difference in the socioeconomic development of the two regions".[1]

This research appears in the 29 June 2012 issue of Science. Science is published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.
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[1] Shelach, Gideon, On the Invention of Pottery, Science, 29 June 2012, Vol. 336.

Significant Islamic Find in Japan

This discovery could possibly re-write the history, such as it is, of trade between Japan and centers that traded Islamic-made goods in the 8th century CE. 8th century Islamic vase found THE ASAHI SHIMBUN 2009/7/6 NARA--Shards of an Islamic ceramic vase--the oldest uncovered in Japan--were excavated at the former site of Heijokyo palace, municipal researchers said. The 19 pieces of what is believed to be a vase more than 50 centimeters tall date back to the late eighth century, about 100 years earlier than Islamic ceramics found in Fukuoka Prefecture. The researchers believe the vase was used during maritime trade to carry spices from the Islamic world. Tatsuo Sasaki, a professor of archaeology at Kanazawa University, said the finding confirms that Nara was a terminus on the ancient Silk Road of the Sea. Heijokyo was the nation's capital during the Nara Period (710-784).(IHT/Asahi: July 6,2009)

Oldest Known Pottery Discovered in China

I'll keep my eye out for further stories on this - who has the oldest pottery seems to be an area of some contention among archaeologists! Story from digitaljournal.com Archaeologists Discover Oldest Pottery Remains in the World Published 7 hours ago by Christopher Szabo. The remnants of the oldest known pottery have been found in a cave in southern China’s Hunnan province. The pottery shards, estimated at being from about 18,000 years Before Present, or 16, 000 years B.C. The Hungarian-language Mult Kor website said the oldest known rice grains were also found in the Yuchanyan cave site, which scientists say shows an important link between hunter-gatherer cave-dwellers and agriculturalists. Associated Press (AP) reported that Elisabetta Boaretto of Bar Ilan University in Israel believed hunter-gatherers were able to make pottery, something not widely accepted. She added the discovery: Supports the proposal made in the past that pottery making by foragers began in south China. An anthropologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Tracey Lu, explained the significance of ancient pottery finds: Pottery initially serves as a cooking and storage facility. Later on, some pottery vessels become symbols of power and social status, as well as examples of art. Lu said that ancient pottery making was likely spread over a wide area: I agree that pottery was made by foragers in South China, but I also think pottery was produced more or less contemporaneously in several places in East Asia ... from Russia, Japan to North and South China by foragers living in different environments. Until now, the earliest pottery discoveries have come from Japan, at around 17,000 to 16,000 years ago. This form of pottery ware is known as Jomon pottery, and was found on the coast of the island of Kyushu. Like much ancient pottery, it was made of cords pressed into clay and then heated at relatively low temperatures. (600-900 degrees Celsius.)

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For information on Jomon pottery:

Women's Prehistoric Jomon Pottery: History, Illustrations, Links

Japanese Pottery - Clay Figurines from the Jomon Period (some of these sure look like much later eye goddesses that were popular all over the Middle East)

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History - Jomon Culture, Metropolitan Museum of Art

The image above is identified as "incipient" Jomon: [from] The Odai-Yamamoto site has yielded 46 pottery sherds that have been dated by the radiocarbon method to 16,500 BC (NUTA-6510) to14,920 BC (NUTA-6506).

Compare to the Naqada II black and red ware (second image), circa 3550 - 3400 BCE.