While I waxed lyrical about Bread a couple days ago, I must confess that, in comparison, ancient Pottery has seemed a little underwhelming. It’s been the part of the museum I slog through, wedged between those fascinating replicas of the Gate of Ishtar and the Egyptian mummies. Oh, look yet another brown glaze!
Yet if there ever was a thing that humans invented and re-invented, in one culture after another, it is cookware. Archaeologists can find buried treasure, in fact, treasure troves just by spotting an ancient “shard” in the trash heaps, among the cigarette butts and plastic bags. Dating the shards can be tricky, but technology has improved its precision. It was once thought that dishes to hold food were created after the invention of organized farming (@10,000 ya), but recent finds on digs have unearthed pots far earlier.
Personally, I can’t tell quartz from limestone, but I’ll bet Paleolithic and Neolithic people could look at the dirt in my neighborhood and explain it to me. Certainly, it makes sense that Stone Age people would have been experts in geology. If they could find the right kind of rocks to hone the points of other rocks and create sparks for fire, then they could make their own rocks, which is why today’s post is all about Dishes. Let’s explore three topics:
- A core definition of the “thing”
- Where and when it happened first “around the world”
- How it influenced human development
