Pottery

(c. 10,000 B.C.E.)

The first fired clay pots were made by Japanese hunter-gatherers.

We don't know who came up with pottery, as is the case with all early inventions. No first potter inscribed their name or initials in a pot's base to win first place. The creative individual, whoever they may have been, was thought to have resided someplace in the Near East of Asia for a very long time. Therefore, it came as a bit of an archaeological shock when, in the 1960s, pots from around 10,000 B.C.E. were found at Nasunahara on the island of Kyusu in Japan, on the far eastern border of Asia.

 Instead of settled farmers or city residents, these pots were manufactured by nomadic hunter-gatherers and were discovered in caves.Equally significant. The fact that the clay was heated or fired in order to harden it to create the pots suggests that these individuals were knowledgeable about cutting-edge technologies.

The fact that the earliest Japanese pottery is about 1,000 years older than the earliest pottery produced in the Near East is significant. These Iranian pots were created using a considerably more rudimentary technique than firing the clay: drying it in the sun to harden it.

The bases of Japanese pots are rounded, and they gradually spread to ridged tops and rounded, incised rims. They were the precursors to the jômon, or "cord-marked," vessels that were created in Japan approximately 9000 B.C.E. They are known as Incipient Jômon.We don't know who came up with pottery, as is the case with all early inventions. No potter ever engraved their name or initials onto a pot. These latter pots were constructed by stacking clay coils to get the appropriate shape and had pointed bottoms. The patterns on the cord-marked pots were frequently highly intricate, indicating that they were meant more for ceremonial or burial purposes than for regular usage like cooking and storing food.