Researched
Pottery & Ceramics
Fired clay makes food cookable and storable: the first material that humans chemically transform to obtain something new.
Open in the interactive tree →The oldest pottery shards come from Xianrendong Cave in China and are about 20,000 years old; at first they were used for cooking. Firing at high temperature turns soft clay into a hard material and taught kiln building, temperature control and glazes. Potters' kilns later gave rise to bricks and metal smelting. With farming, pots became stores for grain, oil and water. A widely discussed hypothesis holds that clay tokens used for counting led to the first writing.
Prerequisites
- Mastering Fire~1.8 million-400,000 years ago
Unlocks
- Settlement & Cities~9000 BC
- Fermented food and drink~7000 BC
- Fired Brick~3000 BC
- Metallurgy (Bronze, Iron)~2500 BCSmelting grew out of the hotter kilns of pottery makers
- Mortar & Roman Concrete~200 BC
- Glassmaking & Glassblowing~50 BC