The origin and development of early pottery.
Regarding the origin of pottery, before the latest dating data of Xianren Cave and Yuchanyan were reported, most scholars believed that early pottery had different regions of origin, mainly involving China, Japan and the Russian Far East. The main reason for the scholarly support for the multi-regional origin is that the dating data of the earliest pottery in the above three regions are roughly the same, all of which date back to 14-1.About 30,000 years, it is difficult to distinguish between morning and evening. Another evidence is that the earliest pottery in the above three regions is not quite the same in shape, the earliest pottery in Japan with a multi-round bottom, plain or decorative line, bean grain and claw pattern; Early pottery from the Russian Far East, flat-bottomed, plain or decorated with scraped stripes; The earliest pottery in southern China, decorated with scraped stripes, jomon patterns or plain surfaces; Early pottery in northern China was flat-bottomed ware decorated with shallow rope patterns, additional pile patterns, or plain surfaces.
The pottery kettle unearthed from the Yuchanyan site in Hunan County.
However, as far as the theory of the multi-regional origin of pottery is concerned, there are too many coincidences in terms of distribution area and origin time, which is worthy of further reflection. First, the coincidence of location, why did the world's earliest pottery appear in three roughly adjacent or similar regions, but not in Europe, the Near East, or the Americas? Second, the coincidence of time, why the early pottery is about 1Around 30,000 years in three regions at the same time?
For the long Paleolithic hunter-gatherers of the Old World, their cultural tradition was to learn and use stone tools, or to work with wood and bamboo. These stone, wood, and bamboo objects have similar morphological characteristics, production concepts ("centrifugal processes"), and functions, all of which are closely related to hunting and gathering activities. The morphological characteristics, production concept ("centripetal process") and use function of pottery are different from those of stone, wood and bamboo, which represent the reinvention of new shapes, the focus on new materials, and the transformation of the physical and chemical properties of processed materials. Pottery is a completely different system from stone tool technology, requiring a strong understanding and control of earth, water, and fire. At the same time, the use of pottery is slightly less related to hunting and gathering activities, but is an extension of the scope of hunting and gathering.
In the Levant region of West Asia, thousands of kilometers away from East Asia, the end of the Paleolithic period is 210,000 years to 1The hunter-gatherers of the Kebaran culture and the Natufian culture of about 20,000 years ago formed a highly complex hunter-gatherer society, using stone grinding discs, stone grinding rods, stone pestles, stone mortars, and sickles inlaid with fine stone leaves, and developed a sedentary lifestyle, but these highly developed hunter-gatherers did not use pottery. Not only that, but the Levant region of West Asia is 1Around 20,000 years into the Neolithic Age, there began to be evidence of agricultural economy for the cultivation and domestication of various plants and animals, but its agricultural society has been in the "pre-pottery neolithic" (pre-pottery neolithic), and no pottery was invented and used, and this phenomenon has continued for nearly 4,000 years.
Therefore, the idea of pottery was a completely new category for Paleolithic humans in the Old World, and the complexity of its technical processes showed that its invention was not an easy task. In short, there is a strong sense of "originality" and "non-necessity" in the concept of pottery creation.
In recent years, with the increasing enrichment of early pottery materials, especially the excavators of Xianren Cave and Yuchanyan sites, not only provided systematic dating sequences, but also carried out in-depth burial studies, combined with a variety of primitive characteristics of early pottery in southern China, a variety of evidenceThe earliest pottery vessels first appeared in the hinterland of southern China around 20,000 years ago at the peak of the last glacial period.
After the concept and technology of pottery originated in the hilly area of Jiangnan in southern China, it spread over thousands of years by virtue of the social network of hunter-gatherer groups in the south at that time (including many forms and mediums of communication, such as the migration of people, learning between different groups, intermarriage, exchange, etc.), and then pottery appeared more commonly in Miaoyan, Zongpiyan and Dayan in Guilin area in the southwest of the Nanling Mountains and in Liyuzui, Dingshi Mountain and Niulandong on both sides of the Tropic of Cancer. The invention of pottery technology has broadened the breadth of human life, and pottery can be used as a container to store plant seeds, fruits or animal resources such as fish and mollusks. On the other hand, pottery can be used as a cookware to heat food and eat it, making the food more tasty and digestible, broadening the range of edible or easily edible resources.
We expand the comparison to the Japanese archipelago and the Russian Far East. Chronologically, the early pottery of the Russian Far East, the Japanese archipelago, and northern China is later than that of southern China, supporting the theory of the origin of early pottery in southern China. In terms of the shape of pottery, the early pottery of the Japanese archipelago and the Russian Far East is more diverse and does not have the characteristics of the promiscuous stage. Although Japan is dominated by round-bottomed devices, flat-bottomed devices have appeared; The Russian Far East is dominated by flat-bottomed devices, but there are also a certain number of round-bottomers. Theoretically, the round bottom ware is easier to make due to the simple shape, while the flat bottom ware needs to make the transition between the bottom and the abdomen compared with the round bottom ware, which has higher requirements for pottery making technology. The appearance of "flat-bottomed ware" in early pottery in the Far East of Japan and Russia shows that the stage of pottery development was later than that of southern China, and also supports the theory of the origin of early pottery in southern China. In addition, some scholars have demonstrated the "monism" of the origin of early pottery technology from the perspective of the production, trimming methods and decorative forms of early pottery.
In terms of the assemblage of the artifacts, it seems that the circle bottom ware tradition of early Japanese pottery should be more related to southern China, and its age has been corrected to 140,000 years or 1About 60,000 years, it can even be as early as 1Around 70,000 years ago, its maker may have been "the first user of fine stone leaves to receive a round bottom device" and invented a flat-bottomed jar. In the Upper Paleolithic Age, modern humans emerged and flourished around the world, and they had relatively developed navigation capabilities, such as modern humans who sailed from Southeast Asia to Australia around 5-40,000 years ago. In addition, 1About 70,000 years is close to the peak of the last glacial period, when the sea level height of China's East China Sea should be at least 90 meters lower than the current height, and a large area of continental shelf is exposed (below), when the Japanese archipelago and Chinese mainland are almost integrated, and the newly exposed land not only greatly shortens the distance between the Japanese archipelago and the East Asian mainland, but also should become a space for hunter-gatherers from different regions to compete for development and interaction, providing great convenience for the spread of early pottery to the Japanese archipelago.
The land outcropping during the last glacial low sea level in East Asia is indicated in black to indicate the widely exposed continental shelf.
The tradition of "flat-bottomed ware, supplemented by round-bottomed ware, and co-producing fine stone-leaf tools" in the early pottery of the Russian Far East is most closely related to the tradition of "round-bottomed ware-based, flat-bottomed ware, supplemented by fine-grained stone-leaf tools" in the Japanese archipelago. And the dating of early pottery from the Russian Far East has been corrected to 16-1.about 40,000 years old, slightly later than the Japanese archipelago; Plus the proximity of the geographical location. Together, this evidence suggests that the early pottery tradition of the Russian Far East may have been developed in the Japanese archipelago and developed the flat-bottomed tradition (see Supplementary Table 7).
As for northern China, if it is not found for a long time, it is earlier than 1The 50,000-year-old pottery, because its early pottery is a "flat-bottomed ware with a common fine stone leaf tool" tradition, is very different from the early pottery in southern China, and is closely related to the Russian Far East's tradition of "flat-bottomed ware as the main ware, supplemented by round-bottomed ware and a common fine stone leaf tool", suggesting that it is 1The possibility of close cultural exchanges between northern China and the Russian Far East 10,000 years or earlier has recently attracted the attention of some scholars. In addition, there is various evidence that during the Upper Paleolithic period, the Russian Far East and North China had close cultural exchanges, when hunter-gatherers in Northeast Asia chased the mammoth-woolly rhinoceros fauna southward with climate fluctuations, and left important evidence of cultural exchange in North China with the wedge-shaped stone core as a clue.
The pattern of the stone tool industry in the late Upper Paleolithic period on the eastern side of the Old World.
From another point of view, it can be shown that in the latter part of the late Paleolithic period, the exchange of hunter-gatherer groups between the north and south of the Qinling-Huaihe River line in East Asia was very limited, and this phenomenon did not change until around 8500 years ago, and some scholars have pointed out that around 8500 years ago, there was a phenomenon that people from the Yangtze River basin and the Huaihan region moved northward to the upper reaches of the Huaihe River and the upper reaches of the Han River. At this time, the livelihood and behavior of the hunter-gatherers who used straight-bellied flat-bottomed jars in northern China were gradually changing, and some of them should have been transformed into farmers, and began to settle and cultivate, and the cultural factors of the straight-bellied flat-bottomed jars were well inherited and developed in the Cishan culture and the Xinglongwa culture.
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