Diffusion of Pottery across Afro-Eurasia - Independent Invention in Sudan?

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MarkoZ

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H/T to Awale Ismail from http://anthromadness.blogspot.de/

If true, this would certainly be a paradigm shift. Though it would explain the late appearance of pottery in the places that connect North Asia and the Middle East, namely the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Abstract:

""Where did pottery first appear in the Old World? Statistical modelling of radiocarbon dates suggests that ceramic vessel technology had independent origins in two different hunter-gatherer societies. Regression models were used to estimate average rates of spread and geographic dispersal of the new technology. The models confirm independent origins in East Asia (c. 16000 cal BP) and North Africa (c. 12000 cal BP). The North African tradition may have later influenced the emergence of Near Eastern pottery, which then flowed west into Mediterranean Europe as part of a Western Neolithic, closely associated with the uptake of farming."

Regarding more recent discoveries in Sudan:

"A number of locations inNorth Africa have sites with pottery dated to the earlyHolocene. Ounjougou, in Mali, has some of the very earliest dates but lies quite distant from the Near East (Huysecom et al. 2009). Pottery that is potentially as early as the Ounjougou material has been found at sites that are geographically closer to the Near East. Bir Kiseiba, in theWestern Desert of Egypt, has the earliest dates coming from site E-79-8, although with large margins of error, and in the central Nile Valley of Sudan, the Saggai site has produced the region’s earliest date for pottery (Close 1995)... We have taken... Saggai in Sudan (e.g. Caneva 1983) as the origin point in Africa. The exact location of the source point in the broader region of origination is unlikely to significantly affect the modelled results.."

Unfortunately, it's not open access. But the supplementary material alone is quite informative, including this awesome map

Pots.png


Link: https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...-researchdiv/1085C3DD5DADB0E15056C2A31AAABF81
 
the data on African pottery is scarce and therefore I suspect the circles in Africa on the map are a gross oversimplification
 
the data on African pottery is scarce and therefore I suspect the circles in Africa on the map are a gross oversimplification

Yeah, things don't get preserved all too well in North Africa.
 
The important point is to be capable to connect, pottery and cultures, like, Comb Ceramic accross north eurasia. Out context artifacts doesnt help, apart in a ethnocentric view ( i made it first ! ).
 
If middle eastern pottery had been invented in mid Nile, then 12kya makes sense roughly. 16kya in China is really early and spreads really slowly. Usually excellent ideas and inventions spread rather quickly, as we see it in transition from PPN to PNeolithic.
 
If middle eastern pottery had been invented in mid Nile, then 12kya makes sense roughly. 16kya in China is really early and spreads really slowly. Usually excellent ideas and inventions spread rather quickly, as we see it in transition from PPN to PNeolithic.

Yeah, I mean can you imagine what life must be like without any kind of solid container? Though bags might have been in use before the development of pottery.

It almost looks like development in North Eurasia was disrupted by the Younger Dryas climatic event. In the Middle East and Africa things look more natural & straightfoward.
 
Could pottery have been E1b1b's secret weapon of expansion? G2a and T1a had farming, but who brought pottery to the Neolithic lifestyle? If it came from North Africa then E1b1b would be a good candidate.
 
Could pottery have been E1b1b's secret weapon of expansion? G2a and T1a had farming, but who brought pottery to the Neolithic lifestyle? If it came from North Africa then E1b1b would be a good candidate.

I think that this could definitely have played a part in the dispersion of E1b1b, though the spread into the Levant seems to predate pottery - see the Natufian HGs.
 
But if pottery is effectively born in two regions, Far East and Africa, maybe that, the african one was somehow blocked by natufians and farmers, and was diffuse of a cultural way, on the contrary, the one from Far East had an almost open space ( all siberia, central asia ) to diffuse both culturaly and demic. Like you said, generally good ideas spread very fast, but not only the idea, also the design, so if pottery was made in sudan, and spread in middle east, there is strong chance that the design and the utility or the way of it use, are the same.
 
But if pottery is effectively born in two regions, Far East and Africa, maybe that, the african one was somehow blocked by natufians and farmers, and was diffuse of a cultural way, on the contrary, the one from Far East had an almost open space ( all siberia, central asia ) to diffuse both culturaly and demic. Like you said, generally good ideas spread very fast, but not only the idea, also the design, so if pottery was made in sudan, and spread in middle east, there is strong chance that the design and the utility or the way of it use, are the same.

Hunters must have made pots too, how else can they carry water on their hunts ?
 
Hunters must have made pots too, how else can they carry water on their hunts ?
A bag/bottle made of leather or such (like a stomach) is a traditional way of carrying liquids, as was done in historical times. Less breakable than a pot. Also water can be carried and stored in baskets lined with mud or pitch or whatnot to make them waterproof, wooden vessels, etc.
 
Hunters must have made pots too, how else can they carry water on their hunts ?
Does the hunter-gatherers who first made pottery had relation with early agriculture ? Or if early farmers who made first pottery, first, made pottery or develope agriculture ? The two origin seems very close to some of earliers agricultures of the history.
 
Hunters must have made pots too, how else can they carry water on their hunts ?

in China pottery was made for cooking
I don't know how it was in Africa
in SW Asia pottery was made for storage of cereals and other foods

pottery spread from China through westwards the south-Siberian steppe
I guess, on the steppe they were cooking soups from all kinds of wild seeds
 
A bag/bottle made of leather or such (like a stomach) is a traditional way of carrying liquids, as was done in historical times. Less breakable than a pot. Also water can be carried and stored in baskets lined with mud or pitch or whatnot to make them waterproof, wooden vessels, etc.

The consensus about ancient hunters in UK and Germany in ancient times ..........especially the great hunts near hamburg -germany was that hunters lived in a camp of about half dozen to a dozen people of which some where females ............whatever container they had, it had to be waterproof . the pots would have been made to help in the cooking , even if the dear meat was cooked directly on a fire
 
The consensus about ancient hunters in UK and Germany in ancient times ..........especially the great hunts near hamburg -germany was that hunters lived in a camp of about half dozen to a dozen people of which some where females ............whatever container they had, it had to be waterproof . the pots would have been made to help in the cooking , even if the dear meat was cooked directly on a fire

You can heat rocks in the fire and then drop them into container to boil water, if the container can't be put directly in the fire. Native Americans did this with birchbark or hide containers. There are many ways of cooking. Where I come from the usual way to cook before iron cookpots were introduced was in a barbecue pit, rather like an East Coast clambake.
 
The consensus about ancient hunters in UK and Germany in ancient times ..........especially the great hunts near hamburg -germany was that hunters lived in a camp of about half dozen to a dozen people of which some where females ............whatever container they had, it had to be waterproof . the pots would have been made to help in the cooking , even if the dear meat was cooked directly on a fire

I think that the consensus is that mesolithic north ouest europe Ahrensburgian already had contact with eastern europe and maybe pottery with the so called post-swiderian horizon.
 
what about leather?
and sewing?

first needles we know were from animal bones,
and surely hunters would not let leather-fleece to go waste,

I think they used animal parts to carry water
 
So all pottery came from NE China? And moved West through trade and people? Does this parallel Asian dog domestication?
 

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