Oldest appliance in the world found in China

July 12th, 2012

A 20,000-year-old pottery fragment from what archaeologists think was a cauldron or wok-like pot has been unearthed in Southern China.

Found in Xianrendong Cave, Jiangxi Province, archeologists believe it was a large bowl used to cook food, or possibly to brew booze. The discovery has been published in the last June edition of the journal Science.

Archeologists estimate the pot was 20 centimetres high and 15-25 centimetres in diameter.

It has been confirmed as the oldest piece of pottery found in the world, at least 3,000 years older than pottery found anywhere else and 10,000 years before the emergence of agriculture.

This last point has posed a puzzling situation for archeologists who hitherto have maintained that examples of pottery were demonstrative of sedentary behaviour, as carrying breakable pottery and receptacles was not logical for nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes who moved around.

Recent discoveries have been challenging this idea, according to a report in the BBC.

Extracting more nutrition from food by cooking it may have been a reason for the invention of pottery 20,000 years ago, when the Earth was the coldest it has been for a million years, suggests the report.

Alternatively, the pot may have been used to brew alcohol for social lubrication, that is, to minimise tensions in growing groups of people.

Keri Algar

Having once had to sit on the washing machine to stop it from bouncing into oblivion, Keri is today delighted with the new (smoother running) technologies that make housework easier every day. A self-confessed lazy-bones, Keri seeks out quirky inventions that ease the human workload, such as the robotic vacuum cleaner (wow). And as soon as someone figures out a Jetsons-like self-cleaning house, she will happily lay her pen to rest and retire from appliance journalism. Until then, her pick is a fridge that will tell her smartphone when it's time to pick up more beer on the way home. Magic.