The first fired clay
Ceramic figurines are made at Dolni Vestonice 15,000 years before anyone makes a pot.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 4 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 1 thousand years
- Era
- Late Pleistocene, Quaternary
At Dolni Vestonice in Moravia, around 29,000 years ago, people mixed loess with water, modelled animals and female figures, and fired them in kilns at 500 to 800 degrees. Many appear to have been deliberately made damp so they would explode in the fire, suggesting the point was the event rather than the object. It is the earliest known ceramic technology anywhere — and the idea is not applied to containers for another ten thousand years.