Pottery 20,000 years old found in China

POTTERY fragments found in a south China cave have been confirmed to be 20,000 years old, making them the oldest known pottery, archaeologists said.

The findings, in the journal Science, add to recent efforts that have dated pottery piles in East Asia to more than 15,000 years ago, refuting conventional theories that the invention of pottery correlates to the period about 10,000 years ago when humans moved from being hunter-gathers to farmers.

The research by Chinese and American scientists also pushes the emergence of pottery back to the last ice age, which might provide new explanations for the creation of pottery, said Gideon Shelach, chair of the Louis Frieberg Center for East Asian Studies at The Hebrew University in Israel.

"The focus of research has to change," Mr Shelach, who is not involved in the research project in China, said.

In an accompanying Science article, he wrote such research efforts "are fundamental for a better understanding of socio-economic change (25,000 to 19,000 years ago) and the development that led to the emergence of sedentary agricultural societies".

He said the disconnection between pottery and agriculture might shed light on human development in the region.

Wu Xiaohong, professor of archaeology and museology at Peking University and the lead author of the Science article that details the radiocarbon dating efforts, said her team was eager to build on the research.

"We are very excited about the findings. The paper is the result of efforts done by generations of scholars," Prof Wu said. "Now we can explore why there was pottery in that particular time, what were the uses of the vessels, and what role they played in the survival of human beings."

The ancient fragments were discovered in the Xianrendong cave in south China's Jiangxi province, excavated in the 1960s and again in the 1990s.

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