Chapter 2 Chapter 2 Making pottery is the earliest creative labor of human beings

It is not difficult for people living today to make a piece of pottery or obtain a piece of pottery.Pottery is common and cheap.But the invention of pottery is the earliest creative labor achievement of human beings.Since the beginning of human history, human beings have struggled hard for their own survival, and the first thing to be solved is the problem of diet.Before the invention of pottery, people searched everywhere for food, gathered or hunted for food and clothing.When you are hungry, you look for food, and when you are full, you discard the rest.The food is raw, not easy to digest, not conducive to the body to absorb nutrients, and even cause various diseases.Later, people gradually realized that cooked food is not only delicious, but also beneficial to the body from the food that has been burned in the sky.This impels people to explore unremittingly for obtaining cooked food.The earliest and easiest way for people to obtain cooked food is to grill food on a warm bonfire. According to ethnological data, some ethnic groups first dig a pit with stones, remove the skin and internal organs of the prey, put them in the pit, and cover them with hot ash. , until the animal meat is cooked, take it out and eat it.There is also a pool built with stones, put water in the pool, put fresh meat in, light a pile of firewood beside it, and throw hot stones into the pool continuously until the meat is hot enough to eat.Some ethnic groups put animal meat in woven nets, soak it in high-temperature spring water, soak it and take it out for consumption.

During the long years of obtaining cooked food, people have been working hard to create a simple and ideal utensil for cooking food and storing food that cannot be consumed temporarily.After long-term experiments and unremitting exploration, pottery has gradually become the most ideal utensil.People choose a kind of clay suitable for pottery making, and through crushing, selection, watering and kneading, it is molded into a certain shape according to the needs of daily life, dried to a certain degree, set up a fire for roasting, and burned to 600- At 800°C, after a certain period of time, the structural water between the mud particles is removed, and it becomes a durable vessel.The creative invention of pottery transforms human beings from the gift of nature into changing the nature of natural objects through creative labor, making them suitable for their own use, and achieving the purpose of improving living conditions.From the perspective of the history of science and technology, it is a major achievement in the history of human science and technology.Marked the beginning of human civilization.

When the Paleolithic Age ended and the Neolithic Age began, China already had the conditions to invent pottery.This is mainly due to: First, the level of productivity achieved in the Neolithic Age was not only established but also initially developed in agriculture and animal husbandry.Chinese archaeologists have discovered thousands of Neolithic sites all over the place.Scientific excavations have been carried out unremittingly for many years. Whether in the north or the south of China, regardless of the early Neolithic sites or the sites of the prosperous period of the Neolithic Age, most of them have remains and relics of agricultural production, such as Stone plow, stone adze, stone sickle, etc.Some also have tools for processing grain, such as stone grinding discs and grinding rods.Many huge grain processing tools were unearthed at the Cishan Cultural Site in Wu'an County, Hebei Province, and the Peiligang Cultural Site in Xinzheng County, Henan Province, about 7,900 years ago.At the Hemudu cultural site in Yuyao, Zhejiang, a large amount of rice and animal bones left over from people's food were found.Pottery makers also engraved images of rice grains on pottery for decoration.In some places, there are traces of grain grains on the surface of pottery.China has a vast territory, and the cultural development of each Neolithic Age has great differences.But no matter what, as long as the clan that produced pottery had agriculture or animal husbandry.

Due to the initial development of agriculture and animal husbandry, compared with people in the Paleolithic Age who relied on hunting wild animals and gathering wild plants for food, people were more confident in controlling and expanding their food sources.When the source of food is indeed guaranteed, it is required to improve the quality of the diet, and then require cooked food to store unfinished food.Life is inseparable from water, and water collection and storage are as important as food storage.The utensils used for cooking food, storing food, drawing water and storing water cannot be solved by collecting natural objects, and can only be created by human beings.This prompted people to invent pottery.

Second, the initial settled life.After you end your wandering life and settle down, a village will appear.A man goes hunting in the forest, chasing wild beasts.Women preside over household chores, raise children, gather food, till the land, and create implements that improve life, such as weaving and sewing clothes, and using clay to make pottery.Judging from the original division of labor of human beings, pottery may have been invented by women. For example, the Dai people in Yunnan and the Gaoshan people in Taiwan all made pottery by women.Many historical facts show that a clan with an uncertain life, wandering around, begging for food when hungry, and abandoning surplus when full has no conditions to make pottery.The production process of pottery is very complicated, and the finished product is fragile. The clans that migrated everywhere could not use pottery in large quantities.Settlement is conducive to the development of production, and the demand for utensils for cooking and storing food is stronger.Some nomadic peoples in the world, such as the Oroqen people in Northeast China, do not know how to make pottery today, and the clans in the semi-nomadic state have a very low level of pottery manufacturing and few types.People who have agriculture and live a settled life can produce many kinds of exquisite pottery despite their backward social form.For example, the Wa people in Yunnan, China, were still in the matriarchal society before 1949, but they had agriculture and settled villages, and the pottery they made was quite beautiful.

Third, in the long-term production practice, especially in the agricultural production practice, ancient humans have improved their scientific knowledge, gained a better grasp of the physical and chemical properties of soil, and realized that the material of aluminosilicate, such as soil, can After crushing, mixing with water, kneading into various shapes, it can hold things, and then can make various utensils suitable for daily needs.According to the earliest utensils discovered in various places, all of them were utensils with a certain curvature and a round (huan) bottom shape. It is estimated that the earliest pottery may be made by imitating the outline of plant fruits such as gourds, or by taking some part of them. Different shapes are made according to the needs of different purposes.The more proficient the skill is, the more forms can be produced.If fine sand or other materials are properly added to the pottery clay, high-temperature-resistant vessels can be produced, and they can be used as cooking utensils.

Fourth, by the Neolithic Age, humans had hundreds of thousands of years of experience in using fire. During the long-term dealing with fire, people learned that fire can not only keep out the cold, drive away poisonous snakes and beasts, barbecue food, but also change the quality of matter. performance, and use your wits to control the fire.After the clay utensils are fired, they become hard and strong, not afraid of moisture, and easy to use.Therefore, it can be said that people making pottery is the art of fire.Of course, it's not as easy as we make it out to be.The initial firing of pottery may be accidental, for example, there are many materials in the clan's house, and there are also utensils made of clay.Once the fire came, people fled in panic.By the time the fire was extinguished, the house and all organic matter had been consumed.Only clay vessels not only have not been reduced to ashes but are durable, even if they are broken into pieces, their hard and durable characteristics will also inspire people and arouse people's continuous exploration.I don't know how many experiments and how many generations of experience accumulation, people gradually mastered the rules of pottery making, and summed up a set of scientific pottery making procedures.For example, the choice of soil, although clay is used to make pottery, and soil is everywhere, but not all clay can be used to make pottery.There are many types of soil on the earth, and various soils show different physical and chemical characteristics due to different components.Some are suitable for pottery, and some are not suitable for pottery.If the clay is too viscous, it will look like a stone without water, and it will look like rotten porridge after soaking in water. If it is too hard, the vessel will crack when it is burned.If the sand content of the soil is too large and the looseness is too strong, it will crack when it is dried in the sun, and it will disperse when it is fired, and it cannot be made into pottery.According to the physical and chemical tests and analysis of various types of pottery in the Neolithic Age, the soil suitable for making pottery is river sedimentary soil, loess and black soil with moderate chemical composition.