Web edition: June 28, 2012 Print edition: July 28, 2012; Vol.182
#2 (p. 15) Pottery making got off to an ancient, icy start in
East Asia. Pieces of ceramic containers found in a Chinese cave
date to between 19,000 and 20,000 years ago, making these finds
from the peak of the last ice age the oldest known examples of
pottery. This new discovery suggests that hunter-gatherers in
East Asia used pottery for cooking at least 10,000 years before
farming appeared in that part of the world, say archaeologist
Xiaohong Wu of Peking University in Beijing, China, and her
colleagues. Cooking would have increased energy obtained from
starchy foods and meat, a big plus in frigid areas with limited
food opportunities, the researchers report in the June 29
Science. “The early onset of pottery making meant that food
preparation intensified during the last glacial maximum,” says
Harvard University archaeologist and study coauthor Ofer Bar-
Yosef. Wu, Bar-Yosef and colleagues gathered 45 samples of bone
and charcoal from previous