Jomon Civilization (2), earthen vessel 2014/12/07
The invention of earthen vessels was significantly important in the human history. Earthen vessels changed human dietary habits dramatically. Before earthen vessels were invented, human mainly had been eating meats of birds or beasts, and also fish and shellfish.
Earthen vessels enabled people to boil foods and diversify a range of foodstuffs dramatically. Earthen vessels made it possible for people to take and enjoy hard nuts or roots of wild grass and so on. Various ruins revealed that Jomon people ate more than 300 kinds of vegetations. Taking vegetations as foods, people started to settle down at a certain place, instead of moving around and making a temporary nest every night.
Settling down gave people some time for the meditation and some room for keeping goods and gradually it led to the development of the human civilization.
Earthen vessels were really the great invention in the human history and only three areas in the world are considered to develop own earthen vessels. One is West Asia whose oldest vessel is 9000 years old. The other is American continent whose oldest earthen vessel is 7000 years old. Another area is East Asia. Lots of earthen vessels which are more than 10000 years old were excavated from the Japanese archipelago. Among them, the oldest one was excavated from Aomori prefecture which is as old as 16500 years.
By the way, Jomon in Japanese means rope pattern culture. One of the particular features of Jomon vessels is to have Jomon patterns on the surfaces.
People started to use vines as rope, then discovered the way to make ropes by weaving fivers of woods or grasses. It is presumed, at that time, ropes were so important, precious and mysterious that they desired to put rope patterns on vessels.
Another feature of Jomon vessels is their shapes. As you see from the photos, many of them have projections and too big tops comparing with smaller bottoms which make earthen vessels not suitable for daily use. This feature appeared especially after mid Jomon period which indicated people started to spend more time for mediation or religious thinking instead of spending most time for hunting and gathering.
flaming earthen vessel
