The Unexpected Item That Turned Hunter-Gatherers Into Empire Builders | BBC Timestamp

[@BBCTimestamp]

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[@JS-jh4cy]

Simple common sense, you get tired dragging your ass all over the country to get fish and meat, when you realize you can grow it

[@JS-jh4cy]

You can't go hunting and fishing every damn day and expect to have something to eat

[@davidclark573]

I wrote a book, Homoexternicus, The direction of Man that explains a theory that predicts the direction of human civilization.

[@joshuataylor3550]

SOMEONE ORDER A CHINESE??

[@arjan2777]

@@JS-jh4cyActually they did so for a very long time and it worked quite well. With agriculture you can feed more people but they have to work harder and their diet is worse.

[@stuartbroadhurst7523]

I am a potter and became fascinated with ceramics as when I was a boy I made a fire on a bed of clay not knowing what clay even was. The following day I realised when mucking about with the ash that the clay had gone hard. This got me thinking so I asked my Dad and he said ‘yea that’s how pots are made’, so that was it and I’ve been a potter all my life. Often I wonder if that’s how it all started.?

[@nmarbletoe8210]

cool!

[@bloodlove93]

many things in humanities past,especially early days were just kinda stumbled upon so i wouldn't be surprised if they discovered it in essentially the same way you did.

[@hefruth]

Most likely an accident like that, or even observing that their normal fire pits made some ground harder than other soils, led to the earliest discoveries of making ceramics, which came before making pots for cooking (although the technology spread rapidly once ceramic pots were produced successfully). We know that a shaman from Dolne Vestonici knew that semi-dried clays shaped like animals would make spectacular explosions in bonefires about 26 thousand years ago (aka one of the first verifiable shaman who could control three elements--earth, water, and fire), so it took awhile for others to refine the process enough to make pots. It was through the pottery making process, however, that metallurgy started because, unlike the open fire they built in this video, people quickly learned how to make kilns and pot pits into which the green pottery was placed with long straws poking into the burning matter surrounding them into which the shaman or potters blew in order to make the fires hotter--thus separating natural copper in malachite, which would have been used to temper the pots, from the clay during firing, leaving slugs of raw copper in the bottom. Later, someone realized that the copper too the shape of whatever it fell on as it cooled, so someone fashioned the first mold into which the metal would fall. In this way, the first copper awls were probably produced that made sewing much easier. Eventually leading to molds large enough to hold knife shapes (possibly leading to the "sword in the stone" mythology).

[@stuartbroadhurst7523]

@@hefruth yea sounds very plausible also having cast bronze and even forging iron I suppose there was a lot of of experimentation. Actually I am 66 and still experiment as a potter with different glazes and learn all the time. I built my first very basic kiln aged 10 and it sort of worked now I fire in a home made hybrid kiln that runs on wood,gas and charcoal. I have an electric kiln but never feels real I like to see a flame.

[@hefruth]

@@stuartbroadhurst7523 Sounds cool. I did ceramics as a project in 4H as a kid, and learned to shape glass a bit when I took a class during my doctoral work. There are several scholars out there who argue that metallurgy was discovered as a by-product of ceramic making, so I found the theory quite plausible, too, especially the more I learned about how the earliest forms of copper made a natural, silvery bronze because it often had arsenic in it naturally. It wasn't until they learned to combine it with tin that we get the more golden bronze.

[@jameshorn270]

I think people underestimate the simple knot. Once you tie knots, you can tie stone tools to handles and shafts. You can also make rope, and weave baskets. It might be that the idea of pots may have come about because of an attempt to make baskets waterproof by covering them with clay. An accidental high temperature fire could have set the stage for conversion from baskets to pots for some storage.

[@doomoo5365]

I heard that that's how they know that neanderthals had woven products like clothing and baskets and floor mats is because it left imprints on the earth and clay

[@jimnagel5611]

AND MANY UNDERESTIMATE THE DOG -- MANKINDS VERY FIRST 24/7 ALARM SYSTEM - QUITE LITERALLY - MANS BEST FRIEND

[@TimothyWhiteheadzm]

Actually stone tools are usually connected to shafts using some form of glue (eg tree sap). Making rope does not require knots but rather the reverse, you need rope to make knots. Weaving isn't really a knot. It is true though that the most primitive cultures make use of rope and knots because they are so readily available and require minimal technological know how. In many locations there are tries with bark that can be removed in strips and used to tie things.

[@tconnolly9820]

​@@jimnagel5611Don't shout. It just makes you annoying.

[@jameshorn270]

@@TimothyWhiteheadzm Ropes and baskets have to be tied off somewhere or they unravel. I used to spend time practicing whipping rope ends when I was a boy scout. And sinew was probably used to tie heavier tools to shafts. Smaller tools like arrowheads are generally glued. In general, because textiles are not generally preserved well, they do not play a big role in the history of early technological development. I suspect that such techniques long predate the oldest preserved examples.

[@Graybeard_]

My mom was into pottery when I was a kid. She had her own kiln. There was a bank of clean clay on the road into our property. One day my mom decided to make a pot with the clay and fire it in a campfire. She placed the pot on the edge of the fire, turning it and slowly moving it into the center of the fire. As I watched her, I had an idea of how pottery may have started. If hunter/gatherers had made a clay depression (similar to what is demonstrated in this video) to either heat water or some other liquid and used the same setup for several days to a week, the clay may have inadvertently become fired after several camp/cooking fires to the point where the now "pot" could be lifted from the dirt and carried to a new camp, saving time.

[@Spockfucious]

Possibly started by accident. For example, a woven bowl shaped basket was being used to scoop out or carry mud. Was discarded in a fire and when the fire died the basket material had burnt away leaving the bowl shaped baked mud. Probably wasn’t useable but would have been the spark to get people to see the potential and start experimenting.

[@linggiman]

I like the idea

[@atlittlefarm]

you've clearly never burnt anything. That would leave a pile of ash. It wouldn't burn a depression, it would do the exact opposite

[@Baysha1000]

@@atlittlefarm they're talking about burning a basket that is covered with a layer of mud. The basket forms a scaffolding for the mud. And then in the fire, the basket itself burns and leaves behind the (now hardened) mud layer in the shape of the basket.

[@supplican]

They would have seen how clay naturally dried and hardened in the hot sun a million times. It wouldn’t take any stroke of genius to realise the heat from a fire would do the same thing quicker and in a more controlled way.

[@Baysha1000]

@@supplican you are mistaken. Sun dried clay is useless for holding liquids because it will dissolve again. Fire doesn't do the same thing as just drying it in the sun, it does something very different - essentially turning clay into stone. Just realising the difference is not trivial. ​ Also, firing clay isn't faster than drying it in the sun. The opposite, actually. You can't put moist clay in the fire because it will crack or even explode. It needs to thoroughly dry first. Figuring out the technology (what type of clay to use, how to fire it so that it turns into pottery, how to make sure it doesn't crack in the process etc.) is quite complicated.

[@TheRoulette77]

NOT FAIR !!! you cant just bring out Prof. Roberts for only 4min....i was just getting setttled ready for a good 1.5 -2 hrs of soothing Archaeolegy , as ceramicist this was such a tease!!! WE DEMAND MORE !!! lol thanks for all you do

[@patrickbenthamradley5429]

Hi Alice Roberts ! I think you have made a couple of simple mistakes here : 1/ : The temperature in a fire/ bonfire / campfire can easily reach 900 degrees ( So-called "Red heat" ) easily turning clay into usable ceramics. 2/ : Hunter-gatherers had long been using baskets to store nuts, berries etc, but needed some means of storing / carrying water. the theory I have heard and believe is that the use of wet clay liners to turn baskets into buckets may have, through some accidental fire burning down a stone-age shelter, resulted in the discovery that the (dry) clay liners therein had miraculously been turned into ceramic pots in the flames ( 900 degrees C )... Hence the sudden proliferation of pots of various shapes and sizes decorated with basket weave patterns!

[@nocraic]

Yeah , you know more than a professor and all the other professors who back up her opinions because you watched KZbin

[@derrickstorm6976]

Why would you line a straw basket with clay, it won't hold water anyway so now you have a not-bucket that weights a ton and is not portable

[@amosungar5248]

How would that work if the clay wasn't dry? It would just turn the water muddy

[@twood2032]

I think I will take a professor's word than yours. On top of that, what she showed us is the earliest record of Chinese ceramics dating back 12000 years. Early human engineering is hard to come by, and turning clay into usable ceramics marks the beginning of something new. The level of engineering that goes into making straw baskets was not the same as ceramics.

[@patrickbenthamradley5429]

@@nocraic NO! Just having worked with ceramics for 50 odd years !

[@preachyourstory3452]

Sorry to spoil the video, Prof. Roberts, but we've known since 1968 what turned hunter-gatherers into empire-builders: The Monolith. For confirmation, see '2001: A Space Odyssey'!

[@rosebrown6128]

😂😂😂Best remark!

[@hook-x6f]

for confirmation you have a fictional movie. that says it all right there. gmab

[@edwardofgreene]

@@hook-x6f *documentary

[@DanieHattingh]

Wonderful documentary that. Very informative.

[@BobbyBaloney]

True

[@davidcattin7006]

Who else was disappointed this wasn't Philomena Cunk? ;o)

[@NoahSpurrier]

I was thinking the same thing!

[@The_Savage_Wombat]

Philomena needs to interview Alice. It would be a gas.

[@CamBridge-ii9mu]

"So smoking pot gave us civilization? That seems very hard to believe, don't you think?" I hear that in Philomena's voice...

[@thomasauslander3757]

Actually it's a primitive toilet bowl 🥣 can build civilization without pooping. 🚽

[@Pados_music]

I wasn't, someone should give us information about early humans, so all that bullsh$t about lost advanced civilization will stop.

[@toddpellegrin8903]

Agriculture was the ultimate key to empire building. It allowed people to pursue other activities besides food. Once food was secure then you can dedicate resources on warfare and technology improvements and simultaneously support a larger community. Then you start expanding by taking other peoples communities and taking their stuff.

[@m6smitten]

Now they want reparations.

[@bertkreft9689]

maybe the opposite is the case? first of all the population grew thanks to the intensive use of the land - at some point more land was needed - and people thought that this was the solution - until the population grew again

[@robertscheinost179]

I disagree. The reason people settled in one area was so they could ferment plant based materials into alcoholic beverages and grow mind-altering drugs. What was available for only a week or two became available throughout the year. The domestication crops and animals came after. This view is becoming increasingly popular in the anthropological community. Anatomically modern humans have been physically unchanged for at least 250,000 years. It is only over the last 15,000 years when people slowly settled down in fortified villages. The fact is that nobody was around to record exactly when and why mankind settled in fortified villages. We are people whose genetics have evolved for hunting-gathering. We are bred to be hunter-gatherers and are living a life that works against our genetic makeup. How successful the social experiment called "civilization" turns out going forward remains to be seen.

[@track1949]

Domestication of certain animals.

[@track1949]

​@@m6smitten People, long dead, who usually get credit for this, in the Fertile Crescent, want reparations?

[@azigar]

I really love primitive style pottery, and I fell in love with the pot you guys made.

[@tarp-grommet]

Making and firing clay pottery is such a rewarding activity. We still fire pots in wood fires just for the sheer fun of it. Some of the most beautiful pottery is made this way (see Navajo). I have no doubt that early potters did it as much for the pleasure as the utility. One can get interesting effects by wrapping them with simple materials like seaweed before firing.

[@RobeLifeMusic]

2:54 - Common Chinese filler word "nèi ge" usually meaning "that".

[@Cooter--l._.Y._.I]

Thank you my nèi ge

[@vijaynair2403]

@RobeLifeMusic I came to the comment section to post just this. You beat me to it! 😂

[@jonnynice8366]

that was actually English

[@mmwrangler]

I had to caution my Chinese friends about using it in American KFC’s .

[@richardshort3914]

I don't know anything about pottery, but shouldn't she have taken off her rings before working the clay?

[@bloodlove93]

idk either but....i guess wash em really good? lol idfk i don't wear rings or work with clay....not since grade school class projects that is and i don't bother thinking much beyond a decade in the past most the time,not much worth remembering.

[@AreHan1991]

Actually it was millett that fuelled the first civilizations of China. Rice came a bit later

[@doomoo5365]

I was just reading about that when I did a search about whether ornamental Millet was edible

[@marshalmcdonald7476]

Nah, it was Frosted Flakes. Either that or Honey Nut Cheerios.

[@agnelomascarenhas8990]

Millet is correct. It is an arid zone C4 plant, tough. Rice is a river valley thing, delicate C3 photosynthesis. Pottery is old like 18,000 years in the Amur basin and this location perhaps. Rice is younger than 8000 years in domesticated form.

[@laxman90210]

Read it as “mullet” 😅

[@LecherousLizard]

You can mix crushed (failed) pots into the clay to prevent it from cracking. Also there's no need to form any "pits" to shape pottery.

[@ShinyAnvil]

Even simple man made wood fires can produce way more than 250° Celsius (or Fahrenheit). Ember temperatures usually range between 750-1070°C (1382-1958°F) under regular burning conditions. Once you add forced air, either by blowing through a tube (bamboo for example) or use simple skin bellows the temperature can be increased even more.

[@jimmyfitz8168]

Fascinating Alice but you forgot to mention how old this fragment was.

[@siler7]

Your comment contains two errors.

[@jimmyfitz8168]

@@siler7 Thank you for your reply. What are my two errors?

[@chicagorandy]

Where were educators like Professor Roberts when I was in college back in the Stone Age (1967+) ?

[@richarde3378]

🤣

[@scharfoskar3254]

They were sitting next to you

[@tristanbareham5638]

An open firing, such as the one shown, exposes the pots to 750-850 degrees centigrade- not 250 degrees as quoted. Probably a mistranslation. At 250 degrees the clay would not have become a ceramic.

[@thenson509]

Try Celsius and not Fahrenheit.. multiple by 5. Then divide by 9 to get the Fahrenheit value.

[@Sitiveni12]

"Degrees centigrade" is Celsius

[@vincentvega5686]

LOL

[@permabroeelco8155]

A grass fire has quite low temperatures, but I saw some wooden poles. She told she wasn’t certain about the results, but was surprised. I don’t know the bottom limit temperature of pottery, but I read that for example ‘Swifterbant-pottery’ in the Netherlands seems to have been made at a temperature of about 350-400 centigrade. But if the cooking temperature exceeds the manufacture temperature, it will probably crack.

[@tristanbareham5638]

@@permabroeelco8155 Hi - thanks for your comment. There are four stages which can take place when a ceramic is created - dehydration, water smoking, sintering and vitrification. Dehydration involves the removal of mechanical water - this takes place up to 100 degrees. It is followed by the removal of water combined in chemical form - ie hydroxyl groups, this takes place around 500 degrees and is non reversible. Then sintering starts and this goes up to 950 (ish) and is time dependent. Then vitrification which typically takes place after 1250 and leads to stonewares. I have undertaken several hundred experimental archaeological firings and made recordings of fuels and temperatures at various points in various period based kilns. An open firing such as this can have significant temperature variability throughout its structure. The ceramics produced are particularly affected by maximum temperature and longevity in a heat environment over 800 degrees. Got these fuels and environmental

[@mschluper]

Dr. Alice Roberts can make even a shard of an ancient pot interesting.

[@track1949]

Great teachers do this. They can transfer their love of a subject in ways that are meaningful, relatable and fun at the same time. It's a gift! 🎉

[@eaglescouttrooper7969]

Really ? I averted my eyes & listened in

[@hook-x6f]

@@eaglescouttrooper7969 you got probs too

[@eaglescouttrooper7969]

@hook-x6f yes, it's called being domestically abused by mother as an infant, what's your point . . ?

[@berettaguy923]

The beautiful Professor, charming everyone with her rosy cheeks and endless knowledge.

[@blindpilot9403]

First pots where not intentionally hand built. They were incidental. Wherever we gathered there was fire. Some naturally accrued many were expanded and transported from those natural ones. The transported fires occasionally landed on top of clay deposits near water basins and rivers. The long burning fires pushed the surface of clay deposits to sintering temperatures resulting in well hardened sherds, irregular plates and occasionally bowl shapes. These early incidental pottery were found after some fires ran out and while we looked for bones of the animals we cooked in fire. Cleaned bones for primitive tools and sintered clay for gathering, cooking and preserving food and water. BTW, the very first metals were also found under the long burning fire pits on the metal rich rocks.

[@JM-cf9xy]

Interesting theory about clay but it doesnt have anything to with metals

[@blindpilot9403]

@@JM-cf9xy True, true. Hence the BTW

[@bangalorebobbel]

yeah such a hypothesis could be right, at least partially. Seems in those days, cooking was already done in earth holes which were anyhow proofed to keep water inside, by putting water and food inside the hole and adding heated stones in order to give the water a boil. Maybe they found out that holes digged in clay keep water better than other underground, or used clay instead of fur pieces or big leaves in order to make the hole water tight. When you see here how they use ground holes to form pots that comes automatically in your mind. And if you use such holes not only for cooking with water but also as fire pits, you might automatically find out that clay gets hard if there is enough heat. Yet we should admit that we have no proof for such ideas were ever reality, and also experimental archeology can not bring that proof but just give us some ideas and options about how it could have happened ... And about your BTW: yes I agree that fire might have been the source of many accidential inventions, it was surely essential for our success in survival and progress as a species. For example it also seems many people guess that the famous pine glue which was used in stone age for keeping the first stone weapons together was most probably found initially as some residue under a badly maintained wood fire ... ;-)

[@blindpilot9403]

@@bangalorebobbel I recall from the behavioural study of species that all apparent intentional behaviours started either as reactionary responses to environmental effects or from found naturally occurring rewards. As cognitive specious we simply mimic and simplify the found and observed events. So, gathering around a hole in the ground and shaping a mound of already processed clay into a hole happened at a much later stages of that behaviour as we developed the primitive control mechanism for that process. On the BTW side of this thread, the finding of cooled molten copper and other low ( comparatively ) melting metals emanating from the rocks containing those metal-salts most likely happened the same way. Those copper rich rocks around the long burning fires eventually released some copper and cooled after pooling under or away from the fire pit. Perhaps some early human got a nasty cut on his/her toe from the rough blade looking shiny thing. And the post-bone tools era was born and early years of bronze age began. Again, abbreviating the function of making clay vessels as described and broadcasted in this documentary is arguably spreading miss information.

[@bangalorebobbel]

@@blindpilot9403 "that all apparent intentional behaviours started either as reactionary responses to environmental effects or from found naturally occurring rewards. As cognitive specious we simply mimic and simplify the found and observed events." Just to say it: I doubt that this hypothesis is the only true explanation as many species also tend to play around and to experiment, besides learning from others, and there is some good plausibility that learning new skills or uses of anything happen not only as repeated responses to repeated stimuli. Primates or some birds like craws or parrots use primitive tools, and with some experience they even tend to choose the best ones for a certain purpose. Just for example. It is also very common among different species to try to use already known skills for other uses, I remember very well the story told by a friend who observed a jungle crow who had obviously learned to dip food into water before eating (maybe in order to get rid of sand or so as it was near to the beach, or maybe in order to soften the food, who knows). He couldn't stop laughing while he told that this crow stole some of his sugar cubes when he had breakfast on his hotel balcony, and dipped these cubes into water ... I agree that accidential findings near or under fires might start further experiments, as any other accidential findings might also use to do. But I highly doubt that mimicing and simplifying is the main aspect in new inventions and skills.

[@alaakela]

Ppl forget how much TIME ppl had back then. How much ppl could observe and experiment. And that innovations back then took hounds of years.

[@norwegianzound]

He means people

[@chumleyk]

On the contrary, people didn't have time at all back then - their whole schedule was based on the weather, nature, and survival and looking for the next meal. Experimentation and innovation as we know it is a civilisational luxury that can only be done if the basics of life are met and there is a need for it. Thats why innovations took a long time to happen, and even when they did they had to be communicated which would also take many many generations

[@stonehengemaca]

@@chumleyk I don't think they struggled to hunt or gather food at all, the same way WE don't struggle to travel to a supermarket and pick up what we need. Our struggle is that we are forced to dedicate 40 hours a week, all available light in some instances, working a job just to afford to go to the shop. I'd swap in lifestyles in an instant.

[@WS_00]

Ah yes, hounds of years. Or better known as dog years 🐶

[@ronin4713]

@@WS_00 Cry havoc! And let slip the hounds of years!

[@iCover480]

Imagine seeing fire for the first time? And then the feeling they had after the first was inadvertently blown out with no way to start a new fire?

[@BW022]

Umm... there are lots of precursors to clay pots. Ask any good survivalist. You have baskets and animal skins which can hold items, including water. You can make bowls out of wood, bone, stone, gourds, or even bark. Any of which are fine for cooking. You can also solve any need to fireproof your cooking 'pot' by simply keeping keeping the container out of direct flames (i.e. put some rocks around the fire and then the baskets or animal skins on the other side of the rocks.) This would lead to crude 'ovens' where you have raised stone slaps with the fire below. Cooking without clay pots would be trivial. Clay would probably have been used as a construction material long before pottery. Walls, rooves, etc. of huts., to line firepits, for early irrigation channels, for outdoor basins for water or food storage, etc. Using it for pots would likely evolve from these.

[@turinturambar347]

Yes, but you can industrialize the production of clay pots, which makes them much more readily available and requires far less input to produce, thus freeing people up for other activities. It's not the key to civilization or anything, but it helps on that path.

[@mmasque2052]

Pots probably predated woven baskets and most tools save for chipped stone axes and similar. People could observe mud or clay hardening and figure out both how to make it and form it without much in the way of tools. Making rope and weaving baskets likely started after as you’d need finer/sharper tools to strip fibers to make the rope or weave into baskets. Clay likely was used for building and linings but not until humans discovered agriculture and started living in a static area instead of being nomads. Clay pots would be useful for carrying food and water when traveling.

[@BW022]

@@mmasque2052Why would pots predate woven baskets? Weaving would have been known pre-fire days as it required no tools, raw materials are trivial to get, and it required little processing time. Shelters such as lean-tos would have been made from weaving sticks, ferns, leaves, and grasses... as would bedding and clothing. You don't need any tools for this. A basket is just a hat turned upside down. Even the most crude weaving would get you something able to hold berries, eggs, grubs, etc. Pots do require tools and far more processing. Getting a wooden pot would require axes, stone pots would have required softer stones and lots of tools/time/effort, and clay would have to come after you know how to weave shelters/beddings/clothes and more importantly fire.

[@megapangolin1093]

Crikey, Prof Alice, you look good, full of enthusiasm and energy. Lovely to see you in action.

[@mechannel7046]

Where is the full video?

[@grega2638]

It’s part of a longer 5 part documentary called the Incredible Human Journey.

[@jody6851]

I can imagine the hunter gatherers celebrating their success at creating the first clay-fired pot. One of the new potters turns to the others and says: "Gosh! If we can pull this one off, maybe we can finally figure out how to warp space-time."

[@JamesJones-cx5pk]

Pottery and agriculture of vegetable plants, fruit trees and vineyards. Southern American indians used snail shells for calcium in their pottery.👍

[@HandyMan-p3t]

Aside from some corrections made here, earliest record of fired pottery belongs to ancient Japan. Also, clay pottery making seems to be ubiquitous with no one culture passing their knowledge of it worldwide. The origin of civilizations is directly tied to sedentary modes of subsistence with some cites predating agriculture.

[@bangalorebobbel]

As we know from Sumer and other early civilizations, the love for fermented alcoholic beverages was maybe the most important and prioritized incentive to become sedentary and create civilizatios and imperiums. We know from all ancient cultures that the use of beer, wine, fermented ananas juice, palm juice etc. was extremely important and popular, and it is even said that writing and early scripts like cuneiform scripts were invented and used for keeping inventory lists of what was used to brew. So it is maybe not the purpose of cooking food which can be done in whatever many ways also without using clay pots and also not the purpose of storing prepared foods or their raw ingredients in hardened pots instead of using egg shells, dried fruit shells or containers made out of bark or leather, but mainly the purpose of preparing, storing and transporting liquid alcoholic beverages (and some other liquid items like oil or so) which made pottery really a thing ...

[@geraldfrost4710]

from a story I'm writing... There are a dozen other reasons I've come up with, but the first handful are quite droll.

[@bangalorebobbel]

@@geraldfrost4710 writing was only invented when civilizations already existed, just to mention that fact. Earliest writings so far found (in cuneiform script) were inventory lists of raw materials for brewing beer ... and before writing in scripts was invented, some seals/stamps were used for similar purposes. There are plenty of possible reasons of how early civilizations evolved. Even nomadic hunter gatherer groups came often back to the same places, and they might have found reasons to finally settle, maybe due to invention of agriculture and the need to maintain and protect their first fields. Maybe these first civilisations formed also around a religious cult, or around a trading spot, just because people became somehow sedentary near to holy places or near to trading routes/cross roads/market places. I think wars came only when civilizations were already there and people had whatever reasons to fight, most probably most often in order to defend or expand this civilization. There could be also different reasons why different civilizations were formed. Fact is, we can only formulate hypotheses but it is more or less impossible to prove which one describes what the relevant point in historic reality was.

[@geraldfrost4710]

​@bangalorebobbel Fair enough. Perhaps a better definition of "civilization" is needed. Picture an ancient human. Sitting by the empty husk of the animal he'd just eaten, it starts to rain. The rain comes down harder, with hailstones mixed in! He picks up the damp hide and covers himself. The hailstones no longer sting, and even the rain is not as annoying. First clothes? Is that civilization? Or had it happened when a human fell out of a tree, still holding on to the broken branch. The lion jumped. The human swung the branch. The clumsy blow broke cat ribs, and the cat scrunched away to check wounds. Human scrambles up another tree, carefully testing branches. External weapons? Does that define civilization? Teaching your children about weapons; does that count?

[@jasonalmendra3823]

This

[@beksinski]

This was always my understanding. There are lots of correlated factors but beer and wine, more than any other single thing are what compelled people to make the switch.

[@MovieMaster5662]

I think Alice Roberts has a deep dark desire to encounter a hunter gatherer - Show her EXACTLY how empires truly began! Fortunately for her there are some of us left!

[@richardharris8538]

I remember reading in the "... Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith, that in the 18th C, the energy density of farmed rice was twice (or more) that of wheat, although it took more labour to cultivate. I wonder how quickly those ancient people improved the wild rice?

[@oltedders]

I thought it was a coprolite when she said she wasn't allowed to touch it. Lucky her.

[@MrSimonmcc]

That sounds like a load of old sh1t.

[@oltedders]

@MrSimonmcc Hard to believe, isnt it?

[@pauljones4960]

Is coprolite the sugar free version? Or is that copro Zero?

[@jameswoodard4304]

1. 1:30. Post-pottery prehistoric people (hunter-gatherers and settled agrarians) were still living in an "ancient lifestyle" for quite a long time after this period. When will history presenters learn to use terms correctly? 2. Woven baskets and other containers already existed, would continue to exist for millenia, and could often display much more impressive technical knowledge than the first pots. 3. Millet came before rice in China and there are ways to cook, store, and transport both without clay or metal pots. 4. Empire building wouldn't come until *much* later. So, this isn't *the* invention that "turned hunter-gatherers into empire builders." That is factually incorrect.

[@paulkurilecz4209]

I think that agriculture came first as it allowed a surplus of food to be produced that then allowed others in the group to undertake other tasks such as pottery and the like.

[@GeneMatheney]

Couldn't it be true that the empire builders and the hunter-gatherers were two separate groups of people with no connections? Today we still have primitive societies in the world.

[@hedonismunderstands2469]

yes, americans...

[@JoelJosephson]

Beer, the actual reason 300,000 years of very successful hunter/gathering was given up for agriculture. You need a high hurdle to change a successful lifestyle to a less successful one, at least for the first few 1,000 years.

[@LesbianstotheRescue]

I have had a suspicion that it may have been beer. In Gobekli Tepi(sorry if I I spelled it wrong), they found bones of wild animals suggesting they were still hunting but they also find some giant carved stone bowls big enough for a human to get in. They did tests to try and find out their use, and all they can say is they had barley and water in them. I'm suspecting that the hunters had a yearly or maybe more frequent party, with beer. They, like us were so fond of beer that this kick started farming and out of that came civilisation.

[@RomaInvicta202]

Experimental archeology is awesome, wish I was younger ;)

[@GordiansKnotHere]

She'd make a great study partner.

[@goBadgers1995right]

The answer is beer.

[@Mark340-zz7vx]

Beer or probably mead, honey ferments rather easily. Cheers

[@AndrewLuppnow-i6j]

Pottery, farming, animal husbandry. In general, anything that decreased the percentage of the population that had to be committed to feeding the population contributed to the exponential growth of civilization.

[@lbco5229]

The ‘stirrup’ is also credited as being one of the great inventions that pushed mankind forward. It allowed us to conduct warfare from horseback. But maybe that’s backwards.

[@bugvswindshield]

Language and the ability to communicate to generations yet to come. song and dance advanced memories and the ability to build upon ages ago. THAT IS WHAT CREATED EMPIRES.

[@claytonbrannon3060]

Guilin is one the most beautiful places I have ever visited.

[@bluenetmarketing]

Those hunter gatherers did NOT fire their pots. They had NO clue about firing clay or other pot-like material.

[@joey1160]

Oh were you there?

[@bluenetmarketing]

@@joey1160 Firing pot knowledge came much later than the first pots. Think about it.

[@mediocreman6323]

Did you ever realize how even little children are fascinated by fire? I think this is genetic. Playing around with fire was what made us human.

[@MrOpenSeseme]

Very likely used underground fires to fire the pots. Easy to dig a small hole and bury the fire and increase the tempurature.

[@elessartelcontar9415]

Not needed

[@James-bv4nu]

Hunter gatherer's catch is sporadic, unpredictable. Farming harvest, on the other hand, must be stored, and the storage can be found and located. Attracting marauders. Therefore farming communities must spend resource on soldiers to protect the stored food. And empires were built.

[@kellydalstok8900]

In hunter-gatherer society it was the women who supplied the most calories. But since women’s contributions that have been largely ignored in archeology, the focus has always been on the success, or lack thereof, of the hunt.

[@leeneeman8398]

We evolved as scavenger/gatherers. A lot of hunting was for animal carcasses. Bone marrow had to have been a major source of protein. Our teeth show us the we evolved completely omnivorous. Storing meat was much harder than wild wheat. Giving rise to the division of labor and civilization. Stone Age people were as smart as people today, they had their own technologies and probably more common sense than we have.today.

[@elessartelcontar9415]

As someone that farmed the wildlife hit food crops hard. Deer, wild pigs, rabbits, birds all are crop depredators. They will eat all of your crops Unless you take measures to prevent it

[@john-draftanimal]

Since you showed such a clay pot being actually used to cook over a fire, I wonder if successive cooking usage would eventually make for a harder/stronger pot with repeated use? Interesting.

[@fastpublish]

What's the possibility that it was children at play who made the first basic pots?

[@spikespa5208]

And who was the first to watch them and think, "hey, if I put a curved disk of that certain kind of mud in the fire while we roast our mammoth, we'll have a bowl for the gravy" ?

[@surfdocer103]

Someone needs to ask Keith Richards

[@OceanusHelios]

Knots, Pots, Sticks, Seeds...a little mud and a little water. A little sunshine. And too many "Dad? Are we there yet?" kids making dad finally pull over.

[@jimparsons6803]

I agree that pottery is or was a very big deal. Not only was it for cooking, but you could make images of your deities to place on a religious altar, or maybe bits of jewelry. Or for making molds or much later you might start doing your Chemistry with them. Much of Chemistry is not only having the right testing equipment, but also having the right sort of dishes. Good for them.

[@peterkratoska4524]

Pottery also led to metalworking because using that type of raku firing often the metals present in the clay come out on the surface of the fimished piece.

[@williamthomas1889]

@@peterkratoska4524 All the achievements @ Gobekli Tepe were pre-pottery.

[@ololo940]

Pam Beesly from The Office😂

[@ShimmyD-u7g]

I'm guessing this video is around 2 decades old, she mentions a discovery in 2001. The host of the show is now in her 50s.

[@penguin44ca]

And?

[@penguin44ca]

This clip is from Incredible Human Journey (2009). It's in the description. Helps to read.

[@krashd]

15 years.

[@scottnowell4975]

They did it for the nookie, the cookie.

[@gregrussell1787]

It is fun to think about how that came about. They didn't just dig a hole and start forming a clay pot. My guess is they wanted to build up a fire pit to contain the fire and noticed the clay getting hard.

[@kevincaruthers5412]

Pottery allowed long term storage. THAT is what changed things.

[@DavidHuber63]

What fragments?

[@ArthurShedsJackson]

Awesome!!! a huge leap indeed. I'm amazed how they figured out the process with heating the pots.

[@Chr.U.Cas1622]

Definitely incorrect about the temperatures that could be reached. If one digs a pit and fires ceramics in there, the possible temperature makes the pots glowing red hot. And even in open fires much higher temperatures can be reached as those who are mentioned in this documentary/documentation.

[@joey1160]

Farming wasn't an innovation, it was a travesty that settled hunter-gatherers relied upon in desperation, not abundance. Read "Against the Grain" by James C Scott for a start. It's curious that we agriculturalists see agriculturalism as the prime example of being human. We are so utterly fascinated by our own myths and achievements of "civilization," yet we look at the resulting world burning around us and wonder what went wrong.

[@sylviaalger4917]

👀 the world burning around us ?! Really?

[@1GoodWoman]

Maybe. What we know about the past comes from some physical evidence, stories and best guesses. This is part of the process. Thank you for sharing. Beautiful….and a puzzle, inside a conundrum, tied in a Gordian knot rolling around in a mobus loop swinging on a pendulum in a vacuum!

[@nmc8496]

I think primitive technology KZbin channel has already figured it out

[@lateve6243]

Exactly what I thought we she said "they only had open fires" ... ummm. no, lady, just no.

[@pradbourne2446]

Pot is the source of thinking for early hunters

[@hippopotamus6765]

And man! Were they creative!

[@clareomarfran]

Corn planted us, Tamed cattle made us tame, Thence hut, citadel, and kingdom came. - Richard Wilbur

[@capt.bart.roberts4975]

And the invention of disposable cookware, there's a literal hill in Rome built of potsheards.

[@Kneedragon1962]

Fascinating. I don't doubt they are right, about China. But this transition has taken place several times, in different places, different groups. Nomadic hunter gatherers in the Fertile Crescent, in what we think of as Iraq ~ they stopped migrating in a regular pattern which revisited the sites from last year, when they realised you could plant enough seeds in one place to not have to keep moving. They would have figured out pottery, yes. They figured out villages, and then small towns, which not only had a group of houses, they had a communal space ~ a town square. A produce market and town meeting space. They discovered how to grind up wheat and make flour, and then they discovered something wonderful. They discovered yeast ~ which makes bread rise, but even better ~ if you make a drink out of grain ~ a kind of tea, (oats hops barley ~ that kind of thing) and you add yeast, it will ferment in a way that produces beer. They had bread, permanent housing, produce markets, and they had beer. The only thing they needed to become us ~ was internet access. They were the first truly modern humans. Urban humans, town dwellers. I am not completely convinced that beer led to civilisation ~ but one could make that argument. One question I don't have an answer to, is whether beer led to bread, or bread led to beer. Like the chicken and the egg, logically one must have been discovered first, but I don't know which.

[@cody481]

What is the temperature of yellow flame ?

[@ellenchavez2043]

We were planting before we had pots. Planting turned us from hunter-gatherers who followed the food into people who stayed in one spot to farm. How we grow food determined the type of societies we developed: rice and wheat require completely different ways of living and organizing. Tthunk about the differences between Western European and Asian cultures.

[@SparkyFinch]

open fires can be hot enough to melt aluminum if you just fan/blow on them and stack logs. That's much hotter than you are suggesting...

[@chumleyk]

When pots were invented, it enabled some of the hunter gatherers who had bountiful finds to store, and then hoard resources. Then they could exchange the extra for things from other tribes - services, adjacent resources, wives, labor, etc. Eventually you get an uneven distribution of resources creating hierarchies of power thus creating 'civilization' through dependance on those with more. In one way, amazing, in others, tragic. Some say this also made humans evolve socially away from what we would call now autistic and adhd traits (both are great for hunting and gathering) to more machiavelli ones like psychopathy etc

[@c0mputer]

Chinese love their rice. They wake up and say, “I’m really hungry and I want to eat two thousand of something.”

[@salimufari]

I respectfully disagree with fired Pottery as the key. Hardened materials have their place for sure. String or the spun thread specifically was it I believe. Rope, wire, textiles, bow strings & most machinery to name a few was only possible after thread. The ability to secure one object to another with a durable fiber or carry heavy objects only comes once you have some way to share the load.

[@RoganBryan]

Alice Roberts is just an awesome woman. And just keeps getting more and more so.

[@freeze-frames]

I think youtube recommended this video because it realized I was into the Tomb Raider Remaster

[@danmartens8855]

The Primitive Technology channel shows how to make charcoal kilns from scratch. The only missing factor was the knowledge that it can be done.

[@XYzXyzXYz290]

Fastening a stone knife, or axe to a stick, and creating the compound tool/weapon, was another milestone.

[@YarrowPressburg]

Pressing the clay into a hole in the ground was very interesting, I know in the desert southwest USA the clay was pressed into a basket, and then placed into the fire, still in the basket, don’t know if it was air dried first. Thanks I found this interesting, my friend is harvesting clay from our local landscape, I would like to do this experiment.

[@stephenlitten1789]

I know that if the clay isn't allowed to air dry, ceramic objects explode in a kiln. Depending how wet the clay is this may happen with an ordinary fire. Even if you don't know the reason for the explosions, experience would probably be a teacher. Another benefit is air drying makes the clay more rigid. Less chance of making an ashtray

[@Rembrant65]

@@stephenlitten1789 Can confirm. Get water hot enough it will become steam and expand massively. Clay is excellent at retaining water, that's part of what makes it malleable. This means it will take a while to fully air dry. Temperature, humidity and thickness of the piece being major factors in how long.

[@JS-jh4cy]

Okay dig a hole in the back yard

[@doomoo5365]

That sounds like a wonderful idea especially if you could find clay that could be fired to high temperatures

[@doomoo5365]

​@@Rembrant65there's a few key things to remember with Clay, try to squeeze out the air pockets and make it uniform thickness

[@davidely7032]

One could argue that beer prompted humans to develop cities and civilization. One needs hops and grains for beer ... and so one needs agriculture, not hunter-gatherer techniques. And, of course, the beer provided the motivation for men (and women) to become farmers. 😋

[@1984Phalanx]

"What turned hunter gatherers into empire builders?" Ooh ooh I know this one! It was the uh... The Musket! Right? ...

[@willsal529]

Fart sound at 1:56

[@jaysonp9426]

I needed this

[@nagyonbalogh]

You are a scholar and a gentleman Sir :)

[@boreopithecus]

My hero.

[@philosophyforum4668]

It wasn't pots. It was the ox, and certain tools that helped you build things like the plow and fences.

[@thorium222]

Did I miss it? How old are the first pots shown here?

[@mikeemmons1079]

No. Comet debris turned hunter gatherers into farmers, and then Empires came from there.

[@CarlAyers-x8h]

We could have gotten the idea from potholes in large rocks along rivers.

[@magnetospin]

I would have thought they had wooden pots before clay pots. You could probably make wooden pots with a stone knife. They might even just have pots that are naturally formed into a bowl shape.

[@JohnAdams-1]

Beautiful caves

[@KarlRoyale]

Sorry but the idea that an open fire only get to 250 degrees is ludicrous. Even without forced air the heart of a campfire can easily reach 1500 degrees F. if sustained long enough it can easily transform clay into pottery A simple slip of watered down clay can seal the pottery so it won't bleed water. The whole point though is that none of this happens in a vacuum. All of the technology has to be interwoven for true advancement to be made. This means agriculture and animal husbandry (domesticating animals) goes hand in hand with leather crafting and food preparation. Pottery skills develop out of mud and clay being used next to a fire for a variety of reasons. Focusing on a single skill and saying "this was the start of it all" is like focusing on a single pixel of a painting and saying "this is where the art began".

[@scottcates]

I was looking for a comment about the fire only reaching 250 degrees and "ludicrous" was the exact same word I would have used. A stunningly inane thing for a supposedly learned person to say.

[@stuartmcalpine9468]

Does she mean Celsius because Farhenheit 454 is a reality.

[@nicklenco7311]

Native Americans in Eastern Canada, or so I have read, used birch bark containers and slowly added hot rocks to bring the temperature up and cook food. Which sounds tedious. They had pottery as a skill but apparently lost it thousands of years ago. Maybe due to the low quality of clay in the area. Maybe because they were semi-nomadic and making birch bark containers where you were was easier than carrying pots around. Regardless of all that, pottery seems hardly to have change the hunting and gathering so I doubt it was the reason for a shift in China either. Also, storing food is less about containers and more about food preparation, and having pots to store food in hardly creates the food to store in the pot. You have to be bringing in excess food first and that food needs to be something that stores well in a pot (grain is good for that). But even when you have grain in a pot you need to keep moisture and oxygen out to really store it for any time. So storage, prior to agriculture, seems like a weak use for a resource intensive container. Cooking makes a tonne of sense for pottery being an advantage (yay soup and porridge), or for the best utilization of, say, milk. But you’d still be hunting and gathering the food to put in the pot. Pots keep vermin away and are great for storing some items, but they simply do not keep food all that long on their own.

[@obsidianjane4413]

Pottery is a key technology that enables a sedentary lifestyle. Containers are important in long term fermentation and potting of meat etc.

[@PoeLemic]

Well, being a cook, I can say that pottery would have been essential to early mankind. Why? Because you can take tough meats (or inedible parts of the animal) and use heat over time to turn them into very delicious meals. To me, that's one of the early advancements that mankind would have had to make, to be able to live in small areas and feed large populations.

[@nicklenco7311]

@ you read the comment I made right? There is no question it was an importance step. A HUGE advancement in tech. But 100% not necessary for what you just described. Which was my point. Way easier though. Raising temperature with hot rocks must have been slow.

[@nicklenco7311]

@@obsidianjane4413it seems like you are just saying what the video said and not reading what i wrote. Thanks for the input though.

[@obsidianjane4413]

@@nicklenco7311 What you wrote is wrong.

[@Jewels___]

You can make pots both for cooking or just carrying around stuff you gather, even if just for one or two days. You wouldn't really know if you would find food beyond the horizon. Nonetheless, the cooking hypothesis is a really strong one for one very speacial reason: cooking something not only makes it easier to digest, but also kills bacteria and viruses. Now, now, this hypothesis does not bring enought about to convince me on the transition from hunter-gathering into farming, specially considering a farmer works more and have worse nutrition than the former.

[@AndrewGraziani-k7d]

I'm down with the "cooking food" theory. Human ability to "fix" our food can not be overstated as a positive evolutionary driver. Less gut more brain.

[@helgavierich4762]

cooking food is practiced by all hunter-gatherers worldwide and seems to have been practiced by early humans ver a million years ago. It has, literally, nothing to do with the origins of civilizations.

[@greattribulation1388]

One word, the barbecue pit.

[@loralou-djflowerdove]

That's 3 words. *(Someone had to say it.)😂😂😂

[@greattribulation1388]

@ a highlight of how absurd the answer is. It was yoke mon, a yoke!

[@doomoo5365]

Yes you're right the barbecue pit would have been perfect to produce some simple bowls and bisque fired clay maybe

[@mikesorensen5228]

We completely underestimate the value of shelving. After watching my mother who has dementia and osteoporosis slowly de-evolve into a cheapskate hunchbacked ape with a hoarding problem store everything on the floor, I'm convinced that the invention of shelving is what allowed humans to become upright on a sustained basis. I believe her cheapness and mental condition contributes to her bad posture. It's also possible she stores stuff on the floor because of the osteoporosis and its easier to access. But it's also possible that it works both ways. But without a continuous steady effort to improve, it never will. I also think that seeing things upright increased our intelligence by allowing us to see things from new perspectives. But dammit Jim, I'm an engineer, not an a paleoanthropologist or an archeologist or whatever the proper term is.

[@duileyah]

Back when BBC was still telling the truth.

[@frankjoseph4273]

Can you imagine pre-pottery drinking from your ma's skull ?

[@got2kittys]

No, they would more likely drink from the skull of their enemies. Ma is respected.

[@Cooter--l._.Y._.I]

@@got2kittys I could imagine an ancient society respecting their ancestors by drinking from their skulls. I'm no expert, but it wouldn't surprise me.

[@Mantelar]

My father taught me knot tying. When I got to college, I had to read all kinds of explanations for cord ware pottery my freshman year. No one cited the most obvious reason - they were making it look like the baskets they previously weaved and were comfortable with. We do the same thing with various goods, especially in architecture. The speculation made me suspicious of both archaeology and anthropology. It’s always a little bit of good data, which I appreciate, followed by reams of well-intended speculation.

[@Bitterrootbackroads]

Only Experimental Archeologist I ever met was Grant Goltz from Hackensack or Brainerd MN. I know zip about pottery, but have you seen his video using a woven cord fabric bag as a mold? Pretty much convinced me the pattern has nothing to do with decoration, just an artifact of how it was made. He builds a real birch bark canoe in another video. Sad, but I believe he passed a few years ago.

[@server1ok]

Take a shot of anti freeze every time she says "hunter gatherer"

[@phillipdavidhaskett7513]

Having grown up in the United States, I was taught that civilization arose in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys. Only later in life did I learn that the Indus and Yellow River valleys predated "western" civilization.

[@adamwu4565]

They (and a couple of other sites) all started at roughly the same time, really. Focusing too much on "who came first" misses the amazing things they all did.

[@phillipdavidhaskett7513]

@@adamwu4565 Agreed, I was just idly remarking on how Euro-centric my personal education was. I'm particularly amazed that current Chinese ideography evolved directly from script carbon-dated back to the earliest Shaung Dynasty.

[@nickp5093]

be nice to know how old that pottery fragment is

[@adrianpallis4568]

I think they dont say it because this is highly contestable and questionable. Others are saying the earliest Jomon Potteries are older but the Chinese nationalistic government has decided that China came first. What came first is a good question but the motivation is the same and the right. So it can be BBC did not want to put it in it can also be the context of this clip just mentioning it after all its a part of a bigger program.