A study from the Hebrew University links a period of widespread fires, soil erosion and clay accumulation thousands of years ago to the appearance of pottery in the region. The researchers suggest that Neolithic people may have noticed how fire hardens clay and learned to imitate the process – but stress that the hypothesis still needs to be proven.
Pottery has changed human life. It has allowed us to cook food, store water and agricultural produce, ferment food and drinks, and transport materials from one place to another. But how did humans discover that it was possible to take earthenware Soft, heat it up and turn it into a hard, durable material?
New research by Prof. Amos Fromkin from the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University offers an interesting possibility: Nature may have demonstrated the process to humans even before they developed kilns.
The article, published in the journal Geomorphology, combines evidence from lake sediments, caves, ancient coal, and archaeological sites to reconstruct periods in which Fires Extensive flooding caused severe soil erosion in the southern Levant.
From this picture, Frumkin suggests the “The Natural Furnace Hypothesis”: People who lived in areas where intense fires burned may have seen that heat turned soft clay into a hard material, and realized that the process could be intentionally produced.
When the hills burned and the ground washed away
The study compares two very different periods.
The first is an interglacial period that occurred about 129 to 116 years ago. The second is the beginning of the Holocene, about 11 to 7,000 years ago – a period when agriculture and permanent settlements had already developed in the region.
Signs of significant fires and vegetation loss were found in both periods.
Tiny charcoal particles preserved in sediments indicate fire events, while chemical signatures preserved in cave sediments indicate significant changes in vegetation cover and soil.
At the beginning of the Holocene, one of the peaks of this activity dates to approximately 9,500 to 8,200 years ago.
As vegetation disappears, the soil becomes more exposed to rain and surface runoff. Clay-rich terra rossa soil is washed away from the mountains and hills and accumulated in low-lying areas, including Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea basin.
An environmental disaster that also became an opportunity
Soil erosion is not just a destructive process.
The sediments that accumulated in the valleys also created new areas relatively rich in fine material, on which agricultural settlements could develop.
During the Neolithic period, human communities began to establish themselves in larger permanent settlements, raise plants and animals, and develop new technologies.
Pottery also appeared in the area during the Neolithic period. Previously, we described the A settlement in which layers from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period were found, and above them layers from the Pottery Neolithic period., which demonstrate the transition between the two periods.
The new study attempts to connect these environmental and technological developments.
A “furnace” without humans building it
Clay does not become ceramic just because it has dried.
To create an irreversible change in its structure, heating to high temperatures is required. Frumkin notes that heating to the order of 500–700 degrees Celsius can already start processes that transform clay into a ceramic material.
A strong fire can, under certain conditions, heat clay-rich soil.
It is hypothesized that people living near burned areas may have found lumps or layers of heat-altered clay. They would have been able to see that the hard material was very different from the soft clay around it.
From here it is still a big leap to creating a tool, drying it, and deliberately burning it – but observation of nature may have provided the first clue.
Ancient pottery and terra rossa
One of the arguments supporting the hypothesis comes from previous petrographic studies of Pottery From the Yarmouk culture in the Jordan Valley.
These vessels were made from local material derived from terra rossa soil that was washed away and re-sanded.
This is the same type of material that the study describes as having accumulated in valleys following the removal of vegetation and increased erosion.
The connection does not prove that fire led to the invention of thegloom, but it places the raw material, the Neolithic settlements, and the fire events in the same space.
And what happened 120 years ago?
The study has a particularly interesting comparison.
During the early interglacial period, similar and even stronger processes occurred in the area: fires, loss of vegetation, erosion, and the accumulation of clay material.
But pottery did not appear then.
Frumkin refers to this as a kind of “natural experiment”: geological conditions alone were not enough.
The environment could create naturally fired clay, but to turn observation into technology, a human society with knowledge, a technological tradition, permanent settlements, and the need for storage and cooking utensils were also needed.
In other words, even if the fire provided the demonstration, it was humans who were required to understand it and turn it into technology.
The hypothesis is not yet proven.
This is the most important part of the study.
There is currently no archaeological layer that proves a simple sequence of: natural burning, the discovery of hardened clay, and then the invention of pottery.
The existing dates are not precise enough to prove that the fires directly preceded the appearance of pottery.
Frumkin himself defines the idea as a testable hypothesis.
Future excavations could look for naturally hardened clay beneath the layers where the first pottery appears. Experiments could test whether natural fires typical of the Jordan Valley are capable of bringing clay to the necessary temperatures.
On the other hand, the discovery of pottery that clearly dates to a period before the major fire events would weaken the hypothesis.
Not a substitute for existing explanations
The study does not claim that pottery was invented in an instant following a forest fire.
The formation of pottery was likely a long process that involved trial and error, accumulated knowledge, changes in lifestyle, and connections between populations.
Even after their invention, pottery continued to change rapidly. Only recently did we report in Science on 8,000-year-old pottery from Mesopotamia decorated with intricate designsand on Painted pottery from northern Arabia that developed thousands of years later into a product with a clear regional identity.
The natural furnace hypothesis adds a possible factor to the picture: a devastating environmental event may have exposed human communities to a new property of a material that had been lying around them all along.
Questions and Answers
Does the research prove that fires invented pottery? No. This is a hypothesis that natural fires might have appeared to the Neolithic period How heat hardens clay.
When did pottery appear in the area? Pottery became common in the Levant during the Pottery Neolithic period, approximately 8,000 years ago, after a long period in which permanent settlements without pottery had already existed in the region.
How can firing turn clay into ceramic? Heating to temperatures of hundreds of degrees causes irreversible mineralogical and chemical changes in clay. The study suggests examining whether natural fires could have reached such conditions in the soil.
Why weren't pottery invented during the earlier fire period? The study suggests that environmental conditions alone are not sufficient. Social and technological conditions that characterized later Neolithic communities were also required.
Scientific source: Late Quaternary fire-induced erosion, impacts and innovations in the southern Levant – Geomorphology
More on the subject on the science website
Flower paintings on 8,000-year-old pottery from Mesopotamia reveal mathematical patterns
Already 3,200 years ago: Pottery from northern Arabia became a "brand" that exported as far as Timna
New evidence: Human ancestors used fire in caves as early as 1.79 million years ago
Archeology - The man in the Neolithic wall
For the scientific article: Opening the scientific article
One response
The ancients built huts from dried mud and tried to improve the process by heating different types of mud.