PERSPECTIVES

ANTHROPOLOGY
What was the function of early Asian pottery,
On the Invention of Pottery which predates the invention of agriculture
by about 10,000 years?

Gideon Shelach

O
n page 1696 of this issue, human bones and identification
1 2 3 4
Wu et al. (1) report the of plant starch and animal pro-
latest of a series of excit- teins extracted from potshards
ing discoveries made over the and grinding stones.
past 20 years that have pushed One of the issues most rel-
back the earliest evidence for the evant to understanding socio-
invention of pottery by more than economic change—not only in
10,000 years. Like their findings at prehistoric societies but also in
the Xianrendong Cave (1), most 5 6 7 8 historic and even modern soci-
of the earliest pottery has been eties—is the context of techno-
discovered in south China (the logical innovations, or more spe-

Downloaded from https://www.science.org at National Cheng Kung University on September 21, 2021
Yangzi River basin and areas south cifically, the ways in which tech-
of it), but evidence for early pot- nologies are invented, developed,
tery is also known from the Yel- and adopted by society. The prov-
low River basin, and indeed from 10 mm erb “necessity is the mother of
a much larger area of East Asia all invention” not only assumes
that includes Japan and the Amur a direct functional explanation,
9 10
River basin (2–4). The early dat- but also assumes that conditions
ing of East Asian ceramics refutes of stress (caused by external
the idea that the beginning of pot- forces, such as climate change,
tery production was associated or by internal social tension)
with the transition to agriculture. force people to change their
What was the societal context for old ways of doing things. Such
its invention? assumptions are embedded in the
Documenting the invention 30 mm idea that the scarcity of resources
and development of one of human- during the LGM forced people to
Socioeconomic changes before the invention of agriculture. Artifacts from
kind’s most fundamental technolo- Locality 1 of the Longwangchan site (the Yellow River basin) dated to ~25,000 develop better ways of collecting
gies captures the imagination and calendar years before present (8): 1 to 4, microblade cores; 5 to 7, microlithic and processing food (1, 6, 9).
is of great scientific importance. tools; 8, shell; 9, shovel; 10, grinding slab (quern). These and other technolo- However, the archaeologi-
However, understanding the socio- gies invented during the Last Glacial Maximum point to a time of socioeconomic cal data suggest that grinding
economic reasons for the devel- development long before the invention of agriculture. Wu et al. contribute to this stones only started to be widely

PHOTO CREDIT: WANG XIAOQING/INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

opment of pottery and the ways field by reporting pottery remains dated to ~20,000 years ago. used toward the end of the last
in which this new technology glacial age, ~13,000 years ago;
evolved and affected human adaptation and It has long been suggested that broaden- ceramic production on a larger scale may
social norms is no less interesting or impor- ing the spectrum of the human diet—includ- have commenced even later. It is thus likely
tant. Research advances that address these ing the consumption of foods that are hard to that these technologies initially had a much
issues have not been as dramatic. process and digest, of which cereals (rice and more limited set of functions, and that their
The period around the Last Glacial Maxi- millet in China) are but one type—eventually full socioeconomic potential remained dor-
mum (LGM), about 25,000 to 19,000 years led to the cultivation of wild plants and finally mant until ecological and social conditions
ago, saw the advent of a new technological to their domestication (10). This remains provided opportunities for the realization of
array that, in addition to pottery, included in a viable hypothesis about the initiation of this potential.
many parts of China the production of small a long-term process that resulted in one of This more complex trajectory allows
flake tools (or microliths) and grinding slab humankind’s most dramatic revolutions: the for the possibility that the new technologies
stones (5–8) (see the figure). It is widely held transition to food production, domestication were initially developed for a different func-
(6, 9) that the artifacts produced by these new of plants and animals, adoption of a sedentary tion from that which they ultimately served
technologies enabled exploitation of a wider way of life, and ultimately, the development with greater economic and/or social effect.
range of plants and animals and more effi- of more complex societies. For example, contrary to the assumption that
cient extraction of their nutritional elements However, the validity of this hypothesis grinding stones were important because they
through grinding and intensive cooking. The should not be assumed. Rather, it should facilitated the consumption of wild cere-
technological advances during the LGM pre- be tested using systematic research meth- als, preliminary analysis of plant remains
date agriculture by at least 10,000 years. ods and scientific tools. For example, the extracted from early slab querns and use-
diet of ancient human populations and the marks found on the querns suggest that the
Department of East Asian Studies, Hebrew University, Jeru- foods processed by prehistoric tools can querns were used to process acorns or even
salem 91905, Israel. E-mail: msshe@huji.ac.il be studied through chemical analysis of nonfood materials such as pigments (6, 11).

1644 29 JUNE 2012 VOL 336 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org

Published by AAAS

Similar trajectories for the development of
grinding technologies are known from the
Levant as well. Thus, technological change
should not be conceived of as the conse-
quence of one-off innovations, but rather as a
long-term process that involves not only tech-
nological improvements but also the adapta-
tion and change of economic habits and nego-
tiations over cultural norms.
It is possible that pottery and other early
technologies were invented independently in
different places. However, the fact that early
pottery is widely distributed in East Asia
among different societies in many different
environments, but not found among preag-
ricultural societies elsewhere, suggests that
it spread in East Asia through intersocietal
interactions, perhaps along with other ideas
and technologies.
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
A New Start for Protein Synthesis
Thomas E. Dever
R
ecent technical advances have led to
the accumulation of vast amounts
of DNA sequences, highlighting the
importance of understanding how the infor-
mation in DNA is translated into amino acids
and proteins. To decipher this information,
the cell first transcribes a “coding” segment
of DNA into messenger RNA (mRNA). Next,
Laboratory of Gene Regulation and Development, Eunice
Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development, National Institutes of Health,
Bethesda, MD 20892, USA. E-mail: tdever@nih.gov
CREDIT: C. BICKEL/SCIENCE
How to begin? In the canonical initiation pathway (A), eIF2 delivers Met-tRNAiMet
to the ribosome. Base-pairing between tRNAiMet and the mRNA directs protein
synthesis to start at an AUG codon. During translation elongation, the transla-
www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 336 29 JUNE 2012
Research endeavors such as those led by
Wu et al. are fundamental for a better under-
standing of socioeconomic change during the
LGM and the developments that led to the
emergence of sedentary agricultural societ-
ies. However, anthropological perspectives on
the context of pottery invention should help
to broaden scientific attention from discovery
and dating to the functions of early pottery
and its social context. Research of this kind
could elucidate the development of human
societies in East Asia, as well as opening up
new perspectives on the evolution of human
societies and the origins of social complex-
ity in general. More general issues awaiting
serious consideration include, for example,
whether the fact that in East Asia pottery
predates agriculture by some 10 millennia,
whereas in the Levant it postdates the tran-
the ribosome decodes the mRNA in blocks of
three consecutive nucleotides, or codons, that
each specify an amino acid. But, how does
the ribosome know where to start reading on
the mRNA? To ensure faithful translation,
and thereby yield a functional protein, cells
restrict translation initiation to AUG codons
that specify the amino acid methionine (Met).
In mammals and other eukaryotic cells, trans-
lation typically initiates at the AUG codon
closest to the beginning of the mRNA. But
on page 1719 of this issue, Starck et al. (1)
show that in addition to the canonical AUG-
tion elongation factor eEF1A delivers Leu-tRNALeu-CAG to decode CUG codons.
Starck et al. show (B) that Leu-tRNALeu-CAG can also direct protein synthesis to
start at a CUG codon.
Published by AAAS
PERSPECTIVES
sition to agriculture, signifies a fundamental
difference in the socioeconomic development
of the two regions.
References
1. X. Wu et al., Science 336, 1696 (2012).
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(2009).
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Change and Human Adaptation in Arid China, D. B.
Madsen, F. H. Chen, X. Gao, Eds. (Elsevier, Amsterdam,
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8. J.-F. Zhang et al., J. Archaeol. Sci. 38, 1537 (2011).
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10.1126/science.1224119
Protein synthesis that does not initiate with
methionine is used by the mammalian immune
system to process antigen.
methionine initiation pathway, CUG-leucine
can also be used to initiate protein synthesis.
When decoding an mRNA, ribosomes
rely on transfer RNA (tRNA) molecules,
each of which is covalently attached to a
specific amino acid at one end, while three
nucleotides in the so-called anticodon loop
at the other end pairs with a codon on the
mRNA. Cells express two types of methio-
nyl-tRNA: elongator tRNAeMet decodes AUG
codons within reading frames, whereas ini-
tiator tRNAiMet is used exclusively to initiate
translation. The eukaryotic translation ini-
1645
 On the Invention of Pottery
Gideon Shelach

Science, 336 (6089),

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