Earthenware is the first pottery humans ever made —and it began much earlier than most people think.
The Very Beginning: Clay Without a Wheel
The oldest fired clay objects are not pots, but small female figurines from Dolní Věstonice in the Czech Republic, dated to around 24,000 BCE. Humans knew how to harden clay with fire long before they knew how to make a vessel.
The first actual vessels — simple, low-fired bowls — appear in East Asia. Archaeological findings date the earliest ceramics back to approximately 20,000 years ago in East Asia, with fragments found in Xianrendong Cave in China (~18,000 BCE) and Jomon pottery in Japan (~14,000 BCE). These were made by hunter-gatherers to store wild grains and nuts, long before farming.
Earthenware was the first kind of pottery made — meaning porous, low-temperature fired clay, not stoneware or porcelain.
The Neolithic Revolution — When Production Becomes a Craft: 7000 – 5000 BCE
Earthenware becomes a true industry with the beginning of agriculture. When humans settled, they needed to store grain, water, milk, and seeds.
Radiocarbon evidence indicates that sustained production of ceramic containers began at several sites in Anatolia, Upper Mesopotamia and the northern Levant around 7000 BC. Pottery making began in the 7th millennium BC. The earliest forms, found at the Hassuna site, were hand-formed from slabs into undecorated, unglazed, low-fired pots.
This is the same period when Early pottery production began in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and along the Indus Valley.
For us in Pakistan, this is direct history:
- Mehrgarh (Balochistan), 7000-5500 BCE: One of the oldest villages in South Asia. Here archaeologists found hand-made, open-fired red earthenware with basket impressions. This is the ancestor of your local matka.
- Greece and Europe, 6000 BCE: Earthenware vessels appear in Greece during the Neolithic period, in 6,000 BCE, and they have remained in use since then.
- Indus Valley — Harappa & Mohenjo-daro, 3300-1300 BCE: By this time, production is on a mass scale. The potter’s wheel, invented in Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE, reaches the Indus. Kilns that could reach 800- 1000 °C were developed. Harappans produced the famous Red and Black ware, painted pottery, large gharhas for grain storage, and perforated pots for making curd — exactly the same chatti used today in Pasrur.
By about 5000 BC, pottery-making was becoming widespread across the region and spreading to neighbouring areas.
Three Technical Leaps
- Coil and Slab Method (7000 BCE): Rolling clay into ropes and stacking them.
- Potter’s Wheel (c. 3500 BCE, Mesopotamia): Made pots faster, rounder, thinner. The Kumhar wheel you see today is almost unchanged.
- Closed Kiln (c. 3000 BCE): Allowed higher firing, making pots water-resistant without glazing.
After that, every great civilization refined earthenware: Egyptians for water jars along the Nile, Greeks for amphorae for oil and wine, Romans for cooking patella, and Islamic potters of Multan and Hala (Sindh) for the beautiful blue-glazed kashigari that is still a hallmark of Pakistan.
The Industrial Revolution tried to replace it with aluminum and plastic in the last 100 years, but in villages around Pasrur, the tradition never stopped — because earth, water, and fire will never go out of fashion.