The oldest ceramic ever manufactured, the Venus of Dolni Vestonice, is displayed at the Anthropology Museum, at Brno, Czech Republic. The Venus of Dolni Vestonice was visited by Prof. Joseph Davidovits who writes:
” I still had for my eyes the image of the yellow limestone Venus displayed at the Vienna Museum, Austria, to be very surprised by this one. It was not worked in soft stone, but manufactured out of terra cotta. Thus, I was looking at the oldest ceramic manufactured by Homo Sapiens 25.000 years ago (…) We have been taught that the terra cotta pottery was not invented before the Neolithic Age, 15.000 years later. And yet, I had in front of me an artifact resulting from the use of fire, at a time when, logically, the prehistoric men did not master this technique, according to the teaching of Prehistory.”
This oldest terra cota had been produced in an open wood fire (a garden fire), at a temperature of 250-400°C. maximum, but with a clay containing natural chemical ingredients, such as alkaline soluble salts, generating a geopolymeric reaction, which I call in my technical jargon, the L.T.G.S. (Low Temperature Geopolymeric Setting of ceramic)
Go to:
Joseph Davidovits’ site
or
The making of brown-black ceramics with LTGS in prehistory and antiquity
