Archeologists say China's most primitive pottery was made to cook freshwater snails in south China, after studying relics in Zengpiyan Cave in Guilin City, capital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The cave represents Neolithic culture in south China about 12,000 to 7,000 years ago. It yielded the country's most primitive potsherds, estimated to be 12,000 years old.

People in south China had been using fire to cook wild plants or animals long before they started cooking shellfish in pottery, said Fu Xianguo, a researcher with the Institute of Archeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

"Freshwater snails were one of their staple foods, judging by the quantities of snail shells found in various strata. Our experiments show it is necessary to heat them before consumption, otherwise it's difficult to release the meat from the shells," Fu said.

Like any technological innovation, the creation of pottery is believed to have been embedded in some cultural context.

There were various hypotheses on how and why pottery was created.

Some said it was related with mud-brick house construction, others believed it was created to meet culinary needs or for subsistence strategies.

Richard Pearson, an independent Canadian archeologist, agreed that pottery could have developed under different circumstances indifferent contexts, but he disagreed with the proposal that it was made to cook snails. "They could also have been roasted or baked,” he said.
 
(Xinhua News Agency December 24, 2003)