Note 1 — Chapter II · A Far-travelled Invention

Before the potter’s wheel came into use, the potter’s art had degenerated. Vases, bowls, jars, platters, and other vessels were made of such costly stones as diorite, alabaster, and porphyry; these were drilled out with copper implements. Copper vessels were also made. The discovery of how to work copper had caused the craftsmen to neglect the potter’s art, and to work with enthusiasm in the hardest stone until they achieved a high degree of skill. The coarse pottery of the pre-wheel period is therefore no indication that the civilization had reached a stage of decadence. This fact should be a warning to those archæologists who are prone to conclude that if the pottery taken from a stratum in some particular area is “coarse”, the people who produced it at the period it represents were necessarily in a backward condition. The evidence afforded by Yakut products is of special interest in this connection. The Yakuts are usually referred to as “the most intelligent and progressive people in Siberia”. They are, however, poor potters. They never glaze their vessels or use the potter’s wheel. At the great Russian market of Yakutsk they refuse to purchase wheel-made crockery, and purchase instead the raw clay with which to make their own hand-made vessels, which are almost as coarse as those of the Stone Age. But although the technique displayed in their pottery is crude, they are famous for their excellent wood-carving and iron forged-work.1 A people cannot, therefore, be judged by their pottery alone. It may be that those ancient peoples who are found to have been poor potters were skilled and progressive in other spheres of activity. The Hebrews were poor artisans and never invented anything, but they have given the world a great religious literature.