Note 5 — Chapter II · A Far-travelled Invention

“The potter’s wheel is the creation of man, and therefore is an independent act of invention which was not evolved from any contrivance utilized during the period of hand-made ceramic ware. The two processes have grown out of two radically distinct spheres of human activity. The wheel, so speak, came from another world. It had no point of contact with any tool that existed in the old industry, but was brought in from an outside quarter as a novel affair when man appropriated to himself the work hitherto cultivated by woman. The development was one from outside, not from within. All efforts, accordingly, which view the subject solely from the technological angle, and try to derive the wheel from previous devices of the female potter, are futile and misleading. It is as erroneous as tracing the plough back to the hoe or digging-stick, whereas, in fact, the two are in no historical interrelation and belong to fundamentally different culture strata and periods—the hoe to the gardening activity of woman, the plough to the agricultural activity of man. Both in India and China the division of ceramic labour sets apart the thrower or wheel-potter, and distinctly separates him from the moulder. The potters in India, who work on the wheel, do not intermarry with those who use a mould or make images. They form a caste by themselves.”5