Ceramics are perhaps the most ubiquitous of all art forms to have emerged from human history.
Ceramics are perhaps the most ubiquitous of all art forms to have emerged from human history. The oldest known ceramic figurine, Venus of Dolní Věstonice, traces back to the Czech Republic in 29,000–25,000 B.C., during the Upper Paleolithic period, and a 2012 study published in the journal Science confirmed that the earliest known ceramic pots, found in Xianrendong Cave in China’s Jiangxi Province, were made during the height of the Ice Age. That means they predated the emergence of agriculture in the Neolithic period by some 10,000 years—a development that scientists previously believed had led to the creation of fired clay vessels for cooking and storing food. Ceramics—in the form of bricks, tiles, vessels, and sculptures—have endured for millennia, and the medium continues to be explored today.