Ceramics and Pre-Pottery Neolithic

Hello,

I think I have read about that, as well as baskets being used to form the shapes of pots. It does make sense and there are a few book books on the issue (such as the one below).
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20177395

Weaving and pottery have long been connected. Loom weights are often clay and woven cloth and reed were used to work pottery (they make easy-to-spin bases which easily detach from wet clay). Below, are a pot and a spinning whorl I am working on using a linen weave mat.


Interestingly, pottery was used to learn of weaving, too! Looking at the distinctive shapes woven textiles and reeds left on pottery, before it was fired, helped us understand Neolithic textiles.

Note the woven hash marks on the spindle whorl in the lower center of this image (itā€™s sitting in an aluminum foil wrapped pile of beads).

Itā€™s hard to see, but the lower bottom edge of this little pot shows the linen it sat upon as hash marks.

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I donā€™t know if anyone has mentioned it yet, but there was definitely basket weaving before the use of pottery. While woven baskets were made out of organic material, meaning we donā€™t know how old the craft actually is, the oldest woven baskets have been dated to be 10,000-12,000 years old.

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Iā€™ve heard some speculation that Pottery may have originated as an analog to basketry.

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I seam to keep running into interesting posts which I enjoy both the content and Ideas but always seem to end with a but.

So here goes noting I pasted a longer but similar response in Bronze age Expansion.

I respect the ideas with period correct and the progression of society but this is linier thinking and the game needs to use linier thinking only as long as absolutely necessary non liner and divergent thinking needs to be applied to the game to make it interesting (and profitable) in other words your reproductions are great to give developers a baseline for how long it will take to produce and what things mite look like. The next step is to apply knowledge to the Neolithic process to improve or diverge from the known Neolithic liner time line this divergence must be logical, probable and using items available from the base time line.

A few examples
Just because its starts in Europe does not mean it has to be limited to Europe areological or geological items.
what random local material https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_metal
Could change the liner progression of Neolithic period.

The language problem between charcoal and coal brings to mind coal can be mined but also is often found in the open if the our newly found Neolithic village just happens to be located in a area where there is coal on the surface the development of pottery could be altered allowing for interesting divergent development.

PS game ends when entire village starves to death after being driven out of village because no one knew the village oven was built on top of the largest vein of coal ever discovered and even all the water stored in the massive fine ceramic pots could put out the fire once it got going :grin:

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I agree with non-linearity, but we can examine the outcomes of different cultures, locations and influences, and ensure the game follows some general, baseline trends. Divergence and a stochastic play are important, but we must also consider strongly causal relations as the antecedents of certain technologies. For example, before metal can be worked, you would need the following:

Fire
Charcoal OR coal
weaving/spinning -> Bellow OR fan
stone tool for impact

So, we know that these need to exist before metal work, but we can have divergence on how they are had and evolve. For example, a bellow works better than a fan, but you could use a less advantageous fan (I did lol) when working raw copper.

Keep in mind that some advancements simply donā€™t make sense not being first. For example, charcoal primarily comes from wood fires, which will definitely exist before coal fires as coal needs wood to get going, which means wood fires must first exist.

So, it really should be a mix of both linear and divergent lines of advancement, Iā€™d suspect.

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No question there is always a linier component of any and every advancement the thought process is for every linier step or two you would like to see two potential divergent paths.

I disagree with your comment about working metal to some extent or you may confusing working with and smelting/casting you are 100% correct something approximating a forge is required to smelt/cast bronze ,brass or copper.

But the process to forge bronze or copper only requires 1400-1600 F well within even a hardwood fire.

Since copper and Bronze do occur in nature in a pure form so in rare cases smelting is not required so getting copper or bronze to a acceptable forging temperature is within abilities of early Neolithic society.

Ugg not wanting to repeat last winters hut fire gathered rocks and placed them around the camp fire so the flames would not spread to the huts. the first night one of the rocks glowed brighter than the others and even seemed to change shape. The next night Ugg put some of the black rocks they used for cold nights in the center of the fire placing the glow rock on top of the black stones. The birth of forged tools after all there were hundreds of those glow rocks by the big lake.

From then on lotus spent every night pounding on the glow rocks shaping them into her prized knitting needles Ugg did not understand but was thankful for there flax hats and shoe liners on the couples next cold hunting trip.

Ok a little corny (lot) but the story is within the realm of possibility and yes I know knitting is way out of the Neolithic era but why its not like any special tools are needed (You actually need more to create a loom) in truth if you went back in time to where there was no loom maybe knitting would be invented before the loom. Side note my grandmother used polished iron wood knitting needles made by my grandfather so the discovery of a forgeable metal was not actual required.

If you question the possibilities research mid to upper Michigan both coal and copper are found in abundance on the surface

Now I am not saying the above divergences should be available every game or even once in 10 games but there should be at least some possibility of some form of a logical radical divirgance in every game form the ā€œNeolithic time lineā€

If youā€™ve ever tried to do this, youā€™ll quickly discover itā€™s a lot harder than it seems. I have experimented with copper using open fires, as well as attempting to push them hard enough for certain forms of ceramics. Maintaining a temperature that high with uniformity, especially for the process of working something like copper, is very difficult. Once you heat the copper, you then have to cool it, hammer it or tool it, then repeat the process. This produces the need for a continuous fire of extremely high temperatures for wood, burning huge amounts of wood and requiring a massive amount of time.

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Native metal form is already scarce so Bronze occurrence as an alloy is even more uncommon and never in large quantity. Moreover, without any smithy techniques it is very unlikely that you can created any tools with it.

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My own experiments with using only Neolithic tools and techniques to attempt to shape copper using an open fire were rough at best. You could not get the copper into any smooth and definite form, only primitive shapes. If you found a raw nugget the size of two adult hands and then spent weeks, you might be able to get it into the shape of an axe head, but then youā€™d end up grinding it and it simply wouldnā€™t be worth the effort when you have stone. Worse, it would be structurally insecure due to fractures and cavities within. These are normally removed in smelting and forging, but not when youā€™re simply heating and then hitting with a rock.

I should point out that I wanted a rough copper and gold wrapped neckband for my early Neolithic character in my novels, Iā€™ve spent months trying to find any evidence thatā€™s such work had been done in the time period In question, c. 5500BCE. The Varna necropolis whatā€™s the only example I could find. Even then, it was still nine hundred years later oh, by the earliest estimates. Looking at its complexity, I rationalized but it is not impossible somebody could have made crude rock hammered bands of copper and gold using nuggets, and I was able to demonstrate that it could be done, but I put a special note in my books that this is a fanciful thing for which there is no practical evidence. lol

I have hot/warm/cool forged copper, brass, siliver and aluminum over coal and have campfire cast and forged aluminum and silver. The aluminum casting was also a smelting process as my raw material was hard drives. I only point out smelting aluminum(Not available in native form) is similar to smelting native gold, silver, coper, zinc, tin and lead as many times its just a simple separation for example smelting gold out of quartz ore is easy just heat as you will never get the quartz hot enough to alloy much less melt or soften.

So I Completely Agree never said it was easy my original point being it is generally defined in the history of man Neolithic ends with man producing Bronze weapons. So Man will learn how to use copper and bronze it is just a matter of when coupled with the randomness of discovering raw copper, that raw coal or charcoal burns hotter than wood. etc. If man advances by first learning things like farming, domestication of animals, gathering, pottery, ceramics etc to a point that provides comfort and stability when he discovers bronze working his biggest need is likely to be warfare on the other had if he discovers bronze working early his biggest need will be comfort and stability so the bronze working will drive advances in these areas granted changing history but possibly resulting in interesting alternatives.

In general what I am trying to stir is the concept that hindsight into history or if you wish the study of history causes the preconceived notion this is How man Will develop Technology in this order and before he discovers this or that. Now a game can be good in one of may ways but I will only present two to show my point.

  1. It can be historically correct almost to the point of being a teaching tool. this game shows detailed interactions and using history as a guide lays out how man evolves between the stone age and the beginning of the iron age. In other words a liner game. Result people will love the game sales may be good with the help of Modders the game may even hold a niche and stay popular. But the only way it will have true staying power is if the end game is first one to bronze age wins by warfare and conquering all after all this is what history shows us as there was no great world dominance until weapons and warfare.

  2. Game allows a fairly liner progress but offers two or three out of a hundred out of period random options and one or two unique resources out of 50 that require player choices allowing for a potentially massive divergence from history. This gives the game diversity and the ability to replay over and over. Now add in modding and we have a classic game.

My point work toward providing a list of technologies and discoveries that are within the realm of possibilities for Neolith man then define the random resources and occurrences required and the liner events that would be needed for and the result of the technology or discovery.

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The technologies in AC will not use tech tree but a more realistic way : most of the techs are imported rather than discover.
However I do not know how it will work exactly and how randomness influence your game

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I hope not that would make for a informative but dull game.

What I hope for is historically accurate starting conditions and plausible possibilities for advancement allowing for a divergence from history with believable ramifications and that any random event needs player interaction to promote or mitigate it effects.

I should clarify I hope its historlicy accurate but not nessary in all aspects especialy for example beekeeping could be discovered and used as a aid to pollination in Neolithic times this is possible but definitely not Historically accurate

From what I understand, the techs will be people based. Apparently you can lose techs if the guy who know how to do it die without transmitting his knowledge.
I ask if the techs discovery will be situational (a bit like your idea) and even if I did not get a clear answer it seem it will.
Apparently the techs tree will be hidden and your action will influence how and when the techs will unlock so each run will be different.

However the entire discussion is 1 year old so it could be different

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As a minor point of clarification, the Neolithic ends with the discovery and general use of copper.

I see that you have worked metal, but have you done so using only stone tools and ancient equipment? It is a little different.

Iā€™m also not sure that we can state that weapons were the initial reason my people begin working copper and eventually bronze. Perhaps the first people doing this wanted to make jewelry more harder tools to make their lives easier.

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Agreed.

https://forum.ancient-cities.com/t/bronze-age-expansion/1118/69?u=jrpjim

Minor minor point of clarification Neolithic ends with widespread general use of copper

I believe isolated and or specialized uses of cooper prior to the historically accepted end of Neolithic period would not ā€œViolateā€ the historical correctness of a Neolithic period game. And yes I agree the use of Bronze as other than a ceremonial weapon would pretty much signal the end of the Neolithic age.

I was speaking in the general, as specific instances are not period indicative.

Yes and no used open coal fire in a brick pit with commercial bucket for annealing and tempering. used both steel and stone hammer for the forging on a rough granite anvil.

Over forty years ago so no pictures but was making picture frames and hardware for custom furniture and best way I could get the hammered look was with a stone hammer and yes it had a conventional premade handle and I used a stone drill and modern epoxy to attach.

By the way I totally respect and admire your dedication and adherence to reproducing under almost original conditions vs. my deferring to the statement of the possibility of doing something and until we enter into the history of the late 20th century all my posts and defenses will for the most part be theoretical so I will likely never argue with you about how long or how practical something is or long it takes only that it Is possible in the era and since it is possible having a way to do it gives the game diversity.

Coming late to read the end message in this thread. Interesting discussion for sure, thank to both or you.

Everybody knowing me probably knows my heart is with @lotus253 and my head with @jrpjim on that :slightly_smiling_face:

To be honest, jrpjim, Iā€™d not worry too much on the possibilities of having such options in game, quite early after the release.
Iā€™m not in the devsā€™ heads, but I guess as they want a historical approach they probably will work prioritarily on having everything working fine, to avoid weird situations. But we may perfectly imagine a set of options being implemented in game after that, not even needing a full-fledge DLC. Iā€™m not speaking of mods here, as thatā€™s a common use for this, but thatā€™s also not as appealing as a simple tick in game options.

But, basically, what I think would be totally possible would be a first ā€œstepā€ being for instance:

  • an ā€œUnbelievable but trueā€ option in-game: having 4,000 people in your town if you reach later tech stages, like in Neolithic Eastern Europe; or a machine to make 40/50-cm-long flint blades like in Eastern Europe (those blades were only a prestige thing, as they were very frail, could not be used for anything and virtually impossible to trade safely with the means of the time on long distance); or discovering how to forge native metals to make a few things with them, as you suggested. A good part of that would need only toying with a few flags and writing bit of scripts, no more, so this probably would not be a very big deal regarding the feasibility.
  • there may also be possibilities for pure fantazy DLCs or additions: either a full-fledge DLC, or for instance a ritualistic goody added in game every 1st of April, like a priest able to make the earth shake in case of an attack, orā€¦ Well, some strange cattle. However, there is also to think about the tech work needed for such cases: if you compare with this boar as shown by the devs, I guess you may imagine this may need some bits of work to have them introduced in game, so probably this would wait a bit :slight_smile:
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