The Table That Pottery Changed: The Revolution of Boiling

The inventions that changed the history of tools are not always vast. Sometimes one is a single vessel that fits in both hands. A clay vessel that does not crack over fire, that boils the water within it, and that turns hard things soft. One of the earliest places in the world where the ancestor of the utterly ordinary pot in our kitchens appeared was this Japanese archipelago. The ten-thousand-year stability we traced last time — at its starting point is most often placed this invention called pottery. This time, we trace how the act of ‘boiling’ changed the Jomon table and way of life.

A Vessel That Could Be Set Over Fire Changed the World

It is not that humans before the birth of pottery could not use fire. They grilled the meat of game and warmed themselves. Fire itself had been with people since far earlier. But between ‘grilling’ and ‘boiling’ lies an unexpectedly great gap. What can be grilled over an open flame is only what can withstand fire. To fill a vessel with water, heat it long, and slowly soften something hard — for that, a vessel was needed that would not break over fire and could hold water. That vessel was pottery.

The pottery of the Japanese archipelago is regarded, even by world standards, as among the very earliest to appear. The pottery unearthed at sites such as Odai Yamamoto in Aomori Prefecture is thought to be roughly 16,000 years old and is known as among the world’s oldest. Knead the clay, shape it, and harden it with fire, and you have a vessel that leaks no water and can be set over fire — this seemingly simple technique greatly widened the possibilities of people’s food. It should be added that such dates and the label ‘world’s oldest’ are always subject to revision through research, and are debated carefully in comparison with discoveries in various places.

Jomon pottery was not a mere container. Its surface bore patterns made by rolling cord across it, and this is the very origin of the name ‘Jomon,’ meaning ‘cord-marked.’ Many had deep bowl shapes with pointed bottoms; set on the ground or in a hearth and heated from below by fire, they are thought to have been used for boiling and cooking. From the scorch marks left inside the vessels and the analysis of adhering components, we can sense that something was indeed being boiled there.

Recent scientific analysis gives intriguing clues as to what this vessel was born for. Examining the char stuck inside the pottery, there are reported cases of finding components that seem to be the traces of having boiled fish and other creatures of the waterside. This drew attention as something suggesting that the earliest pottery was used first as a tool for boiling and cooking. Not for adornment, nor merely for storing things, but to set over fire and transform food — pottery may have been a kitchen tool from its very beginning. That said, its uses were not limited to one, and it is thought to have been used in various ways depending on the age and region.

Bitter Acorns Became a Staple

Among the things that the technique of boiling changed, said to be especially great was the way people dealt with nuts. The forests of the Japanese archipelago bore an abundance of nuts such as acorns and horse chestnuts. Rich in nutrition and gatherable in quantity in autumn, these nuts would ordinarily be an ideal food. Yet most of them could not be eaten as they were. They contained a strong bitterness — the component of harsh tannins — making them hard to eat raw.

Here pottery shows its power. Soak in water, boil, add ash, and so draw out the bitterness. By taking such trouble, the once-bitter acorns and horse chestnuts turned into something edible. Research holds that this process of removing bitterness was deeply tied to the appearance of pottery that could boil and cook. Was it that bitterness could be removed because there was a vessel, or that the wisdom of removing bitterness arose in the course of handling ash? There is debate over which came first, but it seems certain that pottery and a nut-based diet spread hand in hand.

The act of boiling held meaning on the nutritional side as well. Heating made things soft and easier to digest. Even hard nuts became easier for young children and the elderly with weak teeth to eat. Furthermore, eating it together with the broth means the nutrients that dissolved out are not lost either. Compared with the days of only grilling over an open flame, people became able to draw far more ‘edible things’ from the same nature — pottery was, in a sense, also a device for not letting nature’s blessings slip away.

Storage Nudged People Toward Settlement

The revolution of boiling did not only change that day’s meal. It led, one step further, toward a way of life of ‘setting things aside.’ The nuts gatherable in quantity in autumn, once their bitterness is removed, dried, and stored in pottery or pits, become provisions for crossing a winter poor in harvest. Not only living from day to day, but handling food deliberately across the seasons — the buds of such a way of life come into view here.

And a life of storing food held the power to keep people in that place. To embrace heavy, breakable pottery and carry stored food on one’s back while constantly moving is not realistic. From a life of moving about lightly in pursuit of game, to a life of settling on a particular land and dealing long with the surrounding nature. Pottery and storage are thought to have nudged this flow toward ‘settlement.’ Of course, settlement was not achieved by pottery alone, and care is needed: it is said to be the result of various conditions overlapping, such as the spreading of forests through warming.

To go on living in a single land changed the very way people dealt with nature. Living long in the same forest, people came to know deeply, through experience, which trees bore fruit when, and which rivers the fish ascended when. Gathering nuts in autumn, seeking fish and shellfish in spring and summer, building life in step with the turning of the seasons. The small change that began from the technique of boiling led, in this way, to the Jomon-like form of life of ‘going on living in tune with the rhythms of nature.’ The abundant settled life we will trace from the next episode on had, at its threshold, placed a single clay vessel.

Having gained fire and pottery, the people of Jomon thus boiled and ate nuts, fish, and shellfish, stored them, and began to put down roots in a single land. Next time, we trace how — leaning hardly at all on farming — such an abundant settled life came to stand: the true shape of the ‘unstealing life’ woven by hunting, gathering, and fishing.