Alie Ward

So figurines came first, and maybe they were made to be beautiful and then tossed in the fire, like you would throw a coin into a well, or maybe like a wedding ring into the ocean.

But then, dang, these clay creations...

like a horror villain.

They only got stronger, forged in fire.

So once your ancestors realized, holy shit, this works, actually, they were like, well, let's start the container store, but with more hair and mud.

So about 19,000 years ago, as far as we know, we start seeing pots and such.

And indigenous people in the Americas have been making clay pots for millennia.

And many first forms involved a big, long clay noodle coiled on top of itself and

to make the sides of the pot and then smoothed over and in some places you can see the impressions left by leaves or mats they were created on in the bottom of the pot but from those first figurines it'll be a while before the potter's wheel like 14 or so thousand years i mean the potter's wheel southern iraq probably about 3000 bc um

Right, just give it a couple thousand years.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, you were talking about in Forrest, too, those huge vessels.

I've always wondered, you know, Roman and Greek huge vessels like that.

Why were they pointed at the bottom?

It seems like it would be difficult to set it down.

And this peg he's talking about is that kind of pointed end of the amphora.

So imagine a pitcher, if you will, or imagine a jug, depending on where you are.

And rather than having that flared, wide, flat base, instead, this jug comes to a dull point at the bottom.

And this can be wedged in between the amphoras below it, kind of like stacking chairs in the hull of a ship.

Do you get so excited when you hear of shipwrecks being discovered with amphora?