Old Stone AgeTechnology First pottery c. 18,000 BCEMajor Hunter-gatherers at Xianrendong Cave in China make cooking pots thousands of years before farming. ▲ MattersSaveShareTrace roots Longest chain: The Big Bang → First stars ignite → Supernovae seed heavy elements → The Sun forms → Earth forms → First oceans → First life → Photosynthesis evolves → Great Oxidation Event → Complex cells (eukaryotes) → Multicellular life → First animals → Cambrian Explosion → First vertebrates → Jawed fish → Fish walk onto land → The amniotic egg → The Great Dying → Dinosaurs appear → Asteroid ends the dinosaurs → Early primates → Apes split from monkeys → Human line splits from chimpanzees → Walking upright → First stone tools → Genus Homo appears → Homo erectus → Control of fire → First fired clay figures → First pottery Community notesLoading notes… Learn more ranked by votesDocumentscience.orgEarly pottery at 20,000 years ago in Xianrendong Cave, China (Wu et al., Science 2012) ↗Editor's pickDocumentsciencenews.orgOldest pottery comes from Chinese cave (Science News) ↗Editor's pickBookClive Orton and Michael HughesPottery in Archaeology ↗Editor's pickVideoSearch on YouTubeworld's oldest pottery Xianrendong ↗Editor's pick