Materials · c. 31,000 years ago

Fired clay figurines

Clay shaped into figurines and hardened by fire.

People at Dolni Vestonice in Moravia shaped and fired clay figurines thousands of years before pottery vessels. The Venus figurine is estimated at about 31,000 to 30,000 years old from dated nearby remains.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia Source

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 1

Control of fire 1M years ago

What it led to 1

Pottery 18k BCE

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

World population over a million years Latest: 6.27k million people (2000) Source: DeLong 1998, table 'Total World Population' (Kremer series); Kremer 1993, Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990, QJE 108(3)