Native American peoples had the ingenuity to make the imaginative and intellectual leaps necessary to develop complex inventions when they first came to North America from Asia. But why did they not invent or adopt ceramic containers until about 2300 B.C. in the southeastern U.S., about 1000 B.C. in the Northeast, and about 600 B.C. in the Southwest? There are two archaeological approaches to answering this difficult question.
Some archaeologists believe that pottery was not necessary or advantageous to the survival of Native Americans until they began raising crops and living in larger, more stationary settlements. Before that, stone or wood containers and baskets were more suited to their nomadic lifestyle. Except for some of the stone vessels, most of these containers were lighter and more portable than pottery. They were also more readily made from accessible materials and therefore easily left behind to lighten a traveling load. Pottery was too fragile to be practical, for it could easily be broken or damaged during a move to a new home.
Other archaeologists believe that inventions like pottery came about either trough accidental discovery or through intentional experimentation by observant individuals. Some inventions were adopted because of their utility or other attractive features; others fell by the wayside, perhaps to be reinvented or rediscovered later--as with Leonardo da Vinci's design for the airplane. These archaeologists use examples such as the Northwest Coast peoples, whose villages were sizeable and relatively permanent, but who did not have pottery, to argue their case.
Perhaps the reasons for the invention of pottery lie somewhere between these two archaeological hypotheses. |
