Food residues offer a taste of pottery’s diverse origins in East Asia

Some hunter-gathers used pots to cook fish, while others served up animals such as sheep

East asian cooking pot fragments

Pieces of cooking pots (shown) made by one ancient East Asian hunter-gatherer group contain chemical residues of fish such as salmon. Those people invented pottery independently of other hunter-gatherers in the region, scientists say.

Yanshina Oksana

Pottery making may not have emerged in one Big Bang–like event.