| The bottle shown above is decorated with fingernail impressions. It was excavated at the Banpo site; no date was given by the museum. The decorations on the bottle are similar to those on a bowl shown on the next page. Both show striking resemblance to Neolithic designs found elsewhere in the world.
I picture a Neolithic potter making a mistake by grabbing a completed pot to put it in the furnace and ruining the smooth surface by accident. Gradually the error would be turned to advantage by repeating it in a pattern, thus turning a mistake into a new feature.
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