China is known for its long history of pottery making: archaeologists believe it is quite likely that pottery was invented in what is today China (or nearby) some 20,000 years ago. Even the word "china" means "high-fired ceramics" in English.

So, when people say that Jingdezhen is known as the ceramic capital of China, they refer to the enormous pottery making community where porcelains were made for official and royal consumption by the 7th century AD, and for darned near global markets by the 13th century.

• Read more about Jingdezhen
• Invention of Pottery

The earliest evidence for somebody cultivating banana trees identified so far is in Kuk Swamp, a site in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, where bananas have been growing for over 15,000 years, and people have been deliberately planting them for at least 7,000 years.

Bananas are really interesting: in part, because the evidence for their domestication is so old, but for geeks like me, in part because the main evidence is from tiny silicon plant remains called opal phytoliths that appear in the shapes of volcanoes. Really, how cool is that?

• History of Bananas
• Kuk Swamp, New Guinea
• Opal Phytoliths

Ancient road systems, the earliest of which date to the Neolithic, are feats of engineering that represent a wide range of uses and considerations.

Road systems could have been built primarily for maintaining trade, like the Silk Road; or for building and maintaining great empires, like the Inca, Persians and Romans; or for ritual pathways like the Nazca lines, the Inca Ceque system and the great Chaco Road. Or all of those purposes at once. Fascinating! To feed my personal fascination, I've compiled information on several of the most interesting roads, trails, pathways and highways in our collective histories over the past six thousand years. Here is a collection of the specific ways in which some past cultures moved along the countryside.

• Ancient Road Systems

Great Zimbabwe is the best known archaeological site dated to the Zimbabwe culture of the late African Iron Age.

Nearly 80 acres of masonry buildings and enclosures make up Great Zimbabwe, buildings which were built beginning in the 12th century AD by Zimbabwe culture people stacking courses of shaped local stone--the buildings are mortarless. The structures at Great Zimbabwe are massive, and the architectural details, including conical towers and embedded designs like the one above, make it a fascinating place to visit.

The history of Great Zimbabwe is also fascinating: there is an abundance of archaeological evidence of connections with the medieval trade port of Kilwa Kisiwani and other Swahili coast towns, and thus access to trade goods throughout the Near and Far East.

Read More

• Great Zimbabwe
• Kilwa Kisiwani
• Guide to the African Iron Age
• Guide to the Swahili Culture
• African Iron Age Sites