Iran’s most ancient piece of pottery is over 10,000 years old, though human being used pottery vessels some 2,000 years earlier, an archeologist said.

It is discovered in Ganj Darreh (Valley of Treasure), a district of Kermanshah province, west of Iran, announced Farzaneh Ghaeini, director of the Abgineh Museum in Tehran.

“The vessel is clearly the oldest piece of pottery in Iran, dating back to the 8th millennium BC,” she said.

The first earthenware vessels were of two kinds, black utensils and red ones, both of these had very simple construction.

Gradually, simple earthenware, were being deco rated by geometric designs. Studying these designs shows us that Iranians were very skillful in making designed earthenware and represented these designs in a very lively and beautiful manner. Iran could be called the main birth place of designed earthenware utensils. Designing earthenware in Iran started about 4 thousand years BC.

The artists by using this new machine made different kinds of utensils like: piped pots, bowls and jars for storage of corns and grains.

Among excavated earthen belonging to this age, some primitive earthen statues in the form of animals and birds were found which were used more ornamentally rather than anything else.

During the past hundred years, many valuable remnants earthenware from different civilizations have been found in "Sialk" "Tape Misar", "Shush" "Tepe Gyan" 'Tape Hasanlu" and 'Tal-i Bacon" in Takhte-Jamshid. Studying these works will reveal the changing process of art of pottery in Iran. Images of horns of cows and reindeers, wings of birds and shouts of lions are some kind of decorative design of pottery in fourth Thousand Year BC The strength and durability of this art caused its glory and spread all over Iran's plateau and even beyond there.

At the end of the third century and in the second century BC, pottery became a little delicate and at times decorated by engraved designs. The earthen statue of a wild goat excavated in "Kalar Dasht" at the foot of "Alborz" mountain is a sample of the art of pottery of this age.