Professor Joseph Davidovits is also the Supervisor of PhD’s thesis in geopolymer science.

The Tomas Bata University is one of the youngest European Universities with more than 7,000 students dedicated to learning technology. Although it is a young university, its renown Faculty of Technology was previously part of one of the oldest universities in Europe – Brno University of Technology. The history of the university is very closely connected with the name of Tomas Bata, prodigious entrepreneur of the first half of the 20th century, whose name, the Bata shoes, is well known in the most remote countries in the world. In a relatively short time, he built a modern centre for mechanical engineering, rubber, plastics, metal-working, electrotechnical, leather-making and chemical industries.

” I still had for my eyes the image of the yellow limestone Venus displayed at the Vienna Museum, Austria, to be very surprised by this one. It was not worked in soft stone, but manufactured out of terra cotta. Thus, I was looking at the oldest ceramic manufactured by Homo Sapiens 25.000 years ago (…) We have been taught that the terra cotta pottery was not invented before the Neolithic Age, 15.000 years later. And yet, I had in front of me an artifact resulting from the use of fire, at a time when, logically, the prehistoric men did not master this technique, according to the teaching of Prehistory.”

This oldest terra cota had been produced in an open wood fire (a garden fire), at a temperature of 250-400°C. maximum, but with a clay containing natural chemical ingredients, such as alkaline soluble salts, generating a geopolymeric reaction, which I call in my technical jargon, the L.T.G.S. (Low Temperature Geopolymeric Setting of ceramic)

Go to:
Joseph Davidovits’ site
or
The making of brown-black ceramics with LTGS in prehistory and antiquity

Black Paleolithic ceramic (25,000 B.C.)

The Venus of Dolni Vestonice

This oldest ceramic ever manufactured is displayed at the Anthropology Museum, at Brno, Czech Republic. The Venus of Dolni Vestonice was visited by Prof. Joseph Davidovits who writes:

“I still had for my eyes the image of the yellow limestone Venus displayed at the Vienna Museum, Austria, to be very surprised by this one. It was not worked in soft stone, but manufactured out of terra cotta. Thus, I was looking at the oldest ceramic manufactured by Homo Sapiens 25.000 years ago (…) We have been taught that the terra cotta pottery was not invented before the Neolithic Age, 15.000 years later. And yet, I had in front of me an artifact resulting from the use of fire, at a time when, logically, the prehistoric men did not master this technique, according to the teaching of Prehistory.”

Venus of Dolni Vestonice (Brno Anthropology Museum, Czech Republic)

The manufacturing technique is connected with another one used 23.000 years later in the manufacturing of Etruscan black ceramics, the famous Bucchero Nero (see below). Joseph Davidovits and Frédéric Davidovits have replicated this ultra simple technology, in their garden, at Saint-Quentin (see below).

Trials on black terra cota (LTGS) by J. Davidovits and F. Davidovits , 1999

Etruscan Ceramic, Bucchero Nero (750 B.C.)

The Etruscan civilization florished in Italy before the creation of the Roman Empire (Tarquinia, Cerveteri, Orvieto, Veio, Chiusi).

Etruscan Bucchero Nero vase (Louvre Museum)

The manufacture of Etruscan black ceramics, the famous Bucchero Nero, was presented at the 2nd International Conference on Geopolymers, in 1999. In the recently updated book Geopolymer Chemistry & Applications, archaeological ceramics are thoroughly outlined in Chapters 17 and 20. You may also go to the Geopolymer Library and download several papers.