What little we could do and see if we did not have glass

摘要

It is difficult to visualise a period in human history when we had no glass but 5,000 years ago there was probably no such thing.As Alan Macfarlane and Gerry Martin explain in an essay published in Science for 3 September,there is a host of uncertainties associated with that useful commodity.It may have originated in the Middle East,in Egypt or in Mesopotamia,although if we allow the concept of glazing,pottery was glazed perhaps as early as 8000BC.