# Survival > Primitive Skills & Technology >  cooking over fire with primitive containers

## crimescene450

does anyone know what primitive humans used to cook over fire with?

would pottery be able to take, and conduct the heat at all?

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## Alaskan Survivalist

A stick. A multi purpose tool also used for hitting each other over the head.

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## crimescene450

Wouldnt pottery crack from the heat?

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## crashdive123

You can cook with it.  Here are some guidelines and tips to help ensure your food is cooked properly and that your pottery lasts.  http://www.comitatus.net/research_files/claypot.pdf

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## Rick

I'm not sure how far back you want to go for "primitive" but pottery has been used to cook in for a very long time. In the Middle East they have historically used a pot called a tajine (some variations in spelling). It's made of clay. 

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But clay pots of all kinds have been used even in the U.S. from earliest times. 

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## gryffynklm

Are you asking if its possible or wondering how to make a clay cooking vessel? 

The links below discuss and include links to web pages that cover clay preparation and tempering to avoid cracking during firing. 

Here is an earlier thread about making clay pottery.
http://www.wilderness-survival.net/f...t=clay+pottery

This thread has more information about clay preparation and firing the clay.
http://www.wilderness-survival.net/f...t=clay+pottery

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## hunter63

Cooking in a hide bag either directly over a fire, or by putting heated stones in the hide bag. (Caution, some can and do explode from the heated water inside), 

This was common even back to caveman days.
http://www.wynja.com/arch/cooking.html

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## justin_baker

Primitive people didnt have the luxury of pots and pans like us. Usually they put their meat on a stick and just roasted it. As for veggies, they probably ate them almost always raw. But some plants (like milkweed) are toxic if not boiled, and indians were known to enjoy tea quite a bit.
So what they did is they took some kind of container (lets say wooden), heated up rocks in a fire, and then placed into the wooden pot. This would heat up the water and get it to a boil, although this is a very time consuming process.
I really dont know much about any other methods though. A clay pot if you could cook in it would revolutionize the way that a tribe would cook.

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## Camp10

I remember seeing a pot made of birch bark being used to boil water over an open fire.  It was a picture that was in a book I read many years ago about some of the local indians.

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## Rick

Turtle shells were used as well. Obviously, the turtles were less than thrilled with this method.

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## justin_baker

> I remember seeing a pot made of birch bark being used to boil water over an open fire.  It was a picture that was in a book I read many years ago about some of the local indians.


Thats crazy....you would have to be so delicate and careful not too set it on fire.

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## Camp10

> Thats crazy....you would have to be so delicate and careful not too set it on fire.



Scroll down to page 6.
http://essentialstuff.org/wp-content...2610a_cprs.pdf

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## crimescene450

> Are you asking if its possible or wondering how to make a clay cooking vessel? 
> 
> The links below discuss and include links to web pages that cover clay preparation and tempering to avoid cracking during firing. 
> 
> Here is an earlier thread about making clay pottery.
> http://www.wilderness-survival.net/f...t=clay+pottery
> 
> This thread has more information about clay preparation and firing the clay.
> http://www.wilderness-survival.net/f...t=clay+pottery



i was asking how they did it, because i assumed the pottery would explode
which apparently it would unless it was heated slowly

sounds like a pain
haha

as for making pottery
im going to ohio soon and i know a nice place along the chagrin river that has some clay
i might try taking some and maybe oven-ing it up





> Turtle shells were used as well. Obviously, the turtles were less than thrilled with this method.



do you think turtle shells would have exploded too?




> I remember seeing a pot made of birch bark being used to boil water over an open fire.  It was a picture that was in a book I read many years ago about some of the local indians.



yeah thats kinda like how you can boil water in a paper cup, as long as its full

has something to do with physics or something like that
haha

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## Rick

I was being tongue in cheek. Sorry. The turtle shell was a joke with the turtles being upset.

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## gryffynklm

Crimescene, Read the posts I linked to to find out a bit about cleaning the clay, shaping, drying and pre firing before you actually fire the clay. Firing the clay is a long process. depending on the size of the clay pot it could take 6 to 8 hours in the coals. Good luck

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## your_comforting_company

properly tempered pottery will not explode in use. An oven will not get hot enough to fire pottery fully (unless your oven gets over 800 degrees F), you need pretty high temperatures to fully fire pottery. The Natives of my area made pottery that was used regularly to cook in. It was no big deal to make more if the clay cracked.
Hide bowls and hot rocks as mentioned already were used. It's not as tedious or time consuming as one might think. It takes about 10 minutes to heat the rocks up and less than 5 to bring the water to a boil once the rocks start going in the pot.
Turtle shells is pretty delicate and since it's bone will degrade rather quickly in the fire. The hot rock method would work nicely with a shell.
Judging by the amount of pottery found in fields and such around my area, I would say that (at least in my area) the Natives made pottery. Some were flat plates, some were drinking cups, some were storage vessels, and some were dedicated to cooking. As long as you heat the pottery evenly (not necessarily slowly) It shouldn't crack and break. Earthenware vessels are quite resilient when treated with care. The natives didn't make use of glazes much, but I have found glaze recipes that use sand and wood ashes (and a few other ingredients could be substituted). Pottery is a great conductor of heat.

Here is a picture of a small dish I made that can be used to warm up meat-stuffs or just for eating. I've made a few other things also, but it's just too hot right now to be watching an open pit-fire. I'll be back on primitive pottery as soon as the temps drop off enough to justify a fire.
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## justin_baker

With clay pottery, would you want to cook on an open flame or restrict yourself to just coals?

Also, at a nature preserve there are some volcanic rocks with natural depressions in them. One is particular was used for grinding acorns. If you had a big enough depression, couldnt you put the rock int fire and it would work just as good as a metal pot? Coudlnt you take a softer rock, and use the grind peck and methods to force a depression in it?

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## Alaskan Survivalist

Primitive man had enough sense to use what was available to them. Clamshells should be abundent in California to cook in. I have the feeling if primitive man was around today they would use car hoods, old tin cans or whatever metal they could find until they got thier hands on a cast iron pot and then hang on to it for dear life as long as they lived.

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## gryffynklm

I use clay vessels sort of like cast iron. It depends on what I'm cooking. If I'm cooking soup I would begin cooking over the flames because the much hotter spots were the flame comes in contact with the pot usually do not scorch food as easily with all the liquid. I would still finish the soup over coals at a slow simmer. If I'm roasting in a covered clay pot I would use coals so that I have uniform heat to avoid burning or scorching the food. This may be more of a personal preference then a standard rule.

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## your_comforting_company

A rock with a natural depression could very easily be used as a frying pan, if you have enough animal fat to keep it full of grease. Rocks tend to absorb liquids, but in a pinch there's no doubt in my mind it would work well.
If you have a soft enough rock that is stable in the fire, you could peck a bowl out of it for use. The trick here is finding a soft rock that won't explode in the fire. At least in my area, the softer rocks you find are mostly limestone, which is not particularly stable when heated (calcium likes to expand). Shells were typically pre-fired to stabilize them. I know, I know... shells are mostly calcium too, but it's somehow different and many times clam shells were burned and crushed for use as temper in clay vessels.
Not sure if I entirely answered your question.
Were I in a survival situation that required the making of cooking vessels, earthenware would be my first choice. A few simple test runs can tell you if the clay is suitable for dinnerware. None of it has to be excessively accurate, so you don't need exact measures and after a while, you wouldn't need to measure anything at all.. You'd get a "feel" for the clay and could make pots on a whim.

I think I'll fire a sort of pan and see how it holds up on the fire. Maybe cook some fish in it with wild onions and okra. yummmmm.

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## Rick

Hey YCC - Neat looking plate. Did you pull the clay locally to make that? If so, did you use the malleable test by rolling it in your hand? Have you tried the taste test yet? It's my day for questions. (shrug)

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## Beans

> I was being tongue in cheek. Sorry. The turtle shell was a joke with the turtles being upset.




Gee Rick
and to think that I believed you too
 :Blushing:

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## Rick

Well, uh, yeah. Turtle shells, sure. But not just any turtle shell. It has to be the, uh, rare, ummm, soup bowl turtle. Now if you spot one of them fellas, you got yourself a pot.

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## kyratshooter

The earliest ceramics we have date to 40,000bc in europe.  They are the oldest artifacts ever recovered from an archiological site.  Of course ceramics will last forever, so they would be.  Earliest pottery in orth america comes from a site in South Carolina if my memory serves me.  The skill seems to have been brough to that area from Mexico because the styles are nearly the same in both places.  The Membres Apache made some of the finest pottery in the world,  some of their pieces sell for several MILLION $$$.   It is decorated with some of the finest porn ever found.  Membres women were fine artists.  (they don't teach you that in the history books)

They can be placed directly over the fire for boiling or frying.  You cure them in a kiln at several thousand degrees so a fire is not going to phase them.  Primitive people stacked them up and built a fire on them to temper them.  If they crack in tempering they are thrown away.  Heat is not going to hurt them.

Cooking in birch bark, sure, it works.  I have also boiled water in a paper sack and boiled an egg in a Dixie Cup.  I boiled water in a plastic 2 liter bottle once, just to prove it could be done, but that is not quite primitive.  I fried an egg on a flat rock once too.  That was nasty!

One of the strange things about cooking with the hot rocks is the fast cook time.  You heat a rock up in a fire and release several thousand BTUs of heat in five or ten seconds and stuff cooks real fast.

So the early guys were not just hanging meat over ther fire on a stick, or throwing the whole kangaroo in the middle of the brush pile like I saw in a film at school once.

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## your_comforting_company

> Hey YCC - Neat looking plate. Did you pull the clay locally to make that? If so, did you use the malleable test by rolling it in your hand? Have you tried the taste test yet? It's my day for questions. (shrug)


The clay for that dish came from the boat landing where we hunt. It was full of pebbles and quartz so it had to be cleaned.
To see if it's pliable enough, I rolled it into a coil and tied it in a knot. It did crack but held together so I gave it a shot.
I have not yet tried the taste test, but I have about 5 lbs of clay aging in the shed. I'll give it a taste before making the new cooking dish. Bitter is better, right?

I've also tried some clay from the creek where I grew up. It's white source clay from under a tree on a high bank. Before the landowner closed the place off we used to swim there almost every day and swing from a rope tied in the tree.
That clay mostly blew in firing but I managed to get a little frog and a ceramic spearhead out of it. It needs more temper. The frog also got my first glaze test, borax and fine sand (or extra slippy clay). I did a reduction firing which allowed ashes and trash to contact the glaze that was on the outside of the frog, but the inside is sort of glassy. Needs more experimentation. Next glaze test will be with wood ash for flux.

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## The Crimson Ghost

> Thats crazy....you would have to be so delicate and careful not too set it on fire.


Vessels containing water mostly will not go up in flames. Plastic cups, foam cups, work the same way. Filled with water and put in the fire, they only melt/burn from the top down as the water evaporates.

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## Justin Case

> Vessels containing water mostly will not go up in flames. Plastic cups, foam cups, work the same way. Filled with water and *put in* the fire, they only melt/burn from the top down as the water evaporates.


Are you sure ??

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## Rick

Actually, he's correct. If you fill up a plastic bottle with water, leaving no air, you can cap it and toss it into the fire. The water will purify and the bottle will not melt. I don't know about cups or anything made of foam. 

This vid has been posted on here before. 

http://www.yikers.com/video_how_to_b...ic_bottle.html

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## Justin Case

> Actually, he's correct. If you fill up a plastic bottle with water, leaving no air, you can cap it and toss it into the fire. The water will purify and the bottle will not melt. I don't know about cups or anything made of foam. 
> 
> This vid has been posted on here before. 
> 
> http://www.yikers.com/video_how_to_b...ic_bottle.html


That was my point, how would you seal air out of a Foam Cup ?  besides, the foam itself is mostly little air bubbles ?   I could be wrong, That why I simply asked him if he was sure . I have seen the water bottle trick many times  :Smile:

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## crashdive123

You raise an interesting point JIC.  I've tried plastic cups and bags, but not a styrofoam cup.  I guess a test is in the future plans.

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## Justin Case

> You raise an interesting point JIC.  I've tried plastic cups and bags, but not a styrofoam cup.  I guess a test is in the future plans.


Let us know,,  also , how would you seal the top of the cup and make it air tight ?

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## Ken

I'll tell you one thing I already know for a fact.   :Innocent: 

If you take a styrofoam cup FILLED with coffee (cream and sugar Crash  :Smile: ) and covered with a lid, it will melt in a microwave oven if you press 10:00 by accident instead of 1:00 before you press the "start" button.   :Blushing:

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## Camp10

I did a quick sweep of the place looking for a styrofoam cup to try it with but came up empty.  I guess I will have to wait for someone else to try it and post their results.

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## crashdive123

> Let us know,,  also , how would you seal the top of the cup and make it air tight ?


You don't.  I've also done it in a paper (hot drink) cup.  Everyting above the liquid burned away.  The liquid in the cup kept the rest from burning.

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## Justin Case

I still have my doubts about Styrofoam ,  but we'll see  :Smile:

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## crashdive123

I do as well.

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## rwc1969

Wouldn't using plastics and such leach toxic chemicals into the water?

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## gryffynklm

Ya, I don't know about styrofoam, logic says no. I have boiled water in a plastic bottle suspended from a string above a fire. The bottle distorted but didn't melt or burn. As far as plastic and toxins getting into the water, that is a long term exposure health concern (long term not defined). I wouldn't worry about it in a survival situation.

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## crashdive123

> Wouldn't using plastics and such leach toxic chemicals into the water?


It may, but if it does, it will not be an acute toxicity and would take doing it continually, over a long period of time to have any ill effects.  I would consider this method for emergencies and not a normal practice.  We all know that there is usually some trash lying around that can be used to help us out of a tight spot.  This is just one of those examples.

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## Aurelius95

If I remember from chemistry in high school, the reason the paper cup won't burn is that the heat transfer to the water is almost immediate (From the flame).  It will boil the water, it will burn the edges of the cup that don't have water next to it, but the majority of the cup will remain intact.  I guess it would work with styrofoam as well.

Yahooanswers.com says it will work, but I have not tested it myself.
http://ph.answers.yahoo.com/question...5054140AAhJK0R

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## Batch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNf-wcchktk

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## Justin Case

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNf-wcchktk


well Ill be Durned  :Blushing:   Ok,  Now I am wondering about a Water Balloon or a Condom filled with water,  ????   :Innocent: 

Thanks Batch  :Smile:

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## rwc1969

They didn't even cover it did they?

i guess it makes sense cuz I could never get a pipe to take solder even if there was just a tiny trickle of water in there.

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## Batch

> well Ill be Durned   Ok,  Now I am wondering about a Water Balloon or a Condom filled with water,  ????  
> 
> Thanks Batch


Right cause if the condom failed with water you wouldn't want to trust it if the girl is hot!  :Innocent:  ...errrr...GRILL, I mean... :Innocent:

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## BushedOut

I recently visited a site whilst on holiday in the Middle East.  The site dated back to Neanderthal man and they had found a large number of tools and hunting tools and materials.  However, there were not pots... Just sticks and stone.  It was very interesting though to see the progression in spear tips and the improvement in design.  So in agreement.. Depending how far you go back I think you will find the oldest cooking tools were .... A stick.

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## your_comforting_company

I had some dried clay stored in the shed to be processed. I collected rainwater yesterday and worked some into a few jars. I also had some aged and ready to be molded so I made a small cooking pot with a lid. 
We'll see how it holds up to cooking, since the OP was about "primitive containers".

(for Rick) For the record, the clay I made the pot from yesterday did not taste bitter at all.
I acquired some new clay where a friend had a new well drilled. It was very sticky and bendable, even in it's crude form. It also tasted quite bitter. It's in process now and should be a lump in a few days. I'll let you know how it turns out too.

I have to agree that the _most ancient_ cooking tools were sticks and stones.

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