Tanzen artifacts are both tantalizing and frustrating at the same time. We know they make pots, textiles and simple bone and stone tools -- a demonstration of general craft skills that should indicate high-order intelligence. And yet the products themselves exhibit a remarkable degree of uniformity, and there is demonstrably minimal crosstalk between the different products. Unlike humans, the Tanzen show no indication that their pottery informs their basket making, or their baskets shape their hunting tools, or that their tools could be used for making pots. Also, unlike humans, although their crafts are stunning they are not decorative. At least as far as the human eye can tell, everything they make is strictly utilitarian.
I've moved a set of sensors deeper into the north river village and I'm getting some spectacular data. It's at the center of their communities that the Tanzen specialists do their best work, and Eddie has turned out to be exemplary. Eddie -- named after another elder craftsman I knew with a slight potbelly -- is the primary potter for the group. He spends hours each day sorting the different clays that the various gatherers bring in, testing and kneading and tasting each one, pinching off bits of each and moving them between different piles. Eventually when he gets a suitable lump he starts to work it differently and the magic happens.
Tanzen hands are like human hands, but only if you took a whole bunch and spliced them together. Imagine the part of your hand that includes just the heel of your palm and the thumb, like it was chopped off well below the knuckles. Then stick another heel and thumb onto that, although smaller. And then another, and another, and another, and another, and another. You'd have seven thumbs altogether on a long, flexible mitten of a hand. The last of them would be so small that it was more like a pincher -- a small thumb closing against a fingerlike palm. That's a Tanzen hand, and it looks like it was made for pottery.
As Eddie starts to form a pot, the rippling action of the thumbs of his left hand cradle and spin a tiny cup of clay. The first thumb (technically plicus majoris) of his right hand pinches off a small bit of clay from the chunk he holds against his flank and works it into a roll. That's pinned by the next thumb that pushes and rolls it toward the next thumb. Each thumb passes the bit along, rolling and shaping it to the flat crescent that the final pincher squeezes into place. The thumbs are all working at once, so a flowing stream of tiny rolls of clay get steadily deposited on the spinning pot. Pottery, it turns out, is another rhythmic and graceful dance for the Tanzen.
The pots are all nearly identical. Not in configuration -- the shapes and sizes of the pots vary considerably, as if the clay itself were dictating whether this one would be a flat dish while the next one would be a tall amphora. They are identical in style. They are all covered in a zigzag moire pattern indicative of repeating particles tracing a curve along a surface. Pots made by Eddie are the same as pots made by potters in other settlements, and those are indistinguishable from centuries-old pots found in rubbish tips. It is the lack of variation that supports the hypothesis that pottery is instinctive. Tanzen make pots because they were born to make pots, an Eddie could no more give up pottery than a canary could give up singing.
I cannot refute the consensus hypothesis at this point. However I think there's a lot more to be said about the fact that they fire their pots. Semi-sentience is a non-explanation, and fired pots are a non-trivial technology. One pot in ten ends up as shards after firing, but I think a pottery canary would end up with more like ten shards and one pot.
