An 8,300-year-old wooden bowl was discovered at the Jingtoushan Ruins in Yuyao, Ningbo. [Photo/WeChat account: nbfb0574]

An unearthed wooden bowl dating back 8,300 years was discovered at the Jingtoushan Ruins in Sanqishi town, Yuyao, Ningbo, East China's Shandong province, in July.

What surprised experts about the bowl was not its age, but rather its shape. At the edge of the bowl is a curved handle shaped like a small ear.

Sun Guoping, the archaeologist who discovered the bowl, speculated that people may have put ropes on the curved ear-shaped handle, using it to hang the cup up or carry it.

The wooden bowl and other findings offer an insight into the lives of people back then and provide important evidence of how human beings adapted to offshore coastal life and maritime production 8,000 years ago.

The Jingtoushan Ruins were first discovered in 2013 and date back 7,800 to 8,300 years ago, around 1,000 years earlier than the Hemudu Neolithic culture, which was also discovered in Yuyao.

The Jingtoushan findings suggest Ningbo had been populated over 1,000 years earlier than previously thought, archeologists said.

If it is exhibited, the wooden bowl will most likely be named the "Jingtoushan wooden bowl", but it still needs a nickname.