By the time Mendoza observed these wares, the Chinese had been exporting pottery for at least thirteen hundred years and had been making it for at least 5500 years. Estimates are that painted pottery was first made in China in approximately 4000 B.C.2Specimens of Chinese pottery were found in the Malay Archipelago dating back to the third century A.D., Tang Dynasty (621-907 A.D.) pottery, of the white ware, high-fired, porcelain type, was found at an archaeological dig in Samarra, (836-883 A.D.) Mesopotamia.3 Speculations are that this high-fired ware originated in China around 500 B.C.4