Ancient Egyptian Tech May Be Key To Printing 3D Ceramics

I find lately that commentators are more often referring to people from earlier eras as if they were stupid, when my interpretation is that they had an equal if not greater capacity for brilliance.
"...Also known as Egyptian paste, faience is one of those remarkable crossroads materials that occur now and again in the history of technology. It was invented 7,000 years ago in Egypt, when the Egyptians were still trying to get the hang of pottery and smelting metal. It isn?(TM)t actually a ceramic, but rather a paste made of quartz or sand, calcite lime and a mixture of alkalis. Because of this, it can be applied directly to wet clay. When the pottery is fired, the paste turns into a brilliant blue-green glaze reminiscent of lapis lazuli, which the Egyptians used faience as a substitute for...."

Atrocious writing aside, this would be an excellent example - how much determined experimentation would it take YOU to develop something like this...at the available tech from 5000 BC? You don't have calculus, you don't even have a basic understanding of chemistry, microscopes, hell, even an accurate thermometer?

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/O3yN8ZTyvCo/ancient-egyptian-tech-may-be-key-to-printing-3d-ceramics

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