Tens of thousands of years before the use of fired pottery, people were making flute-type instruments from hollowed stones, bones, gourds and sea shells.  There are several examples of bone instruments from 27,000 years ago, most notably from Hungary.

Recently, a paleontologist in Ljublanja uncovered a hollow section of a bear's femur with four finger holes cut into it.  Found on a Neanderthal site, it is at least 40,000 years old.  If the bone had been complete, the finger holes would probably have played a clear range of notes.

I mention this instrument to make the point that when musical instrument makers began to use fired pottery to make tube and vessel flutes, they were drawing on an ancient, established tradition.  Music had been a part of people's lives for at least 30,000 years before the discovery of fired pottery - the use of clay to make musical instruments just made the whole process somewhat easier!

There is evidence of fired pottery from over 6,000 years ago in China.  It's very crude, but it marked a major change for mankind.  The Institute of Ethnology in Nankang, Tai-pai, catalogued over a dozen pottery "Hsun," the Chinese egg shaped vessel flute, from around 4,800 years ago.  It states that the makers were using the same musical principles employed in the manufacture of earlier bone instruments. 

The Hsun changed very little over several thousand years.  By 200 B.C., small orchestras were playing tuned Chinese pottery vessel flutes in harmony.

In 1982 the Santiago Pre-Colombino Museum in Chile mounted a major exhibition of surviving musical instruments from pre-Hispanic Central and South America.  Most were made of fired terra cotta.  Many were over 1,000 years old.  The oldest dated back to 3,000 years ago and there were many similarities to their earlier Chinese counterparts.  There are numerous examples of vessel flutes sculpted in animal, bird and human forms.  Six hundred years before the arrival of the Spanish, the Maya were making sophisticated tuned instruments.  There are examples of fippled instruments and whistling vessels  with several internal chambers.  I have made a museum copy of the little bird ocarina made by the Tairona people around a thousand years ago.

Tairona instruments seem to have been carefully tuned and capable of being played in harmony, but the Tairona were virtually wiped out by the Conquistadors, and many of their musical instruments were broken.  The Spanish regarded pottery instruments with suspicion and attempted to stamp out the musical traditions of the Mayans and Aztecs.  Yet it seems as though the Spanish were responsible for introducing the idea of pottery musical instruments to Europe.  In the early 1500's, Cortes sent a group of Aztec dancers and musicians to Charles V to show the king what his new subjects were like.  Their performances were highly sophisticated and impressed the Europeans.  The Italians and Spanish copied the Aztec pottery flutes resulting in a novelty whistle eventually nicknamed "ocarina" or "little goose" in Italian.

For the next 300 years in Europe the instrument was regarded as a novelty toy with little musical potential.  Then in the 1850's Guiseppi Donati of Budrio, Italy, worked out how to achieve an eight note scale by using a fingering system similar to the flageolet, but using a submarine shape.  After several years he had developed an ocarina which played one and a half octaves.  Inevitably his instruments were copied and competition encouraged more sophistication.  Touring ocarina bands like "The Mountaineers of the Appenines" and virtuoso players like Senor Tapiero gave the instrument respectability, and by the 1900's the submarine shape ocarina had become universally accepted.

First World War soldiers found the ocarina cheaper than the harmonica and easier to carry than a tin whistle or flageolet.  Companies like Mathieu in Paris made metal ocarinas which played well.  Meissen made beautiful glazed pottery instruments which are now collectors' pieces.  Gradually "Bakelite" took over from metal and pottery.  By the 1940's the first American plastic ocarinas (still based on the Donati shape) came onto the market and became popular with G.I's.

After WW2, ocarinas went into a decline as the recorder gained popularity.  However, since the 1980's, largely due to the rediscovery of the versatile Mayan fingering systems, the instruments have gained in popularity.  Currently, many U.K. junior schools are using John Langley's "poly-oc" as a versatile first step in musical education.