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Roadside tea sellers in India serve tea in disposable earthenware cups. The cups are unglazed and lightly fired, so they rapidly disintegrate back into dirt. Disposable plastic cups have only recently started to displace the traditional earthenware cups.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspon...

A fairly poetic use of the word 'massacre', not what I was expecting :P I have to wonder about the economics here
tl;dr "disposable"* cups were a decadent display of wealth in the 15th century. archaeologist recently unearthed a cache of smashed cups.

*by disposable, I mean that wealthy hosts created a large number of earthenware cups which were designed to be used only once and then broken after the first drink.