Humans may have tamed fire earlier than we thought, according to a 400,000-year-old hearth discovered in England.
Researchers found
evidence of the ancient hearth, along with flint tools and bits of iron pyrite,
at what used to be a woodland and pond site where Neanderthals are known to
have lived or camped. It may be evidence that our ancestors knew how to strike
the pyrite with flint to make sparks and start blazes.
The discovery was made
at the Barnham site. It suggests human ancestors were making fire roughly
350,000 years earlier than thought. But they aren’t sure what the fire was used
for. It might have been for cooking, carving tools, or sharing stories. Knowing
when our ancestors learned to use fire could unlock mysteries of human
evolution and behavior.
There are two theories
that try to explain why the ability to make fire led to an increase in the size
of the brain (over evolutionary time). One is that cooking increases calorie
intake because cooked food is easier to digest. Another idea is that having a
fire helped create a gathering space at night, which increased human sociality,
prompting a cognitive evolution.
However, the finding
does not show the start of humans making fire. It is the earliest known example
of using fire that the researchers are confident about. There are earlier
suggestions that our ancestors used fire in such places as South Africa,
Israel, and Kenya, but those examples are not as definitive as this discovery.
In archaeology, it’s difficult to know if a fire was started by nature or if
humans had made it.
Did they collect it
from natural sources? Carry it around and curate it? Or did they make it? The
Barnham site is a compelling case that they knew how to make fire. The
researchers found sediments that contain fire residue, as well as stone tools
such as fire-cracked flint hand axes, and fragments of iron pyrite. Geologic
analysis suggests the pyrite was extremely rare, so it was probably brought to
this site to make fire.
But not all researchers
are convinced. One stated that other Neanderthal sites, dated to around 50,000
years ago, featured flint tools that showed traces of having been struck by
pyrite to make sparks. But not at this much older site.
Fire would have been useful
for staying warm, nutrition, keeping predators away, and melting resin into
glue, as well as other things.
It is important to
realize that learning to make fire was not a linear process. It was a scattered
process, with many different groups learning on their own. There’s also
evidence that some groups of our ancestors learned to make fire and then lost
the ability or stopped using fire for some reason. Some of those may have
rediscovered how to make fire and possibly lost it again. It seems to be a
complicated history.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/in-a-400-000-year-old-hearth-hints-of-humans-taming-fire-earlier-than-thought/ar-AA1S5WuY?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=693a2c55b82340d7890331455cdc1239&ei=24
