Invention of fire
Claims for the earliest definitive evidence of control of fire by a member of Homo range from 1.7 to 0.2 million years ago (Mya). Evidence for the controlled use of fire by Homo erectus, beginning some 600,000 years ago, has wide scholarly support.
The Progress of Fire Control
The human control of fire likely required a cognitive ability to
conceptualize the idea of fire, which itself has been recognized in
chimpanzees; great apes have been known to prefer cooked foods, so the
very great age of the earliest human fire experimentation should not
come as a terrific surprise.
Archaeologist JAJ Gowlett offers this general outline for the
development of fire use: opportunistic use of fire from natural
occurrences (lightning strikes, meteor impacts, etc); limited
conservation of fires lit by natural occurrences, using animal dung or
other slow-burning substances to maintain fires in wet or cold seasons;
and kindled fire. For the development of fire's use, Gowlett
suggests: using natural fire events as opportunities to forage for
resources in landscapes; creating social/domestic hearth fires; and
finally, using fires as tools to make pottery and heat-treat stone tool.
Indirect Evidence
Twomey's argument is based several lines of indirect evidence. First,
he cites the metabolic demands of relatively big-brained Middle
Pleistocene hunter-gatherers and suggests that brain evolution required
cooked food. Further, he argues that our distinctive sleep patterns
(staying up after dark) are deeply rooted; and that hominids began
staying in seasonally or permanently cool places by 800,000 years ago.
All of this, says Twomey, implies effective control of fire.
Gowlett and Wrangham recently argued that another piece of indirect evidence for the early use of fire is that our ancestors H. erectus
evolved smaller mouths, teeth, and digestive systems, in striking
contrast to earlier hominids. The benefits of having a smaller gut could
not be realized until high-quality foods were available all year long.
The adoption of cooking, which softens food and makes it easier to
digest, could have led to these changes.
Fuels
Relict wood was likely the fuel used for the earliest fires.
Purposeful selection of wood came later: hardwood such as oaks burns
differently from softwood from pines, the moisture content and density
of a wood all affect how hot or how long a particular fire burns. Other
sources became important in various places with limited wood supply,
because when timber and branch wood was needed for structures,
furnishing and tools would have reduced the amount of wood spent on
fuel.
University of Colorado Museum found evidence for frequent use of fire by European Neanderthals between 400,000 and 300,000 years ago. European sites
once inhabited by hominids and found no evidence of fire before about
400,000 years ago—but plenty after that threshold. Evidence from Israeli
sites put fire mastery at about the same time. H. sapiens
arrived on the scene in the Middle East and Europe 100,000 years ago,
but our species didn’t have a discernible impact on the charcoal record. Neanderthals must have been the ones
who mastered fire.
Judging from the way things are going, this debate may rage on for a
good while longer. And there is room for more than one right answer:
It’s possible that different groups mastered fire independently of one
another at different points in time. But laypeople can take comfort in
knowing that, even if we don’t know yet who first mastered fire our
simple ancestors almost 2 million years ago, our more advanced cousins
400,000 years ago, or our direct antecedents about 10,000 years
ago there’s no doubt who holds the intellectual property rights to it
today. We even put it in an oven and made it our own.
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