This is the oldest evidence of people starting fires
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Interesting bit of trivia re: humans and fire: Alexander the Great claimed circa 326BCE that they encountered a tribe (the Ichthyophagi) which had not discovered fire.
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…It was always burning, since the world's been turning…
Thanks for that earworm.
Thanks for that earworm.
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The roof is, however, on fire, and we're letting the motherfucker burn
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Evening was always Ana's favourite time of day.
Every night, as the sun sank below the earth, she'd run to camp. The stories and the songs were fun, cooked food delicious, but it was the firestarting that fascinated her. As Jo - hands huge - would stack the wood. Place the leaves. Every step a ritual, every part the same. And then....
The grey stone in one hand, rough. The firestone in the other. And as he struck them together, the fire that leapt from the cold, hardened flame to light upon the wood below. The smoke as the newborn spirits took first the leaves, then the twigs, and then the logs, growing ever larger, ever hotter as the childlike spirits grew to adults. Tamed. Harnessed. Controlled by the group, for the group. To keep what lay within the night at bay.
Someday, she thought, she would be the one to light the fire, to harness the power of the firestones and the spirits within.
Someday.
Every night, as the sun sank below the earth, she'd run to camp. The stories and the songs were fun, cooked food delicious, but it was the firestarting that fascinated her. As Jo - hands huge - would stack the wood. Place the leaves. Every step a ritual, every part the same. And then....
The grey stone in one hand, rough. The firestone in the other. And as he struck them together, the fire that leapt from the cold, hardened flame to light upon the wood below. The smoke as the newborn spirits took first the leaves, then the twigs, and then the logs, growing ever larger, ever hotter as the childlike spirits grew to adults. Tamed. Harnessed. Controlled by the group, for the group. To keep what lay within the night at bay.
Someday, she thought, she would be the one to light the fire, to harness the power of the firestones and the spirits within.
Someday.
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This is my problem with archaeology. I'm pretty good with theory and interpretation. I resolutely do not have the attention to detail to notice that that tiny fragment of rock is unlike all the other tiny fragments of rock I might come across.
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I can't help but wonder if those early firestarters discovered the sparks from pyrite and flint through bored fidgeting with rocks, or if they were trying to do something else when they saw the same sparks that could spread fire over small barriers and gaps.
Probably the latter considering how often flint shows up in paleolithic technology.
Probably the latter considering how often flint shows up in paleolithic technology.
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There must be a good evidence for it, but the idea of early hominids using fire but not being able to make it—collecting it from wildfire or whatnot—just seems so strange to me. It just seems like something you’ll either need, or you won’t.
If the fire goes out… I mean, how often do you get a wildfire that you can harvest from? Might not your tribe go multiple years without seeing that? So, you’ll need to adapt to not having fire in the long run. But, if you do find a spark, you might have to devote someone from your tribe to tending it all day, right? So you must see it as very important. That mix just seems weird to me…
This is definitely ignorance on my part, though, because archaeologists talk about it all the time.
If the fire goes out… I mean, how often do you get a wildfire that you can harvest from? Might not your tribe go multiple years without seeing that? So, you’ll need to adapt to not having fire in the long run. But, if you do find a spark, you might have to devote someone from your tribe to tending it all day, right? So you must see it as very important. That mix just seems weird to me…
This is definitely ignorance on my part, though, because archaeologists talk about it all the time.
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First, very cool article!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firekeeper
Fire watchers were a very important task in older societies. So much that it took a religious stance on at some points. But at this time, very much so routine life task.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firekeeper
Fire watchers were a very important task in older societies. So much that it took a religious stance on at some points. But at this time, very much so routine life task.
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It was an accident!
reads article
Oh, I was only kidding.
I understood that reference.
reads article
Oh, I was only kidding.
So it's not merely fool's gold but fool's steel? Fool me twice, shame on me.Kiona N. Smith said:
Astute readers will recall it also took cutting-edge technology in 2016. The Internet never forgets.Kiona N. Smith said:
Very true. This is why after committing a crime, I...I mean, er, oops, typographical error!Rob Davis said:
We have evidence of people using but not casting fire? That's mad.Kiona N. Smith said:
We can tell when fires were made hundreds of thousands of years in the past?! That's just incredible.Kiona N. Smith said:
It's interesting that those Neanderthals also had drawing pin technology.Kiona N. Smith said:
I understood that reference.
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Given that we are also party Neanderthal, let's just agree the statute of limitations had passed.
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Great article!
This sentence reminded me of the famous bone to satellite segue from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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the.mighty.oracle
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I find it such a strange mix to hear people saying ±"they probably had fire, but we don't have evidence of earlier fire" while also saying things like ±"maybe religion started because they all hung out around the camp fire".
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But still... who knew Billy Joel was so ahead of his time. It wasn't just his ex-wife who was ahead of her time.
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This particular Firestarter was so early, I think we can safely say he (or she) was a Prodigy...
(and for some coincidences, lead singer/dancer of Prodigy was a guy called Flint, and was born not too far away in London...)
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IANAArcheologist, but my understanding is that wildfires are relatively common in the African savannah, but less common in Europe. Part of the evidence for hominids being able to use fire but not start fire is that we see long-term habitation sites in Africa that have signs of intermittent fire use, but in Europe there are lots of sites with little or no fire use. This might indicate that Africans were able to scavenge fire more frequently, but their European offshoots were less lucky. If fire-making technology were available, you would expect all sites to have evidence of fire use, or at least that colder European sites might have more fires rather than less.
The other piece of evidence is that many sites have evidence of fire use, but not evidence of fire starting tools, even though we have a lot of other tools from the same era or site. This isn’t strong evidence because wood and fiber fire-making tools can be lost over time, and stone tools like flints are difficult to categorize if they were knapped for fire-making or for another purpose.
Of course, this is all 'evidence' not 'proof'. As I understand, the "fire use but no creation" idea is still controversial and unsettled. Discoveries like this article keep pushing back the date for fire creation.
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There’s a book called Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human that makes a strong case that later Homo species could only have evolved after fire was being regularly used as a tool. Perhaps even that the brain expansion from Australopithecus to Homo required fire to already be in use.
The fundamental argument for a deep use of fire is that the lineage could not have evolved both a shorter, less efficient digestive system compared to our great ape relatives while it also evolved a much larger brain that is extremely energy hungry, unless they had developed some process to improve food digestibility. One absorbs meaningfully more calories from cooked food than from the same food raw. So much so that it’s non-trivial for humans to stay healthy on a raw-food-only diet. And across anthropology, we know of no culture that relies on a raw food diet (besides the occasional ascetic sub-culture). Even Eskimos cook their food more than conventional wisdom claims. The trick cultural evolution arrived at for the Eskimos was that they cook the high calorie parts, which allows forr better calorie absorption, and they don’t cook (or only lightly cook) the organs that contain temperature sensitive vitamins.
There is some likelihood that the early steps along the road to food processing involved pounding with rocks, which also improves calorie uptake, but it takes a lot of pounding to get the same effect as cooking.
To be clear, there’s a lot of evidence cited in that book about human physiology, how calories are absorbed from cooked food, the importance of cooking to human cultures broadly, etc. But I’m not claiming it to be the definitive word on the subject. I do think there is a strong argument to bE made that fire predated Neanderthals in Europe 400,000 years ago.
The fundamental argument for a deep use of fire is that the lineage could not have evolved both a shorter, less efficient digestive system compared to our great ape relatives while it also evolved a much larger brain that is extremely energy hungry, unless they had developed some process to improve food digestibility. One absorbs meaningfully more calories from cooked food than from the same food raw. So much so that it’s non-trivial for humans to stay healthy on a raw-food-only diet. And across anthropology, we know of no culture that relies on a raw food diet (besides the occasional ascetic sub-culture). Even Eskimos cook their food more than conventional wisdom claims. The trick cultural evolution arrived at for the Eskimos was that they cook the high calorie parts, which allows forr better calorie absorption, and they don’t cook (or only lightly cook) the organs that contain temperature sensitive vitamins.
There is some likelihood that the early steps along the road to food processing involved pounding with rocks, which also improves calorie uptake, but it takes a lot of pounding to get the same effect as cooking.
To be clear, there’s a lot of evidence cited in that book about human physiology, how calories are absorbed from cooked food, the importance of cooking to human cultures broadly, etc. But I’m not claiming it to be the definitive word on the subject. I do think there is a strong argument to bE made that fire predated Neanderthals in Europe 400,000 years ago.
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Unlike the fragment shown in the article, pyrite can be pretty, hence the name "fool's gold". I can imagine a Neanderthal having a pretty chunk of pyrite, and thinking, hey, maybe I can sculpt this into a nice piece of jewelry with my flint tool.
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My WAG would be the latter as well, since flint knapping existed for quite a while before that. Knapping a flint with some sedimentary rock or quartz accidentally containing pyrite crystals and getting a spark burning your thigh or starting off some dry leaves on the ground sounds a quite a bit more likely than just bored fidgeting with rocks.
Of course, I am not a time traveler so can't really say ;-)
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Depends heavily on the environment. In dry environments where nice size sticks tend to be available (such as in the ponderosa forests of the U.S. Southwest), almost any day of the year you could find suitably dry/sized sticks and start a fire within about twenty minutes. In the rainy season in a rain forest, on the other hand…
And most environments end up in between somewhere.
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Fantastic article. This is why ARS is the only site I pay for. Thanks and keep them coming.
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Simple thing? Every time I camp, getting a fire to start — with way easier, modern tools — is a major pain in the ass. Getting a Duraflame on fire and then die out without igniting any wood doesn't count.
I know I'm pretty bad at it, but I know I'm not the only one.
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Fascinating! And now, for a nitpick:
Half a million ≠ 400,000.
Nope, not close enough at all to fudge the number in the name of text flow. Or, did I miss something in the article that happened approximately 500,000 years ago? The entire point of the research was the timing of the finding.
Half a million ≠ 400,000.
Nope, not close enough at all to fudge the number in the name of text flow. Or, did I miss something in the article that happened approximately 500,000 years ago? The entire point of the research was the timing of the finding.
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Am I the only one that saw the 1980's film that investigates breze's query, Quest for Fire? It follows a group of paleolithics trying to restore 'the magic' following a very very bad day for their fire watcher. They traipse through the wilderness seeking a tribe that has a flame. Not a horrid movie.
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It need not be a binary choice of need or not need. For a long time it was probably just "danger, stay away". But even then there was possible to come back later, when the danger was past, to see what remnants could be exploited. (E.g., some cooked meat.) These would presumably have been considered fortuitous luxuries. (After getting over the eww factor.)
Having learned that fire can produce some useful items, people would then have wondered how to get them more often. That first would perhaps be finding the fading remains of a fire, "feeding" it to keep it going, and roasting some fresh kill. After that, the next step could be "borrowing" a flaming branch or some coals from a wildfire and using them to set a fire at home. At that point it would be worthwhile to expend effort to keep the fire going as long as possible, but it would eventually go out. So it was still a luxury item. Over time there would be increasingly desire for that luxury (the fire itself and products like cooked meat), but not a need for it.
The desire might then motivate people to seek a way to create fire on demand, or to exploit a happenstance discovery of a way.
And of course, this learning might take many generations, or longer.
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At Koobi Fora we find evidence of fire associated with H. erectus artifacts, including bone fragments and knapping fragments. We see both evidence of the effect of fire on the surface soil (what would have been surface soil at the time, that is) as well as evidence of fire damage to artifacts. The evidence could be consistent H. erectus artifacts getting burned in a wildfire (or multiple wildfires), though.
In Swartkrans, there is a cave with layers of ash and burned bone also dating to approximately H. erectus (or perhaps an Australopithecene). Analysis of the bones show burning consistent with the temperatures in campfires. We cannot say for certain that there exists no non-hominid-related natural process which would leave that kind of layered, burned bone in a cave, but it seems kind of unlikely.
We would generally expect to find evidence of hominid use of fire older than evidence that hominids actually were able to start the fire, if for no other reason than just the odds of survival of the fire-starting evidence is much lower than the odds of survival of the fire evidence. You can start a fire with a couple sticks, and then leave some relatively permanent fire-modified minerals in the soil (permanent as long as the soil isn't washed away) while the sticks could have even been used in the fire itself and not survived the night.
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“Based on chemical analysis of the sediment at the site, along with the telltale presence of pyrite, a mineral not naturally found nearby but very handy for striking sparks with flint, British Museum archaeologist Rob Davis and his colleagues say the Neanderthals probably started the fire themselves.”
“And to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys.”
“And to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys.”
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Nazonohito
Ars Praetorian
Never saw the movie, but did read the book it was based on. Wasn't really my thing at the time - was a hand-me-down book from my mother - but she loved it... From what I recall, it was decently interesting, though the pacing did seem to drag a bit.
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Heh. A comedy: the paleolithic Three Stooges! Rae Dawn Chong introduces Everett McGill to the missionary position.
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As an example of how similar we might actually be to Neanderthals, I’d be willing to bet that a Neanderthal would seem much more human than the CGI characters in that movie do.
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