This is the oldest evidence of people starting fires

We didn't start the fire. (Neanderthals did, at least 400,000 years ago.)

See full article...

 

[Torbjörn Larsson OM]

The evidence is extraordinarily strong:

The rarity of pyrite in the Breckland region is supported by extensive lithological studies of the regional Pleistocene geology. Analysis of over 121,000 individual clasts from 26 sites, including pre-Anglian fluvial gravels, Anglian glacial sediments and post-Anglian fluvial gravels, provides a robust dataset, with more than 33,000 clasts specifically from the Barnham area (Supplementary Information, section 3). None of the samples contained pyrite fragments, demonstrating the extreme rarity of this mineral in Pleistocene deposits in the region.

But the press conference speculations are beside the evidence.

Speaking of speculation:

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.

There are no contemporary evidence of what he said.

Alexander wrote and received numerous letters, but no originals survive. A few official letters addressed to the Greek cities survive in copies inscribed in stone and the content of others is sometimes reported in historical sources. These only occasionally quote the letters and it is an open question how reliable such quotations are. Several fictitious letters, some perhaps based on actual letters, made their way into the Romance tradition.[314]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great

On the contrary, "Ichthyophagi" was part of the mythology of the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthyophagi