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Concept
Control of fire by early humans
Summary
The control of fire by early humans was a critical technology enabling the evolution of humans. Fire provided a source of warmth and lighting, protection from predators (especially at night), a way to create more advanced hunting tools, and a method for cooking food. These cultural advances allowed human geographic dispersal, cultural innovations, and changes to diet and behavior. Additionally, creating fire allowed human activity to continue into the dark and colder hours of the evening.
Claims for the earliest definitive evidence of control of fire by a member of Homo range from 1.7 to 2.0 million years ago (Mya). Evidence for the "microscopic traces of wood ash" as controlled use of fire by Homo erectus, beginning roughly 1 million years ago, has wide scholarly support. Some of the earliest known traces of controlled fire were found at the Daughters of Jacob Bridge, Israel, and dated to ~790,000 years ago. At the site, archaeologists also found the oldest of controlled use of fire to cook food ~780,000 years ago. However, some studies suggest cooking started ~1.8 million years ago.
Flint blades burned in fires roughly 300,000 years ago were found near fossils of early but not entirely modern Homo sapiens in Morocco. Fire was used regularly and systematically by early modern humans to heat treat silcrete stone to increase its flake-ability for the purpose of toolmaking approximately 164,000 years ago at the South African site of Pinnacle Point. Evidence of widespread control of fire by anatomically modern humans dates to approximately 125,000 years ago.
The use and control of fire was a gradual process proceeding through more than one stage. One was a change in habitat, from dense forest, where wildfires were common, to savanna (mixed grass/woodland) where wildfires were of higher intensity. Such a change may have occurred about 3 million years ago, when the savanna expanded in East Africa due to cooler and drier climate.
The next stage involved interaction with burned landscapes and foraging in the wake of wildfires, as observed in various wild animals.
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