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There is no evidence to suggest that any species of the Australopithecus genus developed control of fire.The find provides the first evidence that a controlled fire took place before Australopithecus robustus became extinct about 1 million years ago, Dr. Brain said. ”It is sort of the last glimpse you have of the ape man,” he said. Dr.No tools have yet been directly associated with Au. afarensis. However, Australopithecus species had hands that were well suited for the controlled manipulation of objects, and they probably did use tools. The oldest known stone tools are around 3.3 million years old and were unearthed in Kenya.
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Australopithecus afarensis was the first hominin to leave the safety of the trees for life in the grasslands. Slow on foot, they struggled to survive on the African continent 3.7 million years ago.
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Fossils Date Use of Fires 1 Million Years – The New York Times
The find proves the first evence that a controlled fire took place before Australopithecus robustus became extinct about 1 million years ago …
Source: www.nytimes.com
Date Published: 5/22/2022
View: 6143
Australopithecus afarensis – Smithsonian’s Human Origins
D Au. afarensis usually walk upright like modern humans, or d they spend more time climbing trees like other living African apes? The species Au. afarensis …
Source: humanorigins.si.edu
Date Published: 4/8/2021
View: 5152
Oldest evidence of stone tool use and meat-eating among …
The bones are about 3.4 million years old and prove the first evence that Australopithecus afarensis used stone tools and consumed meat.
Source: www.sciencedaily.com
Date Published: 12/10/2022
View: 6665
Who invented fire? When did people start cooking?
Richard Wrangham, an anthropologist at Harvard, claims that homins became people—that is, acquired traits like big brains and dainty …
Source: slate.com
Date Published: 8/3/2021
View: 7933
Did australopithecus afarensis use fire? – All Famous Faqs
D australopithecus afarensis use fire? There is no evence to suggest that any species of the Australopithecus genus developed control of fire.
Source: allfamousbirthday.com
Date Published: 9/24/2022
View: 2687
Did Australopithecus control fire? – Quora
It is possible that Australopithecus used fire that they encountered but it’s very unlikely that they could create fire or understood how to control it. There’s …
Source: www.quora.com
Date Published: 6/12/2022
View: 1402
Who Started the First Fire? – Sapiens.org
Neanderthal fire Humans’ ability to control fire is among the most important … Why d Neanderthals stop using fire during cold periods, …
Source: www.sapiens.org
Date Published: 6/3/2021
View: 4768
Climatic Forcing and the Origin of the Human Genus – NCBI
Gracile australopithecines, from which the genus Homo evolved, … and skull, which in both of the known gracile species Australopithecus afarensis and A.
Source: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Date Published: 3/11/2021
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Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy’s species
D Australopithecus afarensis use tools? Since our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, as well as other apes and monkeys, have been observed making and …
Source: www.nhm.ac.uk
Date Published: 10/2/2021
View: 4224
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- Author: NHK WORLD-JAPAN
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- Date Published: Mar 10, 2019
- Video Url link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JretV4EL-uA
Did Australopithecus use fire?
The find provides the first evidence that a controlled fire took place before Australopithecus robustus became extinct about 1 million years ago, Dr. Brain said. ”It is sort of the last glimpse you have of the ape man,” he said. Dr.
What tools did Australopithecus afarensis use?
No tools have yet been directly associated with Au. afarensis. However, Australopithecus species had hands that were well suited for the controlled manipulation of objects, and they probably did use tools. The oldest known stone tools are around 3.3 million years old and were unearthed in Kenya.
Who made the first fire?
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.
What is special about Australopithecus afarensis?
Australopithecus afarensis is one of the longest-lived and best-known early human species—paleoanthropologists have uncovered remains from more than 300 individuals!
When was fire invented?
The oldest fire recorded on Earth has been identified from charcoal in rocks formed during the late Silurian Period, around 420 million years ago.
Did the Neolithic Age discovery fire?
The most likely answer: they didn’t. Our oldest evidence of the controlled use of fire actually dates back way before the evolution of Homo sapiens, likely back to an ancestor known as Homo erectus.
Did africanus use tools?
africanus were using other types of tools, like bones or pieces of wood. Or they might have been using their strong precision grips to get at food in new ways, such as peeling tough skins off fruit – a task that chimps tend to do with their teeth.
What did Australopithecus use for shelter?
Australopithecus used trees and fallen trees for shelter, using what nature offered them.
How old was Lucy the ape when she died?
Therefore, scientists have suggested that Lucy was between 12 and 18 years old when she died. Evidence from Lucy’s skeleton, specifically features of her left os coxa (hip bone) and her limb bones, also support the conclusion that she was a fully mature adult individual (Johanson, Taieb, et al.).
Which part of human body does not burn in fire?
Quite often the peripheral bones of the hands and feet will not be burned to such a high intensity as those at the centre of the body, where most fat is located.
Did Neanderthals use fire to cook?
The fossil and archaeological record of Neanderthals is the most complete among our hominin relatives, and there is clear evidence at many sites that Neanderthals used fire and cooked their food.
How did the early man discover fire?
The early humans discovered fire by rubbing two flint stones against each other. They used to make fires in front of the caves to scare away wild animals. They used to hunt wild animals, skin them and chop them.
What type of environment did Australopithecus afarensis live in?
afarensis imply a habitat of woodland with patches of grassland. A trail of footprints, probably left by Australopithecus afarensis individuals some 3.5 million years ago, at Laetoli, northern Tanzania.
How tall was Lucy the first human?
Lucy, about 3.2 million years old, stood only a meter (3.5 feet) tall. She had powerful arms and long, curved toes that paleontologists think allowed her to climb trees as well as walk upright.
Why did the Australopithecus afarensis go extinct?
Perhaps the increased severity of droughts during glacial maxima caused the extinction of the robust australopithecines. There is evidence that Australopithecus africanus persisted to about 2.3 Ma (Delson, 1988), but we do not now know for sure that it survived beyond the origin of Homo at about 2.4 Ma.
Did Australopithecus use fire?
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Fossils Date Use of Fires 1 Million Years
That discovery is considered by some the most momentous in human prehistory. ”Once you master the technology of fire,” Dr. Brain said in a telephone interview yesterday, ”you start on a road that led right to now. Everything we take for granted is really connected to the technology of fire.”
The burned bones were found in several distinct layers of limestone that at various levels contained the remains of both Homo erectus, a direct ancestor of modern humans, and a somewhat less advanced hominid known as Australopithecus robustus that Dr. Brain describes as a ”large ape man.” This line is believed to have died out about a million years ago.
”For a long time,” he said, ”these hominids used the cave, and there’s no evidence of fire.” The charred bones showed up in a stratum that represents a relatively brief 100,000 years of prehistory and appeared in succeeding layers. ”Once they started making fires, they did it repeatedly,” said Dr. Brain. ”We have up to 20 levels, one upon the other.”
Dr. John A. J. Gowlett of the University of Liverpool, who made the 1981 Kenya discovery while with Oxford University, said the new discovery was ”the latest and one of the most solid chunks of evidence” in a long line that is gradually establishing the era when fire was discovered. ”We don’t have absolute proof,” he said in a telephone interview, ”and you don’t get absolute proof from single sites.”
Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy’s species
Johanson thought Lucy was either a small member of the genus Homo or a small australopithecine. Only after analysing other fossils subsequently uncovered nearby and at Laetoli in Kenya did scientists establish a new species, Australopithecus afarensis, four years after Lucy’s discovery.
At the time, Au. afarensis was the oldest hominin species known, although far older species have since been found.
How did Lucy die?
Researchers studied injuries to Lucy’s bones to see whether they offered insights into how she died, publishing their findings in 2016.
CT scans revealed fractures in her shoulder joint and arms similar to those observed in people who fall from a great height, as if she reached out to break her fall. They also indicated that many of the breaks occurred perimortem, around the time of death, rather than over time as the bones became fossilised.
The researchers believe the injuries observed were severe enough that internal organs could also have been damaged. Based on their evidence, the team suggest that Lucy died falling out of a tree.
However, this conclusion is controversial and many scientists, including Johanson, say there are other plausible explanations for the breakages, such as being trampled by stampeding animals after death.
Control of fire by early humans
Aspect of human history
“Control of fire” redirects here. For the process of suppressing or extinguishing a fire, see Fire control . For components that assist weapon systems, see Fire-control system
Not to be confused with Controlled burn
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).[1] 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.[2][3] Flint blades burned in fires roughly 300,000 years ago were found near fossils of early but not entirely modern Homo sapiens in Morocco.[4] 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.[5] Evidence of widespread control of fire by anatomically modern humans dates to approximately 125,000 years ago.[6]
Control of fire [ edit ]
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.[citation needed][clarification needed] Such a change may have occurred about 3 Mya, when the savanna expanded in East Africa due to cooler and drier climate.[7][8]
The next stage involved interaction with burned landscapes and foraging in the wake of wildfires, as observed in various wild animals.[7][8] In the African savanna, animals that preferentially forage in recently burned areas include savanna chimpanzees (a variety of Pan troglodytes verus),[7][9] vervet monkeys (Cercopithecus aethiops)[10] and a variety of birds, some of which also hunt insects and small vertebrates in the wake of grass fires.[9][11]
The next step would be to make some use of residual hot spots that occur in the wake of wildfires. For example, foods found in the wake of wildfires tend to be either burned or undercooked. This might have provided incentives to place undercooked foods on a hotspot or to pull food out of the fire if it were in danger of getting burned. This would require familiarity with fire and its behavior.[12][8]
An early step in the control of fire would have been transporting it from burned to unburned areas and lighting them on fire, providing advantages in food acquisition.[8] Maintaining a fire over an extended period of time, as for a season (such as the dry season), may have led to the development of base campsites. Building a hearth or other fire enclosure such as a circle of stones would have been a later development.[13] The ability to make fire, generally with a friction device with hardwood rubbing against softwood (as in a bow drill), was a later development.[7]
Each of these stages could occur at different intensities, ranging from occasional or “opportunistic” to “habitual” to “obligate” (unable to survive without it).[8][13]
Lower Paleolithic evidence [ edit ]
Most of the evidence of controlled use of fire during the Lower Paleolithic is uncertain and has limited scholarly support.[14] Some of the evidence is inconclusive because other plausible explanations exist, such as natural processes, for the findings.[15] Recent findings support that the earliest known controlled use of fire took place in Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa, 1.0 Mya.[14][16]
Africa [ edit ]
Findings from the Wonderwerk Cave site, in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, provide the earliest evidence for controlled use of fire. Intact sediments were analyzed using micromorphological analysis and Fourier Transform Infrared Microspectroscopy (mFTIR) and yielded evidence, in the form of burned bones and ashed plant remains, that burning took place at the site 1.0 Mya.[14]
East African sites, such as Chesowanja near Lake Baringo, Koobi Fora, and Olorgesailie in Kenya, show some possible evidence that fire was controlled by early humans.[15]
In Chesowanja, archaeologists found red clay clasts dated to 1.4 Mya. These clasts must have been heated to 400 °C (750 °F) to harden. However, tree stumps burned in bush fires in East Africa produce clasts, which, when broken by erosion, are like those described at Chesownja. Controlled use of fire at Chesowanja is unproven.[15]
In Koobi Fora, sites show evidence of control of fire by Homo erectus at 1.5 Mya with findings of reddened sediment that could come from heating at 200–400 °C (400–750 °F).[15]
Evidence of possible human control of fire, found at Swartkrans, South Africa,[17] includes several burned bones, including ones with hominin-inflicted cut marks, along with Acheulean and bone tools.[15] This site also shows some of the earliest evidence of carnivorous behavior in H. Erectus.
A “hearth-like depression” that could have been used to burn bones was found at a site in Olorgesailie, Kenya. However, it did not contain any charcoal, and no signs of fire have been observed. Some microscopic charcoal was found, but it could have resulted from a natural brush fire.[15]
In Gadeb, Ethiopia, fragments of welded tuff that appeared to have been burned were found in Locality 8E but refiring of the rocks might have occurred due to local volcanic activity.[15]
In the Middle Awash River Valley, cone-shaped depressions of reddish clay were found that could have been formed by temperatures of 200 °C (400 °F). These features, thought to have been created by burning tree stumps, were hypothesized to have been produced by early hominids lighting tree stumps so they could have fire away from their habitation site. This view is not widely accepted, though.[15] Burned stones are also found in Awash Valley, but volcanic welded tuff is also found in the area, which could explain the burned stones.[15]
Burned flints discovered near Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, dated by thermoluminescence to around 300,000 years old, were discovered in the same sedimentary layer as skulls of early Homo sapiens. Paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin believes the flints were used as spear tips and left in fires used by the early humans for cooking food.[4]
Asia [ edit ]
In Xihoudu in Shanxi Province, China, the black, blue, and grayish-green discoloration of mammalian bones found at the site illustrates the evidence of burning by early hominids. In 1985, at a parallel site in China, Yuanmou in Yunnan Province, archaeologists found blackened mammal bones that date back to 1.7 Mya.[15]
Middle East [ edit ]
A site at Bnot Ya’akov Bridge, Israel, has been claimed to show that H. erectus or H. ergaster controlled fires between 790,000 and 690,000 BP.[18] An AI powered spectroscopy in archaeology has helped researchers unearth hidden evidence of the use of fire by humans dating 800,000 and 1 million years ago.[19] In an article published in June 2022,[20] researchers from Weizmann Institute of Science, who pioneered the AI application, along with researchers at University of Toronto and Hebrew University of Jerusalem described the use of deep learning models to analyze heat exposure of 26 flint tools that were found in 1970s at the Evron Quarry in the northwest of Israel. The results showed that the tools were heated upto 600°C.[19]
Pacific Islands [ edit ]
At Trinil, Java, burned wood has been found in layers that carried H. erectus (Java Man) fossils dating from 830,000 to 500,000 BP.[15] The burned wood has been claimed to indicate the use of fire by early hominids.
Middle Paleolithic evidence [ edit ]
Africa [ edit ]
The Cave of Hearths in South Africa has burn deposits, which date from 700,000 to 200,000 BP, as do various other sites such as Montagu Cave (200,000 to 58,000 BP) and the Klasies River Mouth (130,000 to 120,000 BP).[15]
Strong evidence comes from Kalambo Falls in Zambia, where several artifacts related to the use of fire by humans have been recovered, including charred logs, charcoal, carbonized grass stems and plants, and wooden implements, which may have been hardened by fire. The site has been dated through radiocarbon dating to between 110,000 BP and 61,000 BP through amino-acid racemization.[15]
Fire was used for heat treatment of silcrete stones to increase their workability before they were knapped into tools by Stillbay culture in South Africa.[21][22][23] These Stillbay sites date back from 164,000 to 72,000 years ago, with the heat treatment of stone beginning by about 164,000 years ago.[21]
Asia [ edit ]
Evidence at Zhoukoudian cave in China suggests control of fire as early as 460,000 to 230,000 BP.[6] Fire in Zhoukoudian is suggested by the presence of burned bones, burned chipped-stone artifacts, charcoal, ash, and hearths alongside H. erectus fossils in Layer 10, the earliest archaeological horizon at the site.[15][24] This evidence comes from Locality 1, also known as the Peking Man site, where several bones were found to be uniformly black to grey. The extracts from the bones were determined to be characteristic of burned bone rather than manganese staining. These residues also showed IR spectra for oxides, and a bone that was turquoise was reproduced in the laboratory by heating some of the other bones found in Layer 10. At the site, the same effect might have been due to natural heating, as the effect was produced on white, yellow, and black bones.[24]
Layer 10 itself is described as ash with biologically produced silicon, aluminum, iron, and potassium, but wood ash remnants such as siliceous aggregates are missing. Among these are possible hearths “represented by finely laminated silt and clay interbedded with reddish-brown and yellow brown fragments of organic matter, locally mixed with limestone fragments and dark brown finely laminated silt, clay, and organic matter.”[24] The site itself does not show that fires were made in Zhoukoudian, but the association of blackened bones with quartzite artifacts at least shows that humans did control fire at the time of the habitation of the Zhoukoudian cave.
Middle East [ edit ]
At the Amudian site of Qesem Cave, near the city of Kfar Qasim, evidence exists of the regular use of fire from before 382,000 BP to around 200,000 BP, at the end of Lower Pleistocene. Large quantities of burned bone and moderately heated soil lumps were found, and the cut marks found on the bones suggest that butchering and prey-defleshing took place near fireplaces.[25] In addition, hominins living in Qesem cave managed to heat their flint to varying temperatures before knapping it into different tools.[26]
Europe [ edit ]
Multiple sites in Europe, such as Torralba and Ambrona, Spain, and St. Esteve-Janson, France, have also shown evidence of use of fire by later versions of H. erectus. The oldest has been found in England at the site of Beeches Pit, Suffolk; uranium series dating and thermoluminescence dating place the use of fire at 415,000 BP.[27] At Vértesszőlős, Hungary, while no charcoal has been found, burned bones have been discovered dating from c. 350,000 years ago. At Torralba and Ambrona, Spain, objects such as Acheulean stone tools, remains of large mammals such as extinct elephants, charcoal, and wood were discovered.[15] At Saint-Estève-Janson in France, there is evidence of five hearths and reddened earth in the Escale Cave. These hearths have been dated to 200,000 BP.[15] Evidence for fire making dates to at least the Middle Paleolithic, with dozens of Neanderthal hand axes from France exhibiting use-wear traces suggesting these tools were struck with the mineral pyrite to produce sparks around 50,000 years ago.[28]
Impact on human evolution [ edit ]
Cultural innovation [ edit ]
Uses of fire by early humans [ edit ]
The discovery of fire came to provide a wide variety of uses for early hominids. It acted as a source of warmth, making getting through low nighttime temperatures possible and allowing survival in colder environments, through which geographic expansion from tropical and subtropical climates to areas of temperate climates containing colder winters began to occur. The use of fire continued to aid hominids at night by also acting as a means by which to ward off predatory animals.[29]
Fire also played a major role in changing how food was obtained and consumed, primarily by the practice of cooking. This caused a significant increase in meat consumption and calorie intake.[29] In addition to cooking, it was soon discovered that meat could be dried through the use of fire, allowing it to be preserved for times in which harsh environmental conditions made hunting difficult.[30] Fire was even used in manufacturing tools to be used for hunting and cutting meat.[31] Hominids found that large fires had their uses, as well. By starting fires, they were able to increase land fertility and clear large amounts of brush and trees to make hunting easier.[30] As they began to understand how to use fire, such a useful skill may have led to specialized social roles through the separation of cooking from hunting.[32]
Protection and hunting [ edit ]
The early discovery of fire had numerous benefits for early humans. They were able to protect themselves from the weather, and were also able to devise an entirely new way of hunting. Evidence of fire has been found in caves, suggesting it was used to keep warm. This is significant, because it allowed them to migrate to cooler climates and thrive. This evidence also suggests that fire was used to clear out caves prior to living in them.[33] Use of shelter was a major advancement in protection from the weather and from other species.
In addition to protection from the weather, the discovery of fire allowed for innovations in hunting. Initially, it was used to set grass fires to hunt and control the population of pests in the surrounding areas.[34] Evidence shows that early hominids were able to corral and trap animals by means of fire prior to consumption.[citation needed]
Tool and weapon making [ edit ]
In addition to the many other benefits that fire provided to early humans, it also had a major impact on the innovation of tool and weapon manufacture. The use of fire by early humans as an engineering tool to modify the effectiveness of their weaponry was a major technological advancement. In an archeological dig that dates to around 400,000 years ago, researchers excavating in an area known as the ‘Spear Horizon’ in Schöningen, in the district of Helmstedt, Germany, unearthed eight wooden spears among a trove of preserved artifacts.[35][36] The spears were found along with stone tools and horse remains, one of which still had a spear through its pelvis. At another dig site located in Lehringen, Germany, a fire-hardened lance was found thrust into the rib cage of a ‘straight-tusked elephant’.[37] These archeological digs provide evidence that suggests the spears were deliberately fire-hardened, which allowed early humans the ability to modify their hunting tactics and use the spears as thrusting rather than throwing weapons. Researchers further uncovered environmental evidence that indicated early humans may have been waiting in nearby vegetation that provided enough concealment for them to ambush their prey.[36][38]
More recent evidence dating to roughly 164,000 years ago indicated that early humans living in South Africa in the Middle Stone Age used fire as an engineering tool to alter the mechanical properties of the materials they used to make tools and improve their lives. Researchers found evidence that suggests early humans applied a method of heat treatment to a fine-grained, local rock called silcrete.[39] Once treated, the heated rocks were modified and tempered into crescent-shaped blades or arrowheads. The evidence suggests that early humans probably used the modified tools for hunting or cutting meat from killed animals. Researchers postulate that this may have been the first time that a bow and arrows were used for hunting, an advancement that may have had a significant impact on how early humans lived, hunted, and existed as community groups.[39][40]
Art and ceremonial uses [ edit ]
Fire was also used in the creation of art. Scientists have discovered several small, 1- to 10-inch statues in Europe referred to as the Venus figurines. These statues date back to the Paleolithic period. Several of these figures were created from stone and ivory, while some were created with clay and then fired. These are some of the earliest examples of ceramics.[41] Fire was also commonly used to create pottery. Although the advent of pottery was first thought to have begun with the use of agriculture around 10,000 years ago, scientists in China discovered pottery fragments in the Xianrendong Cave that were about 20,000 years old.[42] During the Neolithic Age, which began about 10,000 years ago, though, the creation and use of pottery became far more widespread. These items were often carved and painted with simple linear designs and geometric shapes.[43]
Developments and expansion in early hominid societies [ edit ]
Fire was an important factor in expanding and developing societies of early hominids. One impact fire might have had was social stratification. Those who could make and wield fire had more power than those who could not, and may have, therefore, had a higher position in society.[30] The presence of fire also led to an increase in length of “daytime”, and allowed more activity to occur in the night than was previously possible.[44] Evidence of large hearths indicate that the majority of this nighttime activity was spent around the fire, contributing to social interactions among individuals.[45] This increased amount of social interaction is speculated to be important in the development of language, as it fostered more communication among individuals.[44]
Another effect that the presence of fire had on hominid societies is that it required larger and larger groups to work together to maintain and sustain the fire. Individuals had to work together to find fuel for the fire, maintain the fire, and complete other necessary tasks. These larger groups might have included older individuals, such as grandparents, to help care for children. Ultimately, fire had a significant influence on the size and social interactions of early hominid communities.[44][45]
Environment and nighttime activity [ edit ]
The control of fire enabled important changes in human behavior, health, energy expenditure, and geographic expansion. Humans were able to modify their environments to their own benefit.[46] This ability to manipulate their environments allowed them to move into much colder regions that would have previously been uninhabitable after the loss of body hair. Evidence of more complex management to change biomes can be found as far back as 200,000 to 100,000 years ago at a minimum. Furthermore, activity was no longer restricted to daylight hours due to the use of fire. Exposure to artificial light during later hours of the day changed humans’ circadian rhythms, contributing to a longer waking day.[47] The modern human’s waking day is 16 hours, while many mammals are only awake for half as many hours.[45] Additionally, humans are most awake during the early evening hours, while other primates’ days begin at dawn and end at sundown. Many of these behavioral changes can be attributed to the control of fire and its impact on daylight extension.[45]
The cooking hypothesis [ edit ]
The cooking hypothesis proposes the idea that the ability to cook allowed for the brain size of hominids to increase over time. This idea was first presented by Friedrich Engels in the article “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man” and later recapitulated in the book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham and then in a book by Suzana Herculano-Houzel.[48] Critics of the hypothesis argue that cooking with controlled fire is not enough to be the reason behind the increasing brain size trend.
The supporting evidence of the cooking hypothesis argues that compared to the nutrients in the raw food, nutrients in cooked food are much easier to digest for hominids, as shown in the research of protein ingestion from raw vs. cooked egg.[49] Such a feature is essential for brain evolution; through comparison of the metabolic activities between primate species, scientists found that a limitation of energy harvesting through food sources exists due to shorter days without fire.[50]
Besides the brain, other organs in the human body also demand a high level of metabolism.[51] At the same time, the body-mass portion of different organs was changing throughout the process of evolution as a means for brain expansion. Genus Homo was able to break through the limit by cooking food to shorten their feeding times and be able to absorb more nutrients to accommodate the increasing need for energy.[51] In addition, scientists argue that the Homo species was also able to obtain nutrients like docosahexaenoic acid from algae that were especially beneficial and critical for brain evolution, and the detoxification of food by the cooking process enabled early humans to access these resources.[52]
Changes to diet [ edit ]
Before the advent of fire, the hominid diet was limited to mostly plant parts composed of simple sugars and carbohydrates such as seeds, flowers, and fleshy fruits. Parts of the plant such as stems, mature leaves, enlarged roots, and tubers would have been inaccessible as a food source due to the indigestibility of raw cellulose and starch. Cooking, however, made starchy and fibrous foods edible and greatly increased the diversity of other foods available to early humans. Toxin-containing foods including seeds and similar carbohydrate sources, such as cyanogenic glycosides found in linseed and cassava, were incorporated into their diets as cooking rendered them nontoxic.[53]
Cooking could also kill parasites, reduce the amount of energy required for chewing and digestion, and release more nutrients from plants and meat. Due to the difficulty of chewing raw meat and digesting tough proteins (e.g. collagen) and carbohydrates, the development of cooking served as an effective mechanism to efficiently process meat and allow for its consumption in larger quantities. With its high caloric density and content of important nutrients, meat thus became a staple in the diet of early humans.[54] By increasing digestibility, cooking allowed hominids to maximize the energy gained from consuming foods. Studies show that caloric intake from cooking starches improves 12-35% and 45-78% for protein. As a result of the increases in net energy gain from food consumption, survival and reproductive rates in hominids increased.[55] Through lowering food toxicity and increasing nutritive yield, cooking allowed for an earlier weaning age, permitting females to have more children.[56] In this way, too, it facilitated population growth.
It has been proposed that the use of fire for cooking caused environmental toxins to accumulate in the placenta, which led to a species-wide taboo on human placentophagy around the time of the mastery of fire. Placentophagy is common in other primates.[57]
Biological changes [ edit ]
Before their use of fire, the hominid species had large premolars, which were used to chew harder foods, such as large seeds. In addition, due to the shape of the molar cusps, the diet is inferred to have been more leaf- or fruit-based. Probably in response to consuming cooked foods, the molar teeth of H. erectus gradually shrank, suggesting that their diet had changed from tougher foods such as crisp root vegetables to softer cooked foods such as meat.[58][59] Cooked foods further selected for the differentiation of their teeth and eventually led to a decreased jaw volume with a variety of smaller teeth in hominids. Today, a smaller jaw volume and teeth size of humans is seen in comparison to other primates.[60]
Due to the increased digestibility of many cooked foods, less digestion was needed to procure the necessary nutrients. As a result, the gastrointestinal tract and organs in the digestive system decreased in size. This is in contrast to other primates, where a larger digestive tract is needed for fermentation of long carbohydrate chains. Thus, humans evolved from the large colons and tracts that are seen in other primates to smaller ones.[61]
According to Wrangham, control of fire allowed hominids to sleep on the ground and in caves instead of trees and led to more time being spent on the ground. This may have contributed to the evolution of bipedalism, as such an ability became increasingly necessary for human activity.[62]
Criticism [ edit ]
Critics of the hypothesis argue that while a linear increase in brain volume of the genus Homo is seen over time, adding fire control and cooking does not add anything meaningful to the data. Species such as H. ergaster existed with large brain volumes during time periods with little to no evidence of fire for cooking. Little variation exists in the brain sizes of H. erectus dated from periods of weak and strong evidence for cooking.[45] An experiment involving mice fed raw versus cooked meat found that cooking meat did not increase the amount of calories taken up by mice, leading to the study’s conclusion that the energetic gain is the same, if not greater, in raw meat diets than cooked meats.[63] Studies such as this and others have led to criticisms of the hypothesis that state that the increases in human brain-size occurred well before the advent of cooking due to a shift away from the consumption of nuts and berries to the consumption of meat.[64][65] Other anthropologists argue that the evidence suggests that cooking fires began in earnest only 250,000 BP, when ancient hearths, earth ovens, burned animal bones, and flint appear across Europe and the Middle East.[66]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
The Smithsonian Institution’s Human Origins Program
Height: Males: average 4 ft 11 in (151 cm); Females: average 3 ft 5 in (105 cm)
Weight: Males: average 92 lbs (42 kg) ; Females: average 64 lbs (29 kg)
Overview:
Australopithecus afarensis is one of the longest-lived and best-known early human species—paleoanthropologists have uncovered remains from more than 300 individuals! Found between 3.85 and 2.95 million years ago in Eastern Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania), this species survived for more than 900,000 years, which is over four times as long as our own species has been around. It is best known from the sites of Hadar, Ethiopia (‘Lucy’, AL 288-1 and the ‘First Family’, AL 333); Dikika, Ethiopia (Dikika ‘child’ skeleton); and Laetoli (fossils of this species plus the oldest documented bipedal footprint trails).
Similar to chimpanzees, Au. afarensis children grew rapidly after birth and reached adulthood earlier than modern humans. This meant Au. afarensis had a shorter period of growing up than modern humans have today, leaving them less time for parental guidance and socialization during childhood.
Au. afarensis had both ape and human characteristics: members of this species had apelike face proportions (a flat nose, a strongly projecting lower jaw) and braincase (with a small brain, usually less than 500 cubic centimeters — about 1/3 the size of a modern human brain), and long, strong arms with curved fingers adapted for climbing trees. They also had small canine teeth like all other early humans, and a body that stood on two legs and regularly walked upright. Their adaptations for living both in the trees and on the ground helped them survive for almost a million years as climate and environments changed.
Fossils Date Use of Fires 1 Million Years
That discovery is considered by some the most momentous in human prehistory. ”Once you master the technology of fire,” Dr. Brain said in a telephone interview yesterday, ”you start on a road that led right to now. Everything we take for granted is really connected to the technology of fire.”
The burned bones were found in several distinct layers of limestone that at various levels contained the remains of both Homo erectus, a direct ancestor of modern humans, and a somewhat less advanced hominid known as Australopithecus robustus that Dr. Brain describes as a ”large ape man.” This line is believed to have died out about a million years ago.
”For a long time,” he said, ”these hominids used the cave, and there’s no evidence of fire.” The charred bones showed up in a stratum that represents a relatively brief 100,000 years of prehistory and appeared in succeeding layers. ”Once they started making fires, they did it repeatedly,” said Dr. Brain. ”We have up to 20 levels, one upon the other.”
Dr. John A. J. Gowlett of the University of Liverpool, who made the 1981 Kenya discovery while with Oxford University, said the new discovery was ”the latest and one of the most solid chunks of evidence” in a long line that is gradually establishing the era when fire was discovered. ”We don’t have absolute proof,” he said in a telephone interview, ”and you don’t get absolute proof from single sites.”
The Smithsonian Institution’s Human Origins Program
Height: Males: average 4 ft 11 in (151 cm); Females: average 3 ft 5 in (105 cm)
Weight: Males: average 92 lbs (42 kg) ; Females: average 64 lbs (29 kg)
Overview:
Australopithecus afarensis is one of the longest-lived and best-known early human species—paleoanthropologists have uncovered remains from more than 300 individuals! Found between 3.85 and 2.95 million years ago in Eastern Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania), this species survived for more than 900,000 years, which is over four times as long as our own species has been around. It is best known from the sites of Hadar, Ethiopia (‘Lucy’, AL 288-1 and the ‘First Family’, AL 333); Dikika, Ethiopia (Dikika ‘child’ skeleton); and Laetoli (fossils of this species plus the oldest documented bipedal footprint trails).
Similar to chimpanzees, Au. afarensis children grew rapidly after birth and reached adulthood earlier than modern humans. This meant Au. afarensis had a shorter period of growing up than modern humans have today, leaving them less time for parental guidance and socialization during childhood.
Au. afarensis had both ape and human characteristics: members of this species had apelike face proportions (a flat nose, a strongly projecting lower jaw) and braincase (with a small brain, usually less than 500 cubic centimeters — about 1/3 the size of a modern human brain), and long, strong arms with curved fingers adapted for climbing trees. They also had small canine teeth like all other early humans, and a body that stood on two legs and regularly walked upright. Their adaptations for living both in the trees and on the ground helped them survive for almost a million years as climate and environments changed.
Oldest evidence of stone tool use and meat-eating among human ancestors discovered: Lucy’s species butchered meat
The evolutionary stories of the Swiss Army Knife and the Big Mac just got a lot longer. An international team of scientists led by Dr. Zeresenay Alemseged from the California Academy of Sciences has discovered evidence that human ancestors were using stone tools and consuming meat from large mammals nearly a million years earlier than previously documented. While working in the Afar Region of Ethiopia, Alemseged’s “Dikika Research Project” team found fossilized bones bearing unambiguous evidence of stone tool use — cut marks inflicted while carving meat off the bone and percussion marks created while breaking the bones open to extract marrow.
The bones date to roughly 3.4 million years ago and provide the first evidence that Lucy’s species, Australopithecus afarensis, used stone tools and consumed meat. The research is reported in the August 12 issue of the journal Nature.
“This discovery dramatically shifts the known timeframe of a game-changing behavior for our ancestors,” says Alemseged, Curator of Anthropology at the California Academy of Sciences. “Tool use fundamentally altered the way our early ancestors interacted with nature, allowing them to eat new types of food and exploit new territories. It also led to tool making — a critical step in our evolutionary path that eventually enabled such advanced technologies as airplanes, MRI machines, and iPhones.”
Although the butchered bones may not look like particularly noteworthy fossils to the lay person, Alemseged can hardly contain his excitement when he describes them. “This find will definitely force us to revise our text books on human evolution, since it pushes the evidence for tool use and meat eating in our family back by nearly a million years,” he explains. “These developments had a huge impact on the story of humanity.”
Until now, the oldest known evidence of butchering with stone tools came from Bouri, Ethiopia, where several cut-marked bones were dated to about 2.5 million years ago. The oldest known stone tools, dated to around the same time, were found at nearby Gona, Ethiopia. Although no hominin fossils were found in direct association with the Gona tools or the Bouri bones, an upper jaw from an early Homo species dated to about 2.4 million years ago was found at nearby Hadar, and most paleoanthropologists believe the tools were made and used only by members of the genus Homo.
The new stone-tool-marked fossil animal bones from Dikika have been dated to approximately 3.4 million years ago and were found just 200 meters away from the site where Alemseged’s team discovered “Selam” in 2000. Dubbed “Lucy’s Daughter” by the international press, Selam was a young Australopithecus afarensis girl who lived about 3.3 million years ago and represents the most complete skeleton of a human ancestor discovered to date.
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“After a decade of studying Selam’s remains and searching for additional clues about her life, we can now add a significant new detail to her story,” Alemseged notes. “In light of these new finds, it is very likely that Selam carried stone flakes and helped members of her family as they butchered animal remains.”
The location and age of the butchered bones from Dikika clearly indicate that a member of the A. afarensis species inflicted the cut marks, since no other hominin lived in this part of Africa at this time. These fossils provide the first direct evidence that this species, which includes such famous individuals as Lucy and Selam, used stone tools.
“Now, when we imagine Lucy walking around the east African landscape looking for food, we can for the first time imagine her with a stone tool in hand and looking for meat,” says Dr. Shannon McPherron, archeologist with the Dikika Research Project and research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. “With stone tools in hand to quickly pull off flesh and break open bones, animal carcasses would have become a more attractive source of food. This type of behavior sent us down a path that later would lead to two of the defining features of our species — carnivory and tool manufacture and use.”
To determine the age of the butchered bones, project geologist Dr. Jonathan Wynn relied on a very well documented and dated set of volcanic deposits in the Dikika area. These same deposits were previously used to determine Selam’s age, and they are well known from nearby Hadar, where Lucy was found. The cut-marked bones at Dikika were sandwiched between volcanic deposits that have been securely dated to 3. 24 and 3.42 million years ago, and they were located much closer to the older sediment. “We can very securely say that the bones were marked by stone tools between 3.42 and 3.24 million years ago, and that within this range, the date is most likely 3.4 million years ago,” says Wynn, a geologist at the University of South Florida.
Both of the cut-marked bones discovered at Dikika came from mammals — one is a rib fragment from a cow-sized mammal, and the other is a femur shaft fragment from a goat-sized mammal. Both bones are marred by cut, scrape, and percussion marks. Microscope and elemental analysis using secondary electron imaging and energy dispersive x-ray spectrometry demonstrated that these marks were created before the bones fossilized, meaning that recent damage can be eliminated as the cause of the marks. Additionally, the marks were consistent with the morphology of stone-inflicted cuts rather than tooth-inflicted marks. Dr. Hamdallah Bearat from the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University determined that one cut-mark even contained a tiny, embedded piece of rock that was likely left behind during the butchering process.
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“Most of the marks have features that indicate without doubt that they were inflicted by stone tools,” explains Dr. Curtis Marean from the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, who helped with the mark identifications. “The range of actions that created the marks includes cutting and scraping for the removal of flesh, and percussion on the femur for breaking it to access marrow.”
While it is clear that the Australopithecines at Dikika were using sharp-edged stones to carve meat from bones, it is impossible to tell from the marks alone whether they were making their tools or simply finding and using naturally sharp rocks. So far, the research team has not found any flaked stone tools at Dikika from this early time period. This could indicate that the Dikika residents were simply opportunistic about finding and using sharp-edged stones. However, the sedimentary environment at the site suggests another potential explanation.
“For the most part, the only stones we see coming from these ancient sediments at Dikika are pebbles too small for making tools,” says McPherron. “The hominins at this site probably carried their stone tools with them from better raw material sources elsewhere. One of our goals is to go back and see if we can find these locations, and look for evidence that at this early date they were actually making, not just using, stone tools.”
Regardless of whether or not Selam and her relatives were making their own tools, the fact that they were using them to access nutritious meat and marrow from large mammals would have had wide-ranging implications for A. afarensis both physically and behaviorally.
“We now have a greater understanding of the selective forces that were responsible for shaping the early phases of human history,” says Alemseged. “Once our ancestors started using stone tools to help them scavenge from large carcasses, they opened themselves up to risky competition with other carnivores, which would likely have required them to engage in an unprecedented level of teamwork.”
While many questions remain about the history of tool use, tool making, and related dietary changes among human ancestors, this discovery adds a rich new chapter to the story — a story that is deeply relevant to what makes us unique as a species.
This research was conducted under the auspices of the Ethiopian Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage / Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Financial support for the 2009 field and laboratory work was provided by the California Academy of Sciences. Travel expenses for D.G., S.P.M., D.N.R. and J.G.W. were covered by their respective institutions.
Did australopithecus afarensis use fire?
Did australopithecus afarensis use fire? There is no evidence to suggest that any species of the Australopithecus genus developed control of fire.
The bones are about 3.4 million years old and provide the first evidence that Australopithecus afarensis used stone tools and consumed meat. The evolutionary stories of the Swiss Army Knife and the Big Mac just got a lot longer.
Did Australopithecus boisei use fire?
” But he said it could have been both. The find provides the first evidence that a controlled fire took place before Australopithecus robustus became extinct about 1 million years ago, Dr. … ”He predicted that Australopithecus had used fire,” Dr. Brain said.
How did Australopithecus afarensis survive?
They also had small canine teeth like all other early humans, and a body that stood on two legs and regularly walked upright. Their adaptations for living both in the trees and on the ground helped them survive for almost a million years as climate and environments changed.
What was unique about Australopithecus afarensis?
Australopithecus afarensis characteristics afarensis possessed both ape-like and human-like characteristics. The top of its skull (the cranial vault) was slightly domed and its brain was comparable in size to a chimpanzee’s. Its face projected outwards, less so in females than in males.
What did the Australopithecus afarensis invent?
New finds from Dikika, Ethiopia, push back the first stone tool use and meat-consumption by almost one million years and provide the first evidence that these behaviours can be attributed to Lucy’s species – Australopithecus afarensis.
What did Australopithecus use for shelter?
Australopithecus used trees and fallen trees for shelter, using what nature offered them. They were adaptable hominids and were able to live on the…
When did man invent fire?
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.
boisei gripped well-enough to make and use simple stone and bone tools, just as other members of the human evolutionary family may have as early as 3.3 million years ago (SN: 5/20/15). That’s long before the emergence of the Homo genus, which appeared around 2.8 million years ago.
Is fire discovered in Paleolithic Age?
The controlled use of fire was likely an invention of our ancestor Homo erectus during the Early Stone Age (or Lower Paleolithic). The earliest evidence of fire associated with humans comes from Oldowan hominid sites in the Lake Turkana region of Kenya.
What did australopithecines not eat?
Their thick-enameled, flattened molars would have had great difficulty propagating cracks through tough foods, suggesting that the australopithecines were not well suited for eating tough fruits, leaves, or meat.
What did Australopithecus Garhi eat?
It most likely ate plant material and possibly some meat. If the antelope bones found at the site were butchered by this species, then they must have included significant amounts of meat and marrow in their diet.
Did Lucy speak a language?
Did Lucy speak and if so, what language did she speak? There is no evidence Lucy had a spoken language, however, she may have been able to communicate in different forms. Primates are known to communicate in a variety of ways, such as gestures, facial expressions, and vocalizations.
Did a afarensis have a divergent big toe?
The fossil record for that period had been virtually limited to the species Australopithecus afarensis, made famous by the 3.2-million-year-old Lucy skeleton. … Their feet, mostly, told the tale: the divergent, opposable big toe, long digits and other bones of the newfound species did not match the feet of afarensis.
What made Australopithecus afarensis a hominin quizlet?
afarensis a hominin? Locomotion- Efficient habitual and obligate terrestrial biped. Strong candidate as the ancestor of all later hominins. biggest teeth of all, esp in huge premolars and molars, specializations related to powerful chewing- big jaws and attachments for muscles.
Why did the Australopithecus afarensis go extinct?
All the australopithids went extinct by about 1 million years ago, about 3 million years after they first appeared. Habitats may have vanished as a result of global climate cooling — or the australopithids may have been pressed to extinction by the growing populations of early humans.
The research shows that Australopithecus africanus, a three to two million-year-old species from South Africa traditionally considered not to have engaged in habitual tool manufacture, has a human-like trabecular bone pattern in the bones of the thumb and palm (the metacarpals) consistent with forceful opposition of …
Did Australopithecus climb trees?
The scans of Lucy’s arm bones showed they were heavily built, like chimpanzees, indicating that members of this species spent significant time climbing in trees and used their arms to pull themselves up in the branches. Australopithecus afarensis possessed a combination of ape-like and human-like traits.
What is the meaning of Australopithecus afarensis?
noun. an extinct species of early hominin whose fossil remains were discovered in Ethiopia and have been dated at about 2.8–4 million years of age. a fossil belonging to this species.
What do the teeth and jaws of Australopithecus afarensis suggest about its diet?
What do the teeth and jaws of Australopithecus afarensis suggest about its diet? The large back teeth and thick lower jaw (mandible) suggest the ability to chew and process hard, brittle foods. Which dating technique was used to establish that the age of the volcanic ash at the Laetoli site was 3.6 million years old?
What did Australopithecus look like?
As characterized by the fossil evidence, members of Australopithecus bore a combination of humanlike and apelike traits. They were similar to modern humans in that they were bipedal (that is, they walked on two legs), but, like apes, they had small brains.
What is the cranial capacity of Australopithecus afarensis?
Australopithecus afarensis Afarensis had an apelike face with a low forehead, a bony ridge over the eyes, a flat nose, and no chin. They had protruding jaws with large back teeth. Cranial capacity varied from about 375 to 550 cc. The skull is similar to that of a chimpanzee, except for the more humanlike teeth.
How do we know that fire was known to Palaeolithic man?
The discovery of fire during lower Paleolithic age is drawn on certain evidences like the oxidised patches of earth found in the lake Turkana in Kenya,at a depth of several centimetres is being interpreted as an evidence of fire control,or there are also few regions in Kenya containing the remains of burned clay clasts …
Who invented fire extinguisher?
The first version of the modern portable fire extinguisher was invented by Captain George William Manby in 1819, consisting of a copper vessel of 3 gallons (13.6 litres) of pearl ash (potassium carbonate) solution under compressed air pressure.
Did the Neanderthals use fire?
They conclude that Neanderthals used and probably maintained fire when it was convenient and available on the landscape—for example, in warmer periods when fuel was abundant and natural fires from lightning strikes were frequent—but that Neanderthals did not have the ability to manufacture fire.
Which species of humans first used fire?
The oldest unequivocal evidence, found at Israel’s Qesem Cave, dates back 300,000 to 400,000 years, associating the earliest control of fire with Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. Now, however, an international team of archaeologists has unearthed what appear to be traces of campfires that flickered 1 million years ago.
Who Started the First Fire?
In the 1981 movie Quest for Fire, a group of Neanderthals struggles to keep a small ember burning while moving across a cold, bleak landscape. The meaning is clear: If the ember goes out, they will lose their ability to cook, stay warm, protect themselves from wolves—in short, to survive. The film also makes it obvious that these Neanderthals do not know how to make fire.
During the Middle Paleolithic, roughly 250,000 to 40,000 years ago, when Neanderthals occupied Europe and much of western Asia, the climate included a couple of major warm periods similar to today, but was dominated by two major cold periods that included dozens of shifts between cold and very cold conditions. Quest for Fire presented a generally accurate portrayal of Europe during one of the cold periods (80,000 years ago, according to the film’s title card), but almost all researchers agreed that the movie was flat-out wrong in its suggestion that Neanderthals were incapable of making fire. Now, new fieldwork our team has done in France contradicts some long-held assumptions and shows that the film might have had it right all along.
Conventional thinking has long held that our human ancestors gained control of fire—including the ability to create it—very early in prehistory, long before Neanderthals came along some 250,000 years ago. For many researchers, this view has been supported by the discovery of a handful of sites in Africa with fire residues that are more than a million years old. But it has also been buoyed by the simple logic of one idea: It is hard to imagine that our ancestors could have left Africa and colonized the higher, and often much colder, latitudes of Europe and Asia without fire.
The Neanderthals, after all, lived in Europe during multiple periods in which seasonal temperatures were similar to those that exist today in northern Sweden. (Northern Europe was covered in massive ice sheets during those periods.) There were vast, frigid grasslands populated by herds of reindeer, horses, and woolly mammoths. Fire would have allowed Neanderthals to cook those animals, making the meat easier to chew and more nutritious. And, perhaps more importantly, it would have helped the Neanderthals stay warm during the coldest periods.
This line of thought is the basis for the long-prevailing notion that our ability to make fire began long before the Neanderthals, as a spark—a single technological discovery that spread widely and quickly and has remained essential to human life, in an uninterrupted line, to the present day. But more recent evidence—some of it coming from our own fieldwork—indicates that hominins’ use of fire was not marked by a single discovery. It more likely consisted of several stages of development, and while we don’t yet know when these stages occurred, each of them may have lasted for hundreds of thousands of years.
Chimpanzees cannot make fire but they clearly understand its behavior. Jill Pruetz
We surmise that during the first stage, our ancestors were able to interact safely with fire; in other words, instead of simply running from it, they had become familiar with how it works. To get a deeper understanding of this stage, we can look to research done on chimpanzees—our closest living relatives—by Jill Pruetz, a primatologist at Iowa State University, who has studied chimps’ interaction with wildfires in West Africa. Pruetz has found that chimps clearly understand the behavior of fire enough to have lost the fear of it that most animals typically possess. In fact, Pruetz has observed chimps monitoring the progress of a passing wildfire from a few meters away and then moving in to forage in the burned-out area. So while chimps cannot build or contain fires, they understand how fire moves across the landscape, and they use this knowledge to their benefit. It is not hard to imagine a similar scenario playing out among small groups of our own early ancestors, perhaps the australopithecines, who lived from around 4 million years ago until about 2 million years ago in East Africa. The first stage may have persisted throughout much of prehistory.
The second stage would be when people could actually control fire—meaning they could capture it, contain it, and supply it with fuel to keep it going within their living areas—but they were still obtaining it from natural sources like forest fires. It is difficult to establish when this stage occurred, for a couple of reasons. One is that some claims for very old fires were simply incorrect. For example, at the famous Chinese site Zhoukoudian, what were originally thought to be the remains of 700,000-year-old Homo erectus fires turned out to be natural sediments resembling charcoal and ash.
Second, and perhaps most crucial, is that some of the earliest fire residues have been found in open-air settings—not inside caves—and consist of isolated fragments, small scatters of burned bones, or patches of discolored sediments. While it is possible that these residues are the remains of hominin campfires, it is equally possible, if not probable, that they were produced by naturally occurring wildfires. Every year, lightning causes tens of thousands of wildfires across Africa, Asia, and Europe. In the past, some of these would have burned the remains of hominin camps, including bones, stone tools, and sediments. In such cases, the fire residues have nothing to do with hominin occupation of the sites.
During the final stage, humans learned how to make fire, but again, we are not yet sure when this happened. Starting about 400,000 years ago, we begin finding much better evidence for human-controlled fire, such as intact campfires, or “hearths,” that contain concentrations of charcoal and ash inside caves, where natural fires don’t burn. Furthermore, the number of sites with such evidence increases dramatically. So it is clear that by this time, some hominins in some regions could manage fire and thereby control it, but whether they could make it remains an open question.
Between 2000 and 2010, our research team—made up of three Paleolithic archaeologists who focus on stone tool technology and two geoarchaeologists who study how archaeological sites form—excavated two Middle Paleolithic sites, Pech de l’Azé IV and Roc de Marsal, in the Périgord region of southwestern France. Pech IV and Roc de Marsal are caves that were regularly used as campsites by small groups of Neanderthals from 100,000 to 40,000 years ago, which is about when Homo sapiens, modern humans, arrived in Europe.
Experiments show that fires leave behind evidence—charcoal, ash, and burned artifacts—that gets buried under layers of sediment. These layers accumulate over time, leaving a record that can persist for many thousands of years. Vera Aldeias
One of the more interesting discoveries we made during our years of excavating Pech IV was strikingly abundant evidence of fire use. In the lowermost deposits, those resting directly on the cave’s bedrock floor, we found a 40-centimeter-thick layer full of charcoal, ash, and burned artifacts marking where individual campfires had been built 100,000 years ago. There were also thousands of stone tools, many of which had been incidentally burned by nearby fires. (Paleolithic people were producing, using, and discarding stone tools on a daily basis, so their occupation sites are full of these artifacts—along with bone fragments from their prey animals—which were eventually buried under sediments that accumulated over time. Later people who used the sites could not help but build their fires on top of concentrations of discarded tools and bones.)
We found similar evidence at Roc de Marsal, which also has a thick sequence of successive layers containing tens of thousands of stone tools and the bones of butchered animals. Just as at Pech IV, the oldest layers at Roc de Marsal contained abundant evidence of fire, including dozens of intact hearths so well-preserved that they looked like they could have been abandoned just days before.
We were not surprised to find signs of fire at these two sites, since other, even older sites also offered good evidence of fire. And given the prevailing notion of a spark—that once fire-making was “discovered” it quickly became part of everyday life—we simply assumed that the Neanderthals at Pech IV and Roc de Marsal knew how to make fire.
However, other evidence from these sites soon led us to question that notion. For one, neither site showed signs of fire in its upper layers. At first, we speculated that since Paleolithic people tended to live right at the mouths of caves, wind or water had removed the fires’ ephemeral traces, like charcoal and ash. At the same time, however, almost none of the thousands of stone tools and animal bones we found in these upper layers were burned. If fire had been present, these objects would have been altered by the heat. Erosional processes like wind and water, after all, cannot selectively remove burned objects and leave behind unburned ones. It was clear, then, that fire had almost never been used at these sites in the later periods.
Research our team conducted at Roc de Marsal revealed that the oldest layers of occupation contained abundant evidence of fire. Shannon McPherron
This seemed strange, especially because the older layers dated to a warm climatic period, while the more recent layers—the ones without fire—were deposited between 70,000 and 40,000 years ago, a time of increasing cold as glaciers again spread across much of Europe. This raised some really interesting questions: Why did Neanderthals stop using fire during cold periods, when the need for warmth would be most important? And if they were using fire only in the warm periods, what were they using it for? Cooking would be one possibility, but then why did they not cook their food during the colder periods?
Having fires in warm periods and not in cold periods made little sense. It’s not just a question of having fuel available. While trees are much more common during warmer periods, animal bone, which is also an effective fuel (and was used for the fires at Pech IV), is abundant during both warm and cold periods. This leaves one possible explanation: The Neanderthals at this time were still in the second stage of interacting with fire—they were collecting naturally occurring fire when it was available but did not yet have the technology to start fires themselves.
It is well-known today that natural fires from lightning strikes occur much more frequently in warm conditions—whether in more temperate places or during warmer parts of the year. Similarly, lightning would have been much more prevalent during the warmer phases of the Pleistocene Epoch (which lasted from roughly 2.6 million years ago to around 10,000 years ago) than during the colder periods. If the Neanderthals lacked the ability to start fire themselves and could thus only obtain it from natural fires, then we would expect to find much more evidence of hearths during warmer periods and less during colder ones. Which is why it is likely that Neanderthals had not yet entered the third stage of interacting with fire. That technological development occurred either elsewhere or at a later time.
Evidence from both Pech IV and Roc de Marsal suggests that Neanderthals did not have fire during the coldest time periods. Shannon McPherron
The evidence from Pech IV and Roc de Marsal clearly shows that the Neanderthals at these sites lived without fire not only for long periods but also during the coldest periods. This alone raises even more questions about how they were able to survive. There is no clear evidence that they could make clothing (although some researchers today seem to think Neanderthals were likely making some articles of clothing, even if they were very crude), so perhaps an old theory about Neanderthals—that they were really hairy—is correct. (This notion, from the early 1900s, was discarded in later decades because it was seen as dehumanizing Neanderthals.) It might also mean that they relied more on food—especially meat—that did not need to be cooked.
So while we are obligate fire users today—we could not survive without fire in some form—Neanderthals, according to our research, had no such dependence. Perhaps fire dependency arose later, in the Upper Paleolithic (40,000 to 10,000 years ago), and it is almost certain to have existed by the time agriculture developed at the beginning of the Neolithic period (roughly 10,000 years ago in the Middle East). But there is still much we do not know.
If chimpanzees can effectively interact with wildfires, can we assume that the same was true for some of the earliest hominins, such as Australopithecus afarensis? When did our hominin ancestors first start to collect burning material and carry it back to their campsites, as portrayed in Quest for Fire and as probably practiced by Neanderthals? And, of course, when did humans first learn how to make fire? These are just a few of the mysteries that remain unsolved.
The ability to take advantage of the properties of fire is one of the most important technological advances in our evolutionary past. What we are realizing now, however, is that it was not the result of a single accident or stroke of genius. It was, instead, a process that likely unfolded over hundreds of thousands of years. And for the Neanderthals, the process was punctuated by periods of intense cold in which, when the benefits of fire would have been greatest, they simply had to make do without it.
Toward the end of Quest for Fire, a young Homo sapiens woman teaches a small group of Neanderthals how to start a fire by using the hand-drill technique to create an ember. While it is certainly possible that modern humans developed fire-making technology before arriving in Europe, and perhaps even shared it with Neanderthals, such a scenario remains, at this point, pure speculation.
What has become clear, however, is that before Homo sapiens arrived in Europe, our Paleolithic cousins didn’t just spend a few months or years in a cold land without fire—they spent entire lifetimes, many generations even, without the warm glow of a hearth to take the chill off their toes, cook their meat, and lift their spirits.
This article was republished on The Atlantic.
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