How fire came to be discovered and then brought under control by our ancestors will probably always remain a matter for speculation. There is evidence that forest fires were occurring “naturally” at least 350 million years ago when plant life colonised the land. It may have been earlier since volcanoes were active long before this but the combustible matter needed (fuel and oxygen) which volcanic eruptions could have ignited would have been plentiful only around 350 million years ago.
Many animals have learned to take advantage of the benefits of wildfires – mainly after the fire is over. Some birds of prey take advantage of fleeing insects and small animals while the fire is still raging. Carnivores search in the ashes for animals killed by the fire but still with edible remains. Herbivores gather to lick the ashes for tasty “elements” and salts. Our ancestors would have been observers and beneficiaries of the accidental “cooking” and the warmth from forest or bush fires for many millions of years.
When our ancestors brought fire under control is a matter of some debate. A new PNAS paper now pushes this point back by about 300k YBP (years before present) to around 1 million YBP:
Microstratigraphic evidence of in situ fire in the Acheulean strata of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa
by Francesco Berna, Paul Goldberg, Liora Kolska Horwitz, James Brink, Sharon Holt, Marion Bamford and Michael ChazanAbstract:
The ability to control fire was a crucial turning point in human evolution, but the question when hominins first developed this ability still remains. Here we show that micromorphological and Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy (mFTIR) analyses of intact sediments at the site of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa, provide unambiguous evidence—in the form of burned bone and ashed plant remains—that burning took place in the cave during the early Acheulean occupation, approximately 1.0 Ma. To the best of our knowledge, this is the earliest secure evidence for burning in an archaeological context.
… According to Richard Wrangham’s “cooking hypothesis,” Homo erectus was adapted to a diet of cooked food and therefore was capable of controlling fire. Recent phylogenetic studies on nonhuman and human primates based on associated trends in body mass, feeding time, and molar size support the hypothesis of the adoption of a cooked diet at least as early as the first appearance of H. erectus approximately 1.9 Ma. …..
Wonderwerk Cave: photo M Chazan
The Wonderwerk Cave is thought to have been inhabited by Homo Erectus and fossils show that they existed between about 1 and 1.8 million years ago.
Though hominins probably first made use of the accidentally “cooked” meats they found after wildfires, they would have observed that the heat was initially unbearable and to be avoided. But they would surely have also observed that the warmth from a dying fire was desirable – especially on a cold night. They would also have been subject to the hypnotic attraction that flames have – when observed from a “safe” but warm distance.
Whenever fire was actually brought “under control” I suspect that the initial driver was a desire for warmth and that the benefits of “cooking” probably came later.
Tags: controlled use of fire, fire, Homo Erectus, South Africa, Wonderwerk Cave
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