On the earliest evidence for habitual use of fire
in Europe
Wil Roebroeksa,1 and Paola Villab,c,d,1
a
Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlands; bUniversity of Colorado Museum, Boulder, CO 80309-0265; cUnité Mixte de
Recherche 5199, de la Préhistoire á l’Actuel: Culture, Environnement, et Anthropologie, Institut de Préhistoire et Géologie du Quaternaire, 33405 Talence,
France; and dSchool of Geography, Archaeology, and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Wits 2050 Johannesburg, South Africa
Edited* by Erik Trinkaus, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, and approved February 8, 2011 (received for review December 4, 2010)
The timing of the human control of fire is a hotly debated issue,
with claims for regular fire use by early hominins in Africa at ∼1.6
million y ago. These claims are not uncontested, but most archae-
ologists would agree that the colonization of areas outside Africa,
especially of regions such as Europe where temperatures at time
dropped below freezing, was indeed tied to the use of fire. Our
review of the European evidence suggests that early hominins
moved into northern latitudes without the habitual use of fire. It
was only much later, from ∼300,000 to 400,000 y ago onward, that
fire became a significant part of the hominin technological reper-
toire. It is also from the second half of the Middle Pleistocene
onward that we can observe spectacular cases of Neandertal pyro-
technological knowledge in the production of hafting materials.
The increase in the number of sites with good evidence of fire
throughout the Late Pleistocene shows that European Neandertals
had fire management not unlike that documented for Upper
Paleolithic groups.
human evolution | Paleolithic archeology | fireplaces | hafting adhesives
T he emergence of stone tool manufacture and the control of
fire are undoubtedly the two most significant events in the
technological evolution of early humans. Although stone tool use
and manufacture were regular activities from at least 2.6 million
y ago (1), the timing of the human control of fire is a contro-
versial issue (2), with some claims for regular fire use by early
hominins in Africa at ∼1.6 million y ago (3–5). Longer chro-
nologies for the use of fire include Wrangham’s recent hypothesis
that fire was a central evolutionary force toward larger human
brains (6–9): eating cooked foods made early hominin digestion
easier, and the energy formerly spent on digestion was freed up,
enabling their energy-expensive brains to grow. Using fire to
prepare food made early humans move away from the former
feed-as-you-go-and-eat-raw-food strategy and toward the sharing
of cooked foods around fires, which became attractive locations
for increased social interaction between individuals. Wrangham
situates these developments around the time of the emergence
of Homo erectus, approximately two million y ago. Most arche-
ologists would agree that the colonization of areas outside of
Africa, especially of regions such as Europe where temperatures
at time dropped below freezing (10), was tied to the use of fire
to bridge gaps in the energy budget and in resource availability
during winter (11). For much later periods, a greater control and
more extensive use of fire is seen by some (12, 13) as one of the
behavioral innovations that emerged in Africa among modern
humans, favoring their spread throughout the world and their
eventual evolutionary success.
How strong are these hypotheses? To what extent are they
backed up by archeological data on hominin use of fire? Our
focus in this review is on Europe, an area of the Old World for
which we have a rich record with a large number of sampling
points distributed in time and space, with sites in a wide range of
sedimentary contexts, from open-air sites to the closed settings of
rock shelters and caves.
www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1018116108
Results
Interpreting the Record. For most of prehistory until ∼10,000 y ago,
hominins all over the world subsisted as hunters and gatherers,
with a generally highly mobile lifestyle. Until the later phases of
the Paleolithic, these mobile foragers invested very little in camp
layout, in dwelling structures, or in the construction of formal
hearths (14). The overwhelming majority of their traces consist of
stone tools, the debris of stone tool production, and often but
not always food remains. With few exceptions (see below), pre-
served fireplaces are simple clusters of burnt materials occurring
as flat lenses or in small hollows. The most common proxies for
fire use consist of various find categories that display traces of
ANTHROPOLOGY
having been submitted to heating: the reddened sediments on
which a fire was built, heated stone artifacts, charred bone frag-
ments, and pieces of charcoal. The problem is that other pro-
cesses than human activities can create such findings too. Vol-
canic eruptions can be an important factor in driving the natural
fire regime in volcanically active areas. Lightning strikes—with an
average global flash rate of an estimated 44 ± 5 flashes per second
(15)—or spontaneous combustion cause natural fires that can
burn archeological camp sites. The remains of such grass and
forest fires can become associated with archeological find mate-
rials. Hence, charcoal, charred bone material, and heated flints
do not necessarily indicate anthropogenic fires (2). At open-air
sites, direct evidence for human fires, such as charcoal, can be
easily removed by natural processes, including erosion by water
or by wind (16). Thus, the context of possible fire indicators is
important. If burnt bones, heated artifacts, and charcoal occur in
caves or enclosed sites where the deposits are demonstrably in
situ and are not reworked by slope wash or debris flow entering
the cave, then they can be considered good indicators of an-
thropogenic fires. Much of the debate on the history of human
control of fire relates to the problem of the correct interpretation
of possible fire indicators, especially in the absence of modern
excavation techniques and detailed studies of site formation pro-
cesses. In this last domain, significant progress has been made by
the application of micromorphological techniques to the study of
combustion features in rock shelters and caves (17–20).
European Record. The earliest traces of hominin presence in
Europe come from its southern parts and date to more than one
million y ago (21). Recent data from the English site Happisburgh
3 suggest that hominins may already have been adapted to the
challenging environments of the boreal zone in the Early Pleis-
tocene, more than 800,000 y (800 ka) ago (10). Fire would have
Author contributions: W.R. and P.V. designed research; performed research; analyzed
data; and wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor.
Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.
1
To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: w.roebroeks@arch.leidenuniv.nl or
villap@colorado.edu.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.
1073/pnas.1018116108/-/DCSupplemental.
PNAS | March 29, 2011 | vol. 108 | no. 13 | 5209–5214
been an important tool in such environments. However, surpris-
ingly, evidence for use of fire in the Early and early Middle
Pleistocene of Europe is extremely weak. Or, more exactly, it is
nonexistent, until ∼300–400 ka. Our review of the early European
sites (Dataset S1) shows that the earliest possible evidence of fire
comes from two sites dated to ∼400 ka, Beeches Pit in England
and Schöningen in Germany. At Schöningen, the evidence con-
sists of some heated flints (although mostly natural pieces) (22)
and charred wood, including a wooden tool, with the studies of
possible remains of former hearths still in progress (23). At
Beeches Pit, dated to Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 11 (Dataset
S1), the evidence consists of heated lithics and heated sediments
(24, 25), interpreted as the remains of hearths. Terra Amata
(France) and Vérteszöllös (Hungary) also provide credible evi-
dence of fire, but estimates of their age vary from MIS 11 to 9.
Of direct relevance are sites that do not have traces of fire
before MIS 9–11. It could be argued that early open-air sites,
such as those in the Orce region in Spain (26) or Isernia (27) and
Venosa Notarchirico in Italy (28), have been affected by water
transport, which removed traces of former fires. The primary
context Acheulian site of Boxgrove (29) in England likewise did
not yield any evidence for the presence of fire use, a few scat-
tered charcoal particles aside. The absence of heated material
from these and other Lower Paleolithic open-air sites could be
ascribed to the short-term occupation character of these sites
and/or their sedimentary history. However, open-air sites from
comparable settings do yield traces of the former presence of fire
from MIS 11 onward (e.g., Maastricht-Belvédère and Neumark-
Nord 2; Dataset S1).
Human occupations without fire also occur at six Lower
Paleolithic caves: Treugol’naya (Russia), Kozarnika (Bulgaria),
Visogliano (Italy), Sima del Elefante (Spain), Arago (France),
and Gran Dolina (Spain) (Dataset S1). The latter four sites also
yielded hominin remains. The evidence from three sites, Treu-
gol’naya, Kozarnika, and Sima del Elefante, is not yet sufficient to
support a hypothesis of hominin habitation, however. To date,
Sima del Elefante has yielded only 32 artifacts (21). The early
layers of Treugol’naya and Kozarnika have a complex history
of human and carnivore occupation. The first site has yielded
a small number of artifacts [395 (30)]; faunal remains represent
natural mortality or carnivore accumulations, and there is evi-
dence of stream transport of both lithics and bones (31). The
lowest levels at Kozarnika (32) have yielded a large number
of artifacts, but contextual and taphonomic data are sparse.
In contrast, the rockshelter of Visogliano has yielded 2,000 arti-
facts together with large numbers of cervids (33). Arago and Gran
Dolina contain long sequences and large quantities of lithic
and faunal remains, subjected to taphonomic analyses (34–36).
Their settings are comparable to the ones that, in later times, have
often provided strong evidence of fire, such as Bau de l’Aubesier,
Grotte XVI, and Lazaret in France; Bolomor Cave in Spain
(Dataset S1); and Middle Paleolithic/Middle Stone age caves in
Israel and in South Africa. Traces of fire have been found in the
upper part of the sequence at Arago, in layers younger than 350
ka. No charcoal, no burnt bones, nor any other evidence of fire
have been reported from any of the assemblages from the lower
levels (dated to MIS 10–14). No charred bones or heated arti-
facts have been reported from the Gran Dolina sequence (TD4–
TD10). Rare charcoal particles have been found in thin sections
of the TD6 sediments, but these sediments originate from the
exterior of the cave, and there is evidence of low-energy transport
(37); thus, the charcoal may not be in situ. However, the high
density of human, faunal, and lithic remains as well as their state
of preservation and refitting studies (38, 39) clearly indicate an
occupation in situ with little postdepositional disturbance. The
absence of any heated material from the long sequences of Gran
Dolina and Arago, both documenting hominin occupations over
several hundred thousand years (36, 40), is striking. This is a
5210 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1018116108
strong pattern, which can be tested by future work at other
hominin habitation sites. We suggest that the European record
displays a strong signal, in the sense that, from ∼400 to 300 ka ago,
many proxies indicate a habitual use of fire, but from the pre-
ceding 700 ka of hominin presence in Europe, we have no evi-
dence for fire use.
From around MIS 9, we find extensive traces of the presence
of fire in cave settings as well as in the open (Dataset S1). The
evidence from the multilevel site of La Cotte de Saint Brelade
(Jersey, UK), for instance, shows that fire was extensively used
throughout the MIS 7–MIS 4 occupation periods. There are in-
dications of burning in every occupation layer here, with high
densities of burnt material and a predominance of burnt bone
over wood charcoal. Apparently, in addition to wood, bone was
used as fuel as well (41). Spatial concentrations of heated flint
artifacts and/or heated stones and charred faunal remains are
a common phenomenon on Middle Paleolithic open-air sites all
over Europe (Dataset S1).
It is also from the second half of the Middle Pleistocene
onward that we can observe some spectacular cases of pyro-
technological knowledge in the production of hafting materials
(42, 43), which some consider a proxy for complex, modern
cognition (44) (Fig. 1 and SI Text). Significantly, several Middle
Paleolithic cave and open-air sites have multiple successive levels
representing a long time span with clear evidence of fire. Con-
sider the 187 combustion structures in the many levels of Abric
Romani in Spain, the 29 combustion structures of Ksiecia Jozefa
in Poland, the multiple levels of El Salt, St. Marcel, Esquilleu
Cave, Peyrards, La Combette, La Quina, St. Césaire, Oscu-
rusciuto, and the fireplaces of Roca dels Bous (Dataset S1). Les
Canalettes, France, is a well-documented Middle Paleolithic site
where lignite was repeatedly imported as fuel from a distance of
8–10 km (45). Fig. 2 and Table 1 show a threefold increase in the
number of sites with good evidence of fire during MIS 5 and
a steady increase in MIS 4 and 3. Stone-lined or stone-delimited
fireplaces are not as common as in the late Upper Paleolithic
(46–49), but they have been documented at a number of Mid-
dle Paleolithic sites: Vilas Ruivas, Les Canalettes, La Combette,
Bolomor layer XIII, Port Pignot, Abri du Rozel, Pech de l’Aze
II, Grotte du Bison, and Abric Romani (Dataset S1). Hearth-
centered activities have been suggested at the rock shelter site of
Abric Romani (50), at the open-air sites of La Folie (France) and
Ksiecia Jozefa (Poland) (Dataset S1), and in Western Asia at the
0 2 cm
Fig. 1. Flint flake from Campitello Quarry (Italy), still enclosed in its adhe-
sive, produced more than 200,000 y ago (42) (SI Text). Study of such adhesives
(42, 43) showed that Neandertals used fire to synthesize from birch bark
a pitch for hafting stone tools (photograph courtesy of P. P. A. Mazza,
Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università di Firenze, Florence, Italy).
Roebroeks and Villa
 quality and efficiency of their stone tool manufacture process
164 ka ago (13). The authors infer that the technology required
> MIS 11 0
a novel association between fire, its heat, and a structural
change in stone with consequent flaking benefits that demanded
“an elevated cognitive ability.” They also suggest that, when
MIS 11-9 0.48 these early modern humans moved into Eurasia, their ability to
alter and improve available raw material may have been a be-
havioral advantage in their encounters with the Neandertals.
However, this interpretation ignores that Neandertals used fire
MIS 8 0.53 as an engineering tool to synthesize birch bark pitch tens of
thousands of years before some modern humans at Pinnacle
Point decided to put their stone raw material in it. In more
general terms, a greater control and more extensive use of fire is
MIS 7 1.92
sometimes (12) seen as one of the behavioral innovations that
emerged in Africa among modern humans and favored the
spread of modern humans throughout the world. As stressed by
MIS 6 1.47 Daniau et al. (52), if extensive fire use for ecosystem manage-
ment were indeed a component of the modern human technical
and cognitive package, one would expect to find major dis-
turbances in the natural biomass burning variability associated
MIS 5 5.25 with and after the colonization of Eurasia by modern humans. In
their study of microcharcoal particles from two deep-sea cores
off of Iberia and France, spanning the 70- to 10-ka period of

ANTHROPOLOGY
biomass burning, the authors did not recover any sign that Upper
MIS 4 10.0
Paleolithic humans made any difference: either Neandertals and
modern humans did not affect the natural fire regime, or they did
so in comparable ways.
MIS 3 20.91
Asian and African Records: A Comparison. The European signal for
fire use aligns well with what we know from other continents,
0 5 10 15 20 25 where indications for habitual use of fire are present from the
second half of the Middle Pleistocene onward. As in Europe, fire
number of sites (per 10.000 years)
seems to have become a maintainable technology between ∼400
Fig. 2. Number of sites with good evidence of fire (Table 1) per 10 ky. (See and 200 ka, as illustrated by the evidence from the cave site of
Table S1 for age estimates of various MIS stages.) Sites with several layers Qesem in Israel. Here, micromorphological studies suggest that
containing evidence of fire are dated to different MIS score for each MIS recrystallized wood ash was a major part of the cave deposits
concerned. over a long time period and that, at least in the upper part of the
sequence, repeated use of fire was common (17). Another signal
for habitual fire use in the 300- to 200-ka period comes from
site of Tor Faraj (51). We conclude that Middle Paleolithic a study of heated flints from the Tabun site, also in Israel (53).
Neandertals did not have to wait for lightning strikes, meteorite Many later Middle Paleolithic sites have yielded a wide range of
falls, volcanoes, or spontaneous combustion: they had the ability evidence for fire, in the form of the large combustion areas from
to make, conserve, and transport fires during successive occupa- Kebara or the hearths from Hayonim (54, 55). There are a few
tions or at different sites, like ethnographically documented re- claims for earlier use of fire in Asia, however, with the case of
cent hunter-gatherers, a pattern comparable to that documented Zhoukoudian Locality 1 being the most contested one. Although
in the Upper Paleolithic. this site was considered for a long time to be the fire-lit home of
Homo erectus, studies by Weiner and colleagues (56, 57) showed
Modern Humans Versus Neandertals. A recent study provides evi- that the “ashes” supposedly reflecting former hearths were not
dence of early modern humans at the site of Pinnacle Point in ashes at all: samples from Layers 10 through 3 showed extensive
Southern Africa regular use of heat treatment to increase the water deposition of fine silt-sized material (reworked loess),
including fine-grained organic matter. The dark, organic-rich
unit in Layer 10, often cited as some of the earliest evidence of
Table 1. Number of sites with good evidence of fire per 10 ky
fire, is in fact a water-laid accumulation. Much of the fine-grained
Number of sediment was derived from outside Locality 1. The 4- to 6-m
sites with Number of sites accumulation of supposed ashes in Layer 4 is interpreted as
MIS duration good evidence with evidence of subaerial water-laid silt deposits derived from the loess-covered
MI Stages in ky of fire fire per 10 ky hill slopes surrounding the site. With such a depositional envi-
ronment, the presence of charred bone fragments in the sequence
>MIS 11 — 0 0
can hardly be considered as direct evidence for in situ burning
MIS 11–9 124 6 0.48
(contra ref. 58).
MIS 8 57 3 0.53
There is however, one well-established case for earlier re-
MIS 7 52 10 1.92
petitive fire use in western Asia: the Acheulian site of Gesher
MIS 6 61 9 1.47
Benot Ya’aqov (GBY) in Israel, dating to ∼780 ka ago (59–61).
MIS 5 59 31 5.25
Most of its many find levels might be correlative with MIS 19,
MIS 4 14 14 10.0
i.e., twice as old as the oldest sites with fire indicators in Europe.
MIS 3 (up to 22 46 20.91
How strong is the evidence? GBY has both charred plant re-
35 ka)
mains and heated microartifacts (≤2 cm) occurring in localized
Data based on Dataset S1. Index of confidence 2 and 3. concentrations in various levels throughout the sequence. Five

Roebroeks and Villa PNAS | March 29, 2011 | vol. 108 | no. 13 | 5211
superimposed GBY assemblages contain clusters with frequen-
cies of burned flint microartifacts of 3.7–5.8%. The spatial dis-
tributions and the frequencies of burned microartifacts are com-
parable to those occurring at much younger Magdalenian sites
in Western Europe, where knapping near a fireplace was a
common occurrence, leading to the accumulation of lithic debris
near the hearth (62). The GBY excavators argue that burnt
microartifacts and other charred materials are the best indicators
of the position of formerly ‘invisible” hearths, better than the
distribution of macroartifacts that are often rejected away from
the combustion area.
For the African record, claims for early fire use from ∼1.6
million y ago onward have been made. These claims include 270
charred bones from Swartkrans (5, 63) and red patches of sedi-
ments from Chesowanja, Kenya, and from Koobi Fora FxJj 20,
thought to be the oxidized remains of 1.5- to 1.6-million-y-old
hominin fires (3, 4, 64, 65). These sites do demonstrate that fire-
altered materials are associated with early hominin activity areas
but not that hominins were involved in the production and/or
the use of such fires. When comparing the records of Africa and
Europe, one also has to envisage that natural fires were very
probably a much more important phenomenon over much of
Africa than at northern latitudes. More lightning occurs near the
equator than near the poles because of differences in the degree to
which daily sunshine heats up the land surface. A recent satellite
study shows that ∼78% of all global lightning occurs between 30°S
and 30°N latitudes, which encompasses most of the African con-
tinent (15).
Discussion
In sum, the European evidence strongly suggests that the ha-
bitual and controlled use of fire was a late phenomenon, dating
to the second half of the Middle Pleistocene, which is not to
deny the possibility of occasional and opportunistic use of fire
in earlier periods (5). In areas that are volcanically active and
have high lightning-strike densities, such as the East African
Rift and the Afar Triangle, hominins were regularly confronted
with natural fires and their results. Early studies of the Homo
erectus–bearing deposits at Trinil, Java, have already discussed
the role of volcanic eruptions in the production of tropical
forest fires and the resulting charred plant remains retrieved
from the Trinil deposits (66, 67). Living in “fire-rich” envi-
ronments may have triggered the repeated opportunistic use of
natural fires in early stages of hominin evolution, but such use
did not create an archeologically visible pattern. The evidence
from GBY is suggestive of repeated use of fire at one location
only, at ∼800 ka. Together with the claims from some early
African sites, the GBY evidence might testify to a sporadic use
of fire by hominins before the second half of the Middle
Pleistocene. Early hominins had expanded their ranges into the
northern temperate latitudes of Eurasia much earlier, however,
long before GBY. The finds from Dmanisi, Georgia (68), show
that the southern Caucasus was already occupied by 1.7–1.8
Ma, whereas hominins were present in northern China at least
by 1.66 Ma, as shown by data from the Nihewan Basin (69). The
evidence from Dmanisi and the Nihewan Basin is older than
any of the abovementioned African sites with contested traces
of fire use. We suggest that early hominins did not need fire for
their colonization of these areas where winter temperatures
dropped below freezing.
Our interpretation of the record raises the question of how
early hominins survived the cold climates of Europe and Asia
without fire. A highly active lifestyle and a high-protein diet may
have significantly increased their basal metabolic rate as a physi-
ological adaptation to the cold (70). Although the energetic sig-
nificance of cooking food is clear (7), consumption of raw meat
and aquatic resources by hunter-gatherers is well documented
5212 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1018116108
(71). Moreover, extant humans are the product of a long history
of genetic adaptations to dietary shifts, of which only a very few
and recent ones are relatively well known (72).
From about half a million years ago, Eurasian hominins adap-
ted to a wider range of environments, from milder, interglacial
conditions to significantly colder ones. In contrast to the earlier
Pleistocene, the archeological record documents a substantial,
almost continuous presence of hominins over major parts of
Europe and Asia from the middle part of the Middle Pleistocene
onward (73–75). The data presented in this article, in combination
with the distinct advantages that control of fire would have af-
forded in higher latitudes, suggest that fire had become a main-
tainable component of the technology of members of the genus
Homo around this time.
Conclusion
The pattern emerging is a clear as well as a surprising one:
Where we would expect habitual use of fire in the Paleolithic,
i.e., the northern latitudes, we do not see any clear traces of it
at all until the second half of the Middle Pleistocene. Cave
sequences spanning the later part of the Early Pleistocene and
the earlier part of the Middle Pleistocene in Europe do not
have convincing evidence of fire. The number and quality of
these early sites are significant, and this absence of evidence
cannot be ignored. The simplest explanation is that there was
no habitual use of fire before ca. 300–400 ka and therefore that
fire was not an essential component of the behavior of the first
occupants of the northern latitudes of the Old World. It is only
much later, with the Neandertals and their contemporaries
elsewhere in the Old World, that fire became an integral part of
the technological repertoire of the human lineage. From the
late Middle Pleistocene of Europe onward and in the Late
Pleistocene of Europe and South Africa, the evidence indicates
that Neandertals and (early) modern humans used fire not only
for warmth, cooking (76), or extending the length of day but also
as an important component of technology for the production of
new materials, including adhesives for the hafting of stone arti-
facts. Contrary to some views (77), European Neandertals had
fire-management control not unlike that documented in the
Upper Paleolithic.
Materials and Methods
Dataset S1 contains our datasets, which are based on a systematic review of
French, English, German, Italian, and Spanish publications. It lists a few Early
Pleistocene and several Middle and Late Pleistocene sites with possible evi-
dence of fire associated with Neandertals and earlier hominins. For primary
context sites older than MIS 9, negative observations are also recorded. We
excluded open-air occurrences in coarse-grained fluvial or clearly disturbed
context and sites with underreported, unpublished, or very ambiguous evi-
dence. Several sites where information on charred bone or charcoal or ash
lenses was minimal or was provided only in excavation reports with re-
stricted circulation, in theses, and in local journals not easily accessible are
not included. The German Late Pleistocene record, for instance, has a num-
ber of rich Middle Paleolithic cave sites from which the original excavators
reported ample indications for the former presence of fire, including
inferred fireplaces, charcoal, and burnt bones, apparently reflecting the use
of bones as fuel. However, in the absence of detailed studies, only a few of
these sites ended up in Dataset S1. Only sites for which we were able to
obtain and check primary sources are included. Sites or layers with so-called
“Transitional” industries, e.g., Châtelperronian, Uluzzian, Bohunician, and
Streletskyan, are not included.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. We thank P. Karkanas, P. P. A. Mazza, J. Porck, M. J.
Sier, M. van Dijk, and J. Weiner for help in the preparation of this article. P.V.
thanks G. Boschian, P. Boscato, A. Ronchitelli, C. Daujeard, J. Fernández-
Peris, B. Galván Santos, J. González-Urquijo, J.-L. Guadelli, J. Hoffecker,
R. March,V. Sitlivy, and the staff of Norlin Library at the University of Colo-
rado for quickly providing needed information and references. J. Joordens,
K. MacDonald, and two reviewers provided very valuable comments.
Roebroeks and Villa
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Supporting Information
Roebroeks and Villa 10.1073/pnas.1018116108
SI Text
Small Is Informative. Use of bone as fuel. In the absence of well-
preserved fireplaces, or as a complement to them, fine-mesh water
screening of sediments followed by sorting and quantitative
studies of the very small, often unidentifiable bone fragments can
provide information on fire activities at any site and, in particular,
on the use of bone as fuel. Experiments have shown that spongy
bone is effective as fuel whereas compact bone does not burn as
well (1). Fire damage on bones can result from a number of
causes. Bones can be heated to extract marrow, partially burned
through roasting, discarded into a fire after consumption, or
accidentally burned near a fireplace. Low proportions of charred
bones can be explained in this manner. It is the very high fre-
quencies of burned small fragments, evidence that spongy bone
was preferentially selected for burning, and low frequencies of
burnt numbers of identified specimens (NISP) that will support
the hypothesis that bone was used as fuel.
A small amount of dry or dead wood is needed to start burning
bone. An abundance of burned fragments and the lack or scarcity
of charcoal in a fireplace can indicate the use of bone as fuel, which
was suggested for the Aurignacian hearths at Abri Pataud and
Castanet and was verified by experiments (refs. 2–4, see also ref.
5). Taphonomic analyses of large and small burned bones at
several Upper Paleolithic sites show that proportions of burned
fragments decrease inversely with size, with an absolute majority
smaller than 2 cm. Use of bone as fuel results in intensive frag-
mentation during combustion (6), and postdepositionally through
trampling, because burned bones are more fragile than unburned
ones. Frequencies of nonidentifiable burned bones are partly a
function of screening, recovery, and sorting techniques. At Upper
Paleolithic sites, frequencies of burned bone can vary from 78.5%
at the Aurignacian site of Castanet (99.8% of those are smaller
than 2 cm) to 46.1% at the site of le Placard and 27.7% at the
Magdalenian site of Saint-Germain la Rivière (an older excava-
tion). Because spongy bones are the only parts that burn well, high
frequencies of burned indeterminate spongy bone suggest the use
of bone as fuel. The percentage of burned identifiable bones (most
often larger than 2 cm) is not significant in this respect. Low fre-
quencies of burned spongy bones (compared with compact bones)
suggest burning as a result of site maintenance.
Dataset S1 indicates the use of bone as fuel at 15 Middle Pa-
leolithic sites in France, Spain, Belgium, Germany, and Eastern
Europe. According to Théry-Parisot and Meignen (7) there are
many sites where the use of bone as fuel is not correlated with
wood scarcity. They suggest that use of bone as fuel may be cor-
related with the length of stay at short-term occupation sites or at
specialized sites where high-energy fires were not needed and
bone would be a response to the immediate need for fuel.
Grease extraction. The extraction of bone grease requires boiling.
The cancellous bone must be broken with a hammer and anvil and
then boiled for at least 2–3 h (8). The use of grease rendering by
prehistoric hunter-gatherers should be identified by the associa-
tions of many small fragments of spongy bones, highly fragmented
fire-cracked rocks (used as heating elements), hearths for heat-
ing the cobbles or rocks, shallow basins (lined with skins or bark
or an animal stomach wall to contain water for boiling), and
secondarily by heavy-duty stone tools (i.e., hammerstones and
anvils). Rapid cooling of heated cobbles in water causes thermal
breakage. Stone-boiling technology seems to occur already in the
Upper Paleolithic (9–11). It has been suggested that bone grease
extraction might be indicated by very high proportions of very
small (<2 cm) unburned spongy fragments (the reverse of bone
Roebroeks and Villa www.pnas.org/cgi/content/short/1018116108
used as fuel), indicating intensive fragmentation of cancellous
bone and the almost complete absence of cancellous bone on
limb end and axial elements, with evidence of percussion marks
for breakage unrelated to marrow extraction. This kind of anal-
ysis, showing the selection of the less dense elements of the as-
semblage, must be supported by a detailed taphonomic study to
exclude postdepositional processes as a factor in fragmentation or
destruction and removal by carnivores. Only two Mousterian sites
have been studied in this manner (Saint Marcel and Baume des
Peyrards) (12). Heated rocks have not been reported at either
site, so the grease-extraction hypothesis remains unsupported.
[The heading of this section, Small Is Informative, is a reference to
a paper by Isaac et al. (13).]
Thermoluminescence (TL). Direct exposure of flint to fire and ex-
posure to temperatures above 300 °C results in visible heat dam-
age to flint, such as cracks, potlid fractures, or changes in color
(14). Reliable TL dating of heated flint requires that the flint was
heated to temperatures in excess of 450 °C (15) or 400 °C (16).
Although only few of the measured wild fires generate soil tem-
peratures higher than 450 °C (17), and the penetration depth of
fire in sediment is very low (18), natural forest fires can reach
temperatures of 600 °C aboveground, and temperatures of 550 °C
can occur at the level of the grass canopy and at the ground
level (19, 20). Thus, at open-air sites, TL dating alone cannot be
considered a reliable indicator of anthropogenic fire. However,
heated flints in a cave site are unlikely to be the result of natural
wild fires and may be considered a reliable indicator of anthro-
pogenic fire if (i) there is no evidence of reworking of sediments,
slope wash, or debris flow entering the cave; (ii) the excavator
noted a localized concentration of heated flint and bones; and
(iii) only a small proportion of heated flint occurs at the site. This
combination of evidence suggests a good probability of local-
ized fire.
Ideally, all attributes should be present, but published in-
formation is not always sufficient. We consider the evidence from
cave sites with TL dating alone as possible evidence of anthro-
pogenic fire (index of confidence 1, Dataset S1).
Neandertal Synthetics. Recent data show that European Nean-
dertals from at least 200,000 y ago onward used fire to synthesize
from bark a pitch for hafting stone tools. Chemically comparable
pitches can easily be produced with modern technical methods, by
using air-tight laboratory flasks and temperature-controlled fa-
cilities, within a small temperature interval (340 °C to 400 °C) and
in the absence of oxygen (21). How this was actually achieved by
Neandertals and prehistoric modern humans is not known, al-
though birch park pitches have been experimentally produced in
small dug out and subsequently covered pits beneath camp fires
(22). Fig. 1 shows one of two flakes with pitch from Campitello
Quarry (Italy) still enclosed in blackish organic material (23).
The Campitello finds date to the end of Marine Isotope Stage
(MIS) 7, and the flakes were associated with remains of Elephas
antiquus. The molecular composition of the organic matter was
detected by GC-MS, which revealed the presence of triterpenoid
species characteristic of tars produced from bark or wood of
Betulaceae trees, including birch. Comparable pitch finds come
from the German site Königsaue A (24), which has an estimated
age of 80,000 y (25, 26) (the AMS dates of 43.800 ± 2100 BP and
48.400 ± 3700 BP cited in ref. 25 should be considered minimum
ages). These are artificially produced materials, synthesized by
Neandertals using fire as a tool. Neandertals also used fire to
1 of 3
heat-treat existing natural materials, such as asphalt, for hafting
purposes; this is clear from 42,000- and 70,000-y-old tools with
traces of bitumen on their surfaces from the site Umm El Tlel
(Syria), on the southern edge of the Neandertal world. That as-
phalt was collected at 40 km from the site (27, 28).
Chilly Land of Fires. In the challenging environments of the
southernmost tip of South America, in Tierra del Fuego, fire was
an essential element for the local hunter-gatherer populations,
and, without fire, life there would have been impossible (29). As
Robert FitzRoy, Darwin’s captain on the HMS Beagle, observed:
“Fire is always kept alive by these savages wherever they go,
either in their canoes, in their wigwams, or even in their hand, by
a piece of burning wood; but they are at no loss to rekindle it,
should any accident happen” (ref. 30, p. 187). Usually, fire was
produced by striking a piece of flint against iron pyrite and
catching the shower of sparks in a tinder consisting of dried
mushroom. The materials for producing fire were very judiciously
guarded and carried around at all times by all adults in small bags
made out of well-prepared fox or guanaco leather (29). Fire
served a wide variety of purposes in these cold environments, in-
cluding long-distance communication. Fire was ubiquitous, both
inside and outside their simple dwellings, and many Fuegans dis-
played marks of serious burns as a consequence of their close
association with fire. The missionary and ethnologist Martin Gu-
sinde documented the fire technology of the Tierra del Fuego in
remarkable detail in the early 20th century, during his ethno-
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2. Théry-Parisot I (2001) Economie des combustibles au Paléolithique (Centre National de la
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3. Théry-Parisot I (2002) Fuel management (bone and wood) during the lower Aurignacian
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graphical studies of the Selk’nam (29), Yamana (31), and Ha-
lakwulup (32).
How to Make Fire in the Pleistocene? In “rudimentary” technolo-
gies, fire is generally produced by striking a piece of flint against
iron pyrite or by the friction of wood on wood. In both cases, the
produced sparks or the glowing wood fragments are caught in
tinder, material that will easily smolder, such as fungus or down.
Some archeologists have suggested that the production of sparks
by percussion would not have been a problem for hominins who
had been bashing stone against each other for more than 2.6
million y. The 19th century antiquarian John Evans suggested
that using pyrite as a hammerstone to work flint may have
sparked up the first discovery of fire (33). Archeological evidence
for pyrite used in strike-a-light activities in the Paleolithic is very
rare, however. There are a few finds of pyrite nodules in Middle
Paleolithic contexts, e.g., from the Grotte de la Hyène, France
(34, 35), but the oldest find with clear use traces dates to the
beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, the Aurignacian, ca. 35,000 y
ago (35). Pieces of flint showing use wear as a result of their
probable function as strike-a-lights have been described from
the late Upper Paleolithic (36). However, to have fire, one does
not need to be able to produce it. Recent hunters-gatherers, such
as the Tasmanian aboriginals, regularly carried fire sticks or rolls
of bark that burned very slowly with them from camp to camp,
even though they were perfectly capable of producing fire at
will (37, 38).
18. Bellomo RV (1994) Methods of determining early hominid behavioural activities
associated with the controlled use of fire at FxJj 20 Main, Koobi Fora, Kenya. J Hum
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paläolithischen Bedingungen. Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Urgeschichte 16:75–83.
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 Table S1. Age estimates of various MIS stages
MIS Boundary LR04 Age, ka

1/2 14
2/3 29
3/4 57
4/5 71
5.a (peak) 82
5.b (peak) 87
5.c (peak) 96
5.d (peak) 109
5.e (peak) 123
5/6 130
6/7 191
7/8 243
8/9 300
9/10 337
10/11 374
11/12 424
12/13 478
13/14 533
14/15 563
15/16 621
16/17 676
17/18 712
18/19 761
19/20 790
20/21 814

Estimated age of MIS boundaries for the Middle and Late Pleistocene,
based on the LR04 Stack record (1). For the substages of MIS 5, the ages of
the isotopic peaks are indicated.

1. Lisiecki LE, Raymo ME (2005) A Pliocene-Pleistocene stack of 57 globally distributed benthic d18O records. Paleoceanography 20:PA1003.

Dataset S1. Fire and fireplaces in Pleistocene Europe from 1.2 Ma to ca. 35 ka

Dataset S1 (DOC)

Roebroeks and Villa www.pnas.org/cgi/content/short/1018116108 3 of 3