When did humans discover how to use

fire?
By Tara Santora - Live Science Contributor 

The answer is hotly contested.

Fires blazed the way for humans to evolve into the species we are today. Scientists
suspect that without a control over fire, humans probably would never have developed
large brains and the benefits that come along with it. But when did humans first discover
how to use fire?

"That's a tricky question," said Ian Tattersall, a paleoanthropologist and curator emeritus
of human origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. "Maybe
the evidence for fire doesn't preserve very well, and what we're seeing is just the
remnants of what was previously a much more rich record. But again, that's guesswork.
We don't know."

What experts do know is that around 400,000 years ago, fire started popping up much
more frequently in the archaeological record across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and
Asia, according to a 2016 review article in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society B. Experts consider these fires to be widespread, though sites with
evidence are still relatively scarce.

At least two isolated sites show earlier humans using fire before 400,000 years ago,
Tattersall said. For instance, at a site in Israel, dating back about 800,000 years,
archaeologists have found hearths, flint and burned wood fragments, according to a
2012 study in the journal Science. At another site, this one called Wonderwerk Cave in
South Africa, scientists found evidence that humans used fire about 1 million years ago,
according to a 2012 study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences. In that cave, they found remnants of burned bone and plants and what
appear to be hearths. 

"Where the evidence is coming from in the site is really far back into the cave," said
Sarah Hlubik, a paleoanthropologist and postdoctoral researcher at George Washington
University in Washington, D.C. "Even a landscape fire that's sweeping around isn't
going to reach that far back." In other words, there's little chance that the data's a fluke,
even though it is isolated in space and time.

Though Wonderwerk is the earliest site where most experts agree humans used fire, in
theory they should have been using it much earlier. Around 2 million years ago, the gut
of the human ancestor Homo erectus began shrinking, suggesting that something such
as cooking was making digestion a lot easier. Meanwhile, its brain was growing, which
requires a lot of energy. "Where else would you get the energy from without using fire to
cook food?" Tattersall told Live Science, referring to cooking meat and vegetables.

To back up that argument, Hlubik is looking for signs of ancient controlled fires at sites
in Koobi Fora, a region in northern Kenya that's rich in paleoanthropological remains
dating back about 1.6 million years. So far, she has found burned bones clustered with
other artifacts there. Burned sediment was clustered separately, suggesting that there
was one area for maintaining fire and another area where ancient humans spent most
of their time. 

"At this point, I'm confident to say, 'Yes, there was fire that was being used by people on
this particular site,'" Hlubik said. "The next phase of the research is to then say, 'How
many other sites in the region also have fire evidence?'" 

But not all experts agree with Hlubik. The fires at the site she excavated may not have
been started by humans. It's possible the evidence could stem from bushes that
were torched by natural wildfire.

Whenever fire use did arise, humans' ability to capture and control wildfires — or create
fires of their own — had massive impacts on the species' evolution. It probably
lengthened life spans, made humans more social by giving them a place to gather
around and, along with the invention of clothing, helped them move into colder climates,
Tattersall said. Using fires also likely increased human cognition, Hlubik added. "The
benefits from using it reinforce the cognitive gains that you've already gotten and then
create more. Because fire is a complex thing," she said. "You can get very hurt if you're
using it incorrectly."

Originally published on Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/when-did-humans-discover-fire.html