Control of fire by early humans

The control of fire by early humans was a critical technology enabling the

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] Some of the earliest known traces of controlled fire were found at the Daughters of Jacob Bridge, Israel, and dated to ~790,000 years ago.^[4][5] At the site, archaeologists also found the oldest likely evidence of controlled use of fire to cook food ~780,000 years ago.^[6][7] However, some studies suggest cooking started ~1.8 million years ago.^{[8][9][clarification needed]}

Flint blades burned in fires roughly 300,000 years ago were found near fossils of early but not entirely modern

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 was in danger of getting burned. This would require familiarity with fire and its behavior.[18]^[14]

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.^[14] 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.^[19] The ability to make fire, generally with a friction device with hardwood rubbing against softwood (as in a bow drill), was a later development.^[13]

Each of these stages could occur at different intensities, ranging from occasional or "opportunistic" to "habitual" to "obligate" (unable to survive without it).^[14][19]

Most of the evidence of controlled use of fire during the Lower Paleolithic is uncertain and has limited scholarly support.^[3] Some of the evidence is inconclusive because other plausible explanations, such as natural processes, exist for the findings.^[1] Findings support that the earliest known controlled use of fire took place in Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa, 1.0 Mya.^[3][20]

Findings from Wonderwerk provide the earliest evidence for controlled use of fire. Intact sediments were analyzed using micromorphological analysis. Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy (mFTIR) yielded evidence, in the form of burned bones and ashed plant remains, that burning took place at the site 1.0 Mya.^[3]

East African sites, such as

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).^[1] Evidence of possible human control of fire, found at Swartkrans, South Africa,^[21] includes burned bones, including ones with hominin-inflicted cut marks, along with Acheulean and bone tools.^[1] This site 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 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.^[1]

In

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.^[1] Burned stones were found in Awash Valley, but volcanic welded tuff is found in the area, which could explain the burned stones.^[1]

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.^[10]

In

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.^[1] The burned wood has been claimed to indicate the use of fire by early hominids.

The

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 180,000 BP, through amino-acid racemization.^[1]

Fire was used for

Evidence at

Layer 10 is 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."^[28] 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.^{[citation needed]}

At the Amudian site of

The earliest evidence for controlled fire use by humans on the Indian subcontinent, dating to between 50,000 and 55,000 years ago, comes from the Main Belan archaeological site, located in the Belan River valley in Uttar Pradesh, India.^[31]

Multiple sites in Europe, such as

Fire also played a major role in changing food habits. Cooking allowed a significant increase in meat consumption and calorie intake.^[34] It was soon discovered that meat could be dried and smoked by fire, preserving it for lean seasons.^[35] Fire was even used in manufacturing tools for hunting and butchering.^[36] Hominids also learned that starting bushfires to burn large areas could increase land fertility and clear terrain to make hunting easier.^[35][37] Evidence shows that early hominids were able to corral and trap prey animals using fire.^{[citation needed]} Fire was used to clear out caves before living in them, helping to begin the use of shelter.^[38] The many uses of fire may have led to specialized social roles, such as the separation of cooking from hunting.^[39]

The control of fire enabled important changes in human behavior, health, energy expenditure, and geographic expansion. After the loss of body hair, hominids could move into much colder regions that would have previously been uninhabitable. Evidence of more complex management to change biomes can be found as far back as 200,000 to 100,000 years ago, at minimum.

Fire allowed major innovations in tool and weapon manufacture. Evidence dating to roughly 164,000 years ago indicates that early humans in South Africa during the Middle Stone Age used fire to alter the mechanical properties of tool materials applying heat treatment to a fine-grained rock called silcrete.^[40] The heated rocks were then tempered into crescent-shaped blades or arrowheads for hunting and butchering prey. This may have been the first time that bow and arrow were used for hunting, with far-ranging impact.^[40][41]

Fire was used in the creation of art. Archaeologists have discovered several 1- to 10-inch

Fire was an important factor in expanding and developing societies of early hominids. One impact fire might have had was social stratification. The power to make and wield fire may have conferred prestige and social position.^[35] Fire also led to a lengthening of daytime activities and allowed more nighttime activities.^[45] Evidence of large hearths indicate that the majority of nighttime was spent around the fire.^[46] The increased social interaction from gathering around the fire may have fostered the development of language.^[45]

Another effect of fire use on hominid societies was that it required larger groups to work together to maintain the fire, finding fuel, portioning it onto the fire, and re-igniting it when necessary. These larger groups might have included older individuals, such as grandparents, who helped to care for children. Ultimately, fire significantly influenced the size and social interactions of early hominid communities.^[45][46]

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.^[46] 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.^[46]

The cooking hypothesis proposes 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 was insufficient to start the increasing brain size trend.

The cooking hypothesis gains support by comparing the nutrients in

Besides the brain, other human organs also demand a high metabolism.^[51] During human evolution, the body-mass proportion of different organs changed to allow brain expansion.

Before the advent of fire, the hominid diet was limited to mostly plant parts composed of simple sugars and

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 process meat efficiently 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

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 more challenging 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 the 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, fire control allowed hominids to sleep on the ground and in caves instead of trees and led to more time spent on the ground. This may have contributed to the evolution of bipedalism, as such an ability became increasingly necessary for human activity.^[62]

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 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.^[46] 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]

• Hunting hypothesis
• Savannah hypothesis
• Theft of fire