Earliest fire sheds light on hominids
            Ancient hearths unveiled as nearly 800 millennia old.
            30 April 2004
            NADJA NEUMANN


                              Fire gives warmth, cooked food and ways to
improve weapons.
                              © Photodisc



            You could travel back 790,000 years and still find someone to
light your fire: archaeologists have collected evidence that early humans
mastered fire much earlier than previously thought.

            There is already good evidence for hearths that are 250,000
years old, and it was widely believed that the first controlled handling of
fire occurred 400,000 to 500,000 years ago.

            But an analysis of burned remains carried out by Naama
Goren-Inbar of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and her team now proves
that fire was tamed at least 300,000 years earlier than that.

            The researchers have spent the past 15 years unearthing and
sorting sediments at a site called Gesher Benot Ya'aqov in Israel. The site
is of particular interest to archaeologists because it was an old crossroads
between Asia and Eurasia. It is also waterlogged, which means that any
ancient remains are extremely well conserved.

            The team sorted flint and wood from the 790,000-year-old site
into burned and unburned material. They found that burned material made up
less than 2% of the total and was concentrated at specific locations in the
site, suggesting the fires that created it were started and controlled by
early humans.

            Goren-Inbar sees the study as a breakthrough in terms of
understanding the evolution of hominids: the fact that they were using fire
so early tells scientists a great deal about their abilities and behaviour
at the time.

            Hearth desire

            As well as providing protection against wild animals, fire would
have enabled hominids to cook their food, stay warm during the winter and
possibly improve their weapons.

            Chris Stringer from the Natural History Museum in London, UK,
suggests that the use of fire would have enriched the hominids' social lives
too. People may have gathered around camp-fires, staying awake longer and
interacting more than before.

            He also points out that this first use of fire correlates with
the time that hominids are thought to have entered colder areas such as
Europe and Northern China, suggesting that fire helped hominids to explore
environments that were previously too hostile.

            Goren-Inbar's analysis suggests that, as well as using fire,
inhabitants of the site in Israel were collecting plant food, hunting and
processing meat.

            The team plans further analysis of the site's material to
determine which species of hominid was responsible for the fires. Homo
erectus, Homo ergaster and Homo sapiens were all around at the time, and all
were able to walk upright, had large brains and were already using tools
made of stone.


            © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004



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