Sheryl wrote:

>Re the fire thing... I read that on the Web.  I looked through my bookmarks
>and I can't find the references--perhaps I didn't bookmark them.  I did a
>quick search on google.com on "first use of fire" and the very first
>reference came up with this quote: "The first use of fire is generally
>associated with Homo erectus, who are thought to have begun using fires
>approximately 1,5 million years ago."  If you search on this phrase (use
>quotes), you'll find the same thing I did.  That's not the site where I
>originally read it through.  Please do a little research on your own.  You
>will surely find it.

 From the Encyclopedia Britannica:

For some years Peking man, about 500,000 BC, was believed to be the
earliest unquestionable user of fire; evidence uncovered in Kenya in 1981
and in South Africa in 1988, however, suggests that the earliest controlled
use of fire by hominids dates from about 1,420,000 years ago. Not until
about 7000 BC did Neolithic man acquire reliable fire-making techniques, in
the form either of drills, saws, and other friction-producing implements or
of flint struck against pyrites. Even then it was more convenient to keep a
fire alive permanently than to reignite it.

Craig Smith