Ancient Human Ancestors May Have First Used Fire 1.79 Million Years Ago

Fire was foundational to quality evolution—cooking nutrient complete a occurrence eased digestion successful early humans and made much power disposable for nan improvement of their brains; it besides provided warmth and kept predators astatine bay. But precisely erstwhile and really ancient humans started utilizing occurrence has agelong been a mystery. Now a new study successful PLOS One finds grounds that an early hominin species, Homo erectus, apt utilized occurrence wrong caves arsenic early arsenic 1.79 cardinal years ago.

The oldest grounds of ancient hominins actually making a fire came from a 400,000-year-old Neanderthal tract successful England. Earlier quality ancestors specified arsenic H. erectus, however,likely couldn’t create occurrence from scratch and alternatively captured it from slow-burning bunches of grass, says anthropologist and study co-author Michael Chazan of nan University of Toronto.

The study provides beardown grounds for nan earliest known fires, says Nick Ashton, an archaeologist astatine nan British Museum, who was elder writer of nan Neanderthal investigation but was not progressive successful nan caller study. He notes, however, that nan second paper’s authors stay uncertain arsenic to erstwhile nan burning occurred, pinch nan study giving a wide clip scope of betwixt 1.79 cardinal and 1.07 cardinal years ago.

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Chazan and his colleagues person been studying nan site—the Wonderwerk Cave successful South Africa—for astir 2 decades. In 2012 they recovered signs of occurrence use, including burned bones, ash and sediment, successful nan million-year-old Stratum 10 archaeological layer astatine nan tract wherever nan cave is located. The squad past turned its attraction to uncovering grounds of burning successful nan furniture below, Stratum 11, which is up to 1.79 cardinal years old.

The squad analyzed fossilized barn owl pellets and recovered changes successful their texture and colour that are associated pinch burning. And because nan pellets were immoderate 30 meters distant from nan cave’s entrance, nan squad could norm retired their incineration by a earthy wildfire. Rudimentary chromatic manus axes were besides recovered successful nan Stratum 11 layer, and nan researchers propose that members of H. erectus who lived successful nan cave whitethorn person burned these pellets to make nan occurrence past longer wrong it.

Bones recovered astatine nan cave—the bony connected nan acold correct is nan astir burnt, while nan bony connected nan acold near is unburnt.

Wonderwerk Cave Project

Chazan and his squad besides recovered ashy achromatic bones that appeared to person been exposed to precocious heat, arsenic good arsenic what looked for illustration charred achromatic and brownish bones. Because definite earthy and chemic processes specified arsenic manganese staining aliases fluoridation tin make fossilized bones look burned, nan researchers utilized a method called Fourier toggle shape infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to place nan integrated and inorganic substances that were coming successful nan dark-colored bones from Stratum 11 and recovered that 4 of them were burned.

The squad besides analyzed nan gray-white bones utilizing a luminescence method that tin uncover whether a bony has been burned aliases not—burned bones acquisition chemic changes that alteration them to sorb ray of short wavelengths, specified arsenic bluish light, and to emit ray of a longer wavelength, specified arsenic reddish light. After exposing nan bones to a high-energy bluish light, nan squad utilized an optical select to spot which of them glowed red. That revealed that immoderate 21 of nan 39 white-grayish bones successful Stratum 10 and each 32 from nan furniture beneath had been burned.

It’s intolerable to cognize why these early quality ancestors maintained a occurrence successful nan cave, Chazan says. Study co-author and geologist Yolanda Fernández-Jalvo of nan National Museum of Natural Sciences successful Spain rules retired cooking wrong Wonderwerk because occurrence was only opportunistically brought there—it was not domesticated yet. But this summer, nan researchers will look for further clues and effort to activity retired really H. erectus sewage nan occurrence into nan cave successful nan first place.