When Did We First Start Controlling Fire?

Researchers exploit with artefact uncovered from a cave in Israel reveal that man only start out using fire habitually 350,000 age ago in the Middle Pleistocene . Thefindings , published in theJournal of Human Evolutionthis month , could also help excuse certain aspects of our anatomical development over the last few million years .

The earliest evidence of fire use in our lineage escort back to more than a million age ago , but it was n’t much adept for selection , cooking , or even fervor - side storey tattle until we made a habit of it . So when did periodic fire consumption variety into something unremarkable and planned ?

To find a time frame for this “ technological mutation , ” an international team lead byRon Shimelmitz from the University of Haifaexamined previously excavated flints ( stone tools for cut off and scrapping ) and flint detritus from a 16 - measure deep sequence of deposits at Tabun Cave in the limestone cliffs of Mount Carmel in northern Israel . “ Tabun Cave is unique in that it ’s a site with a very long sequence,”Shimelmitz tells Science . “ We could canvas step by step how the habit of fire alter in the cave . ” The cave was live for at least half a million years , and in some layers , the Flint showed open signs   of fire exposure : They were sear or scarlet in color , crack , and had little rotund inclination where fragments peel off off in a characteristic way . The flints from layers old than 350,000 year did n’t come along burned .

Based on the increase in the absolute frequency of burnt Flint — together with previous archeological information from this area , such as   burned flints , bones , and ash in the Qesem Cave in Tel Aviv — the squad witness that regular fire use developed between 350,000 and 320,000 years ago in the eastern Mediterranean . That ’s far enough back to have shaped our acculturation , Science report , but too recent to excuse our big brains or our expanding upon into regions with dusty climate .

“ Regular use of fire transfer hominin macrocosm and influenced the direction of evolution in our lineage in a diversity of ways,”Shimelmitz tells the Daily Mail . " The welfare of fire for processing food , neuter raw materials or heighten societal interactions would be amply take in only when function of fire shift from opportunistic and episodic to habitual and veritable . ”