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+--- Thread: Research Archaeologists find oldest evidence of fire-making (/thread-19364.html)
Archaeologists find oldest evidence of fire-making - C C - Dec 11, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/science/archaeology-humans-neanderthals-fire.html?unlocked_article_code=1.708.1xBy.pDVJnzqGW0qA&smid=url-share
EXCERPTS: As important as fire has been to our species, tracing its early history has proved an immense challenge. Rain can wash away ash and charcoal, erasing the evidence of a fire. Even when scientists do uncover the rare trace of an ancient blaze, it can be hard to determine whether it was created by people or ignited by lightning.
The oldest evidence for human ancestors using fire, dating back to between 1 million and 1.5 million years ago, comes from a cave in South Africa. Human ancestors left behind tens of thousands of fragments of bones from the animals they butchered to eat. Of those fragments, 270 show signs of having been burned in a fire.
But clues like these don’t offer clear proof that those ancient people knew how to make a fire. They may have just stumbled across a wildfire from time to time, and figured out ways to take advantage of it. They might have learned to light a stick from the fire, and then carry the ember back to their cave to cook a meal.
[...] Some 400,000 years ago, in what is now eastern England, a group of Neanderthals used flint and pyrite to make fires by a watering hole — not just once, but time after time, over several generations.
That is the conclusion of a study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. Previously, the oldest known evidence of humans making fires dated back just 50,000 years. The new finding indicates that this critical step in human history occurred much earlier.
[...] For the time being, Barnham remains the only place known for any evidence of fire-making hundreds of thousands of years ago. But that isn’t proof that the practice was rare at the time, Dr. Ashton said. After all, it had taken years of field work at Barnham to uncover the telling evidence. Similar efforts could reveal other Barnhams elsewhere in the world... (MORE - missing details)