Earliest Known Fire - 350,000 Years Earlier Than Thought

[quintessentone]

I don't find it that hard to believe.

Humans have used chert/flint for 3 million years, sometime between now and then they'll have figured out the best places to source the stuff which means they'll have come across other minerals such as pyrite which is often found in sedimentary layers such as chalk or limestone, the same place they'd find their chert.

There's evidence of glue making going back 200,000 years, it would be ignorant on our part to assume all our ancestors were really doing is bashing rocks together and hoping for the best.

Our ancestors' opposable thumbs and tool making abilities (1.7 to 2 million years ago) may have been the key...

"The process of making and using increasingly complex tools requires more than dexterous thumbs and hand and eye coordination. Prehistoric toolmakers also must have displayed some levels of forethought, planning and learning along the way. That required better brains, which might have been fed by a meaty diet made possible by better tools, which were crafted by increasingly more capable brains."

How Dexterous Thumbs May Have Helped Shape Evolution Two Million Years Ago

So now 350,000 years ago to figure out how to harness and use fire sounds too early.

[Ray1990]

Our ancestors' opposable thumbs and tool making abilities (1.7 to 2 million years ago) may have been the key...

"The process of making and using increasingly complex tools requires more than dexterous thumbs and hand and eye coordination. Prehistoric toolmakers also must have displayed some levels of forethought, planning and learning along the way. That required better brains, which might have been fed by a meaty diet made possible by better tools, which were crafted by increasingly more capable brains."

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-n...d-shape-ev

So now 350,000 years ago to figure out how to harness and use fire sounds too early.

The Lomekwi tools found in Kenya date back 3.3 million years.  Your link isn't working btw. As I mentioned earlier glue making goes back 200,000 years and I'd imagine people weren't waiting around a lifetime or two just to find a fire to process some glue.

It's also very possible the production of fire was discovered multiple times and wasn't passed on in such a widespread way as other toolmaking. Generally though I'd say tool making equals forethought as you're not exactly going to have much success butchering an animal with any old rock.

This finding is multiple fires in one location over time. It strongly indicates they were making the stuff. Advanced tools do only go back 50,000 - 70,000 years though although arguably using glue 200,000 years ago could be seen as advanced. Definitely worth remembering that archaeology is looking at a fragment chipped off a sliver... We're not exactly inundated with finds.

Generally the consensus is we had an intensification of invention around 50,000 years ago that coincided with cultural and technological diversification. A coalescence of sorts. All the elements to make breakthroughs seem to go back way further though and I would honestly say it's ignorance on our part to say "sure, they made primitive tools, even used fire. But they were too thick to put it all together and be anywhere near as smart as us".

[quintessentone]

The Lomekwi tools found in Kenya date back 3.3 million years.  Your link isn't working btw. As I mentioned earlier glue making goes back 200,000 years and I'd imagine people weren't waiting around a lifetime or two just to find a fire to process some glue.

It's also very possible the production of fire was discovered multiple times and wasn't passed on in such a widespread way as other toolmaking. Generally though I'd say tool making equals forethought as you're not exactly going to have much success butchering an animal with any old rock.

This finding is multiple fires in one location over time. It strongly indicates they were making the stuff. Advanced tools do only go back 50,000 - 70,000 years though although arguably using glue 200,000 years ago could be seen as advanced. Definitely worth remembering that archaeology is looking at a fragment chipped off a sliver... We're not exactly inundated with finds.

Generally the consensus is we had an intensification of invention around 50,000 years ago that coincided with cultural and technological diversification. A coalescence of sorts. All the elements to make breakthroughs seem to go back way further though and I would honestly say it's ignorance on our part to say "sure, they made primitive tools, even used fire. But they were too thick to put it all together and be anywhere near as smart as us".

Fixed the link.

Could it be theorized that after a lightning strike in dense brush or a forest if they were collecting burning embers to keep fires going that they could have also found smoked or cooked animals and learned that the meat lasted longer for storage which may have started them smoking or cooking raw meat as well?

It seems they are sure that ancient man deliberately made fire 400,000 years ago.

"A new analysis of those remnants — including fire-striking tools and geochemical traces of the burns — reveals the oldest clear evidence of archaic humans intentionally making fire.“You get a tingle down your spine,” says archaeologist Nick Ashton of the British Museum in London. “This is a major change in how human societies begin to operate.”"

"Humans and their relatives have used fire for probably more than a million years. Sites in Kenya and South Africa show signs of fire use by Homo erectus. A site in northern Israel preserves remnants of hearths from about 780,000 years ago, but no fire-striking tools have been found, leaving open whether those fires were gathered or made."

Neandertals mastered fire-making tools 400,000 years ago

[Nerb]

I wonder if the learning that fire can make raw meat or other foods taste better or last longer was learned by a fortunate accident by ancient man in warmer climates or they used innovative thinking.

I think that maybe Man discovered Barbecue before he coud make fire.

Lightening strikes a tree, Man is in awe and throws a sacrafice into it from their hunt.

Yummy smells drive the senses wild and the sacrafice brings it's reward.

Still can't make fire though, but imagine the excitement whenever a storm was brewing?

[quintessentone]

I think that maybe Man discovered Barbecue before he coud make fire.

Lightening strikes a tree, Man is in awe and throws a sacrafice into it from their hunt.

Yummy smells drive the senses wild and the sacrafice brings it's reward.

Still can't make fire though, but imagine the excitement whenever a storm was brewing?

Yes, that's the line of thinking I'm on right now. Nature provides (?)

The same may be said of them discovering glue...perhaps sticky tree sap oozed out and discovery was had by one of the smarter humans by simply touching it and having a lightbulb moment.

[Ray1990]

Yes, that's the line of thinking I'm on right now. Nature provides (?)

The same may be said of them discovering glue...perhaps sticky tree sap oozed out and discovery was had by one of the smarter humans by simply touching it and having a lightbulb moment.

Nature provides but it takes a mind to take something and envisage what it could be.

Synthetic glue link

Give it a read if you get the opportunity, chances are they buried birch and then heated it which is a little more complex than simply getting sap and burning it into a tar. I'm a fan of Ray Mears, I've seen him make arrow heads with a bit sap and charcoal, that alone would show intelligence and understanding. This isn't exactly that though.

[Maxmars]

Perhaps the alarming extension of "humans 'using' fire as a tool" might be accounted for (at least in part)
with cataclysmic "resets" in the populations, and or lack of consistent language use.... 

Being clever enough to deduce, infer, replicate and repeat 'ideas' doesn't really have significance if it is not shared, or translated from one individual to another, or others.

I  think 'writing' - expressing language permanently - was a BIG deal.