Neanderthals harnessed fire 350,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Recent evidence uncovered in a field in Suffolk England indicates that ancient humans intentionally harnessed fire more than 350,000 years earlier than previously believed. A British Museum led study published in the journal Nature states that our Paleolithic Neanderthal ancestors utilized technology like hearths and campfires as much as 400,000 years ago.
“The implications are enormous,” says British Museum project curator and study coauthor Rob Davis. “The ability to create and control fire is one of the most important turning points in human history, with practical and social benefits that changed human evolution.”
Early hominins first started utilizing fire over one million years ago, but the instances were sporadic and subject to the environment around them. The team on this new study believes that local early humans worked at a campfire or hearth on multiple occasions to manufacture their flint axes.
Further evidence comes from the iron pyrite uncovered at the site. The naturally occurring mineral creates sparks when struck against flint to make tinder. However, iron pyrite is not common to southern England.
Researchers believe that the residents were probably early Neanderthals based on similarly aged fossil morphology taken from Swanscombe in Kent and at the Atapuerca site in northern Spain.
“It’s incredible that some of the oldest groups of Neanderthals had the knowledge of the properties of flint, pyrite, and tinder at such an early date,” says British Museum paleolithic collections curator and study coauthor Nick Ashton. “This is the most remarkable discovery of my career, and I’m very proud of the teamwork that it has taken to reach this groundbreaking conclusion.”
The evolution of intentional fire use is complex and often ambiguous, typically consisting of associations between heated materials and stone tools. Nevertheless, understanding when and where this transition first occurred around the world is vital to seeing the bigger picture of human evolution.
Producing fire at will would have necessitated social coordination and more complex divisions of labor within hominin communities. Sustained warmth would have improved survival rates, while also providing a way to craft stronger, more resilient tools. Meanwhile, cooked food was easier to digest and more nutritious, freeing crucial calories from the gut to fuel brain power.
In 2018, paleoanthropologists presented the first evidence of intentional firemaking by Neanderthals around 40,000 years ago uncovered in sites in northern France.
After decades of intermittent excavation work at the Barnham site in southern England, British Museum researchers believe they have found that the timeline can be pushed back much, much further.
To understand the potential uses of iron pyrite, the researchers used geochemical analysis to confirm that the site’s heated clay remnants weren’t the results of wildfires. Instead, the artifacts were created after exposure to temperatures over 1,292 degrees Fahrenheit through repeated fire use at the same location.
Iron pyrite was likely a tool that early humans sourced from elsewhere to aid in manufacturing flint axes.
The study’s findings have far-reaching implications for our understanding of Neanderthal history and their place in human evolution.
- Advancements in fire use suggest that Neanderthals were a sophisticated species
- The ability to create controlled fires indicates social coordination and complex labor
- Early humans relied on natural resources and used various tools for survival
This significant discovery highlights the crucial role that early humans played in shaping the course of human history.
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