Column: Our ancestors gained power with ability to harness fire

Greek mythology has Prometheus sneaking into Olympus to steal fire from the gods. Other cultures have similar myths.

If only it were so simple! A scientific look back through prehistory visualizes a gradual process of exploration that reached a point where people learned to make and control their own fires.

There is little doubt that fires started by lightning or lava flows fascinated our pre-human Hominin ancestors. Most animals are afraid of fire, including humans. It would have taken a lot of nerve to reach into a fire and pull out a flaming twig, and it takes a lot of intelligence to control it.

“Hominin” refers to any bipedal species on the human divide of the evolutionary tree since human and chimpanzee ancestors branched off from a common ancestor between 6 million and 8 million years ago.

Learning to control and create fire at will released a tremendous power for keeping warm, for growth of language and social interaction, and for cooking, which made both meat and plants more digestible and with less energy consumption.

As important as it was, fire was the second great technology, following on the heels of stone tools. The rendering of stone tools sometimes produces a spark, which might have started the first man-made fire when someone accidentally lit a tuft of wool or fur with a stray spark.

The first known stone tools date to around 2.6 million years ago. Making and using stone tools necessitated Hominin toolmakers to be more versatile in interacting with and adjusting to their surroundings.

Archaeologists keep pushing back the earliest human fires by uncovering new sites that were formerly fire pits. These deposits are too old for carbon dating, but other techniques can provide an educated guess of the time when fires heated the rocks.

We do not know when our ancestors first starting controlling fire on a regular basis. Many factors make it difficult to determine whether remains of a fire hundred of thousands of years old were natural or human-made, accidental or intentional, occasional or habitual.

Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa’s Northern Cape province contains what appear to be the remains of campfires from a million years ago, but the conclusions of the archaeological team are controversial.

At the archaeological site in Zhoukoudian, China, lies the earliest reliable evidence of cooking. Burned bones and fire-altered stones there date between 780,000 and 400,000 years ago. There is no evidence there as to how Homo erectus might have obtained fire or whether they had the ability to either create or control it.

From 300,000 to 400,000 years ago, Hominins had spread to cold latitudes without the habitual use of fire, but during this period it appears that they first began to regularly control fire for cooking meat, as a campfire and as a focal point for social gatherings and rituals.

Recently discovered evidence in Tabun Cave, Israel, agrees, as does evidence from locations in China and elsewhere.

By roughly 200,000 years ago Hominins commonly and habitually used fire wherever they were able to survive.

Is that my dinner I hear sizzling on the grill?

Richard Brill is a retired professor of science at Honolulu Community College. His column runs on the first and third Fridays of the month. Email questions and comments to brill@hawaii.edu.