When We Tamed Fire
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Published 2019-04-09
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The ability to make and use fire has fundamentally changed the arc of our evolution. The bodies we have today were, in many ways, shaped by that time when we first tamed fire.
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References:
humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species…
humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species…
Alperson-Afil, N. (2008). Continual fire-making by hominins at Gesher Benot Ya ‘aqov, Israel. Quaternary Science Reviews, 27(17-18), 1733-1739.
Barkai, R., Rosell, J., Blasco, R., & Gopher, A. (2017). Fire for a reason: Barbecue at middle Pleistocene Qesem cave, Israel. Current Anthropology, 58(S16), S314-S328.
Berna, F., Goldberg, P., Horwitz, L. K., Brink, J., Holt, S., Bamford, M., & Chazan, M. (2012). Microstratigraphic evidence of in situ fire in the Acheulean strata of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(20), E1215-E1220.
Blain, H. A., Agustí, J., Lordkipanidze, D., Rook, L., & Delfino, M. (2014). Paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental context of the Early Pleistocene hominins from Dmanisi (Georgia, Lesser Caucasus) inferred from the herpetofaunal assemblage. Quaternary science reviews, 105, 136-150.
Carmody, R. N., & Wrangham, R. W. (2009). The energetic significance of cooking. Journal of Human Evolution, 57(4), 379-391.
Clark, J. D., & Harris, J. W. (1985). Fire and its roles in early hominid lifeways. African Archaeological Review, 3(1), 3-27.
Gowlett, J. A. (2016). The discovery of fire by humans: a long and convoluted process. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 371(1696), 20150164.
Gowlett, J. A., & Wrangham, R. W. (2013). Earliest fire in Africa: towards the convergence of archaeological evidence and the cooking hypothesis. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, 48(1), 5-30.
Hlubik, S., Berna, F., Feibel, C., Braun, D., & Harris, J. W. (2017). Researching the nature of fire at 1.5 Mya on the site of FxJj20 AB, Koobi Fora, Kenya, using high-resolution spatial analysis and FTIR spectrometry. Current Anthropology, 58(S16), S243-S257.
MacDonald, K. (2017). The use of fire and human distribution. Temperature, 4(2), 153-165.
Pruetz, J. D., & LaDuke, T. C. (2010). Brief communication: Reaction to fire by savanna chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) at Fongoli, Senegal: Conceptualization of “fire behavior” and the case for a chimpanzee model. American Journal of Physical Anthropology: The Official Publication of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, 141(4), 646-650.
Roebroeks, W., & Villa, P. (2011). On the earliest evidence for habitual use of fire in Europe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(13), 5209-5214.
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All Comments (21)
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Imagine the courage of that first genius who, instead of running away from lightning and fire, ran toward it.
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Welcome to another episode of "When I got struck in a PBS rabbithole"
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Fire gets started: Molecules: I’m sorry were breaking up
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Utilizing fire that was started by nature is one thing. But figuring out how to make a fire is a huge leap. Most of us would be challenged to make a fire without matches or lighter
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Imagine being able to observe that very moment the first hominin created fire on its own. The most pivotal moment in hominin history. Awe-inspiring!
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"Damn it Ugor, you burned the meat again, now we have to hunt again tomorow." 2 Million jears later: "Look Billy, this burned bones are the only evidence that humans lived here long ago."
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No wonder campfires smell so nice to us. We've been making them since before we were humans. Edit 12/19/20: Guys, no. I'm not talking about standing in the smoke or shoving your face in the embers. I'm talking about being out walking on a cold night and smelling someone's wood-burning fireplace off in the distance. It just makes me feel comforted.
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"But of course the other advantage of fire is that it keeps you warm" And provides light in the darkness, which frightens away nocturnal predators. It also fires clay pots, hardens wooden spear points, clears land, smelts metals, and so on, and so on.
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There is a lot more uncertainty around this topic than I realized.
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This video made me nostalgic for some reason for my human ancestors.
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There's a book entitled "Catching Fire, How Cooking Made us Human" by Richard Wrangham. It expands on this video by describing how our bodies changed as our diets changed through the use of fire, and how the changes that preparing food with fire changed our interpersonal and societal relationships.
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I've accidentally caught my mat on fire while flint napping. Can't help but to think that's how it all started. With making fire. It's one of those answers that will be forever lost in time.
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Hank I swear I’m not stalking you but somehow you host everything I want to watch on the internet
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It's sort of amazing that one of the most important innovations in our development as a species is something that I'm sure 99.9 percent of us couldn't achieve today without modern tools.
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I love that they said, "maybe", instead of making "this is the truth" statements like so many other documentaries.
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Me, a Boy Scout, mastered fire about 1.5 decades ago in the middleschoolerian period.
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My only skepticism is that the ‘harnessing of fire’ is not the same as ‘starting fire’. As is the case with many modern nomadic tribes, they generally don’t favor starting a fire every time they move, they keep smoldering embers that travel with them. It seems much more likely that fire-wielding hominids were keeping fires going for millennia before they were actually creating fire. The process of fire creation is quite involved. Keeping smoldering embers hot for a day and then stoking a fire every night is a far more passive action than spending 30+ minutes starting a fire from scratch. Another thing fire brought that I don’t if I missed in the video or not was the safety fire brought. Most predators will steer clear of fire, meaning fire-wielding hominids could focus more on sleeping well and less on being alert at night. Allowing for greater brain development in that sense too.
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Could you do a video on when human beings first arrived in Australia and the species they encountered/affected, We had some amazing wildlife here people just don’t know about! Edit: Thanks everyone who's hopped over to have a look at some of the animals in our videos!
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ive honestly learnt more from this channel than 16 years in school
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Man stuff like this makes me wish I were omnipotent so I could travel back in time, make myself invisible and just fly around observing early humans. It'd be the ultimate people watching, and it'd be so amazing to see them with the knowledge of what's to come. I could find the very first person to learn how to create fire, it'd be like visiting a great (times however many) grandparent or something. Like "wow so it was you huh? you got things going for us without even the slightest clue of what this moment will lead to" it'd be incredible.
