Fire provided a source of warmth and lighting, protection from predators (especially at night), a way to create more advanced hunting tools, and a method for cooking food. These cultural advances allowed human geographic dispersal, cultural innovations, and …

Jun 1, 2018 · Our evidence of fire in the fossil record (in deep time, as we often refer to the long geological stretch of time before humans) is based mainly on the occurrence of charcoal. This …

Sep 21, 2023 · The Dawn of Fire: When Did Early Humans First Discover Fire? Long before the first campfire was lit, early humans may have started as fire foragers, observing naturally occurring blazes and harnessing them for their own needs.

May 3, 2019 · The earliest evidence of fire associated with humans comes from Oldowan hominid sites in the Lake Turkana region of Kenya. The site of Koobi Fora contained oxidized patches …

Nov 22, 2023 · When prehistoric humans built a fire on a cold night, they gathered around it to share its warmth and protection. Experts suggest that this habit helped humans become the social beings we are...

Jun 5, 2016 · Rather than as an event, the discovery of fire use may be seen as a set of processes happening over the long term. Eventually, fire became embedded in human behaviour, so that it is involved in almost all advanced technologies.

Jul 23, 2016 · It is worth noting that fire was not discovered once; instead, it was discovered multiple times by early humans in various locations all over the world. The author speculates that this would have led to revolutionary changes in early human culture.

May 5, 2021 · Fire was used to harden the wood and make the weapon stronger. Scientists believe that it was made by an extinct Homo species that was an ancestor to modern humans.

May 29, 2024 · Before 1 million years ago, sparse evidence from some African sites could suggest that hominins were opportunistically harvesting fire from naturally kindled blazes; rather than practicing truly operative fire making.

Mar 2, 2025 · By the nineteenth century, scientists viewed fire as a result of deeper forces of chemistry and physics rather than a foundational aspect of the universe. On a more mundane level, people in many places were hiding fire away in closed stoves, steam engines, and furnaces. And uncontrolled fire became a problem to solve.