Posted on 06/06/2016 1:47:13 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Prehumans living around 800,000 years ago in what's now southeastern Spain were, literally, trailblazers. They lit small, controlled blazes in a cave, a new study finds.
Discoveries in the cave provide the oldest evidence of fire making in Europe and support proposals that members of the human genus, Homo, regularly ignited fires starting at least 1 million years ago, say paleontologist Michael Walker of the University of Murcia in Spain and his colleagues...
If the age estimate for the Spain find holds up, the new report adds to a "surprising number" of sites from deep in the Stone Age that retain evidence of small, intentionally lit fires, says archaeologist John Gowlett of the University of Liverpool in England.
Excavations conducted since 2011 at the Spanish cave, Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar, have uncovered more than 165 stones and stone artifacts that had been heated, as well as about 2,300 animal-bone fragments displaying signs of heating and charring. Microscopic and chemical analyses indicate that these finds had been heated to between 400° and 600° Celsius, consistent with having been burned in a fire.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
Good question, and it’s difficult to imagine any evidence that could possibly answer that conclusively. As soon as fire was found to be useful, it probably happened. The alternative appears to be, that for 100s of 1000s of years, the earlier hominim types were carrying it from a natural source, and/or keeping it stoked once it was in the desired place.
I saw a Doors tribute band a few years back — there was a ringer for Jim doing the singing (excellent, I might add), and a drummer, and Robby Kreiger and Ray Manzarek, hence, half the original doors, touring as a Doors cover band. They cooked.
Ok so I actually found the song I was thinking of.
“FIRE” by Arthur Brown (1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdLSfXnxahs
I go way back with Rock bands.. From Led Zeppelin to Frank Zappa.. Moody Blues to ELO,, SuperTramp to Devo.. :-o
I rest my case.
I never saw many big name groups. Live anyway.. being a farmboy and all.-}
Hard to get a herd thru Security..)
Can’t imagine what the true rock people listened to back then..much less ‘cooked’.. We’ve come a long way.. I think.. Unless this is all a simulation. :-}
All of this is seriously messed up.
All of our current social and political structure is seriously messed up.
There have been a handful of Songwriters and Musicians from the 1960’s and 70’s that expressed this change to no avail.
We just kept going.
Pushing and pushing every conceivable boundary because we/they could.
And a thousand years from now a handful of Scholars will craft the stories.
The refined Social evolution and religious motivations for the destruction of what was once, Life.
Super Tramp was really good.
I’m going to listen now.
That movie is ludicrously inaccurate. Brontosauri were not carnivorous!
If you find several, small fire locations repeatedly used, I’d say you have evidence of fire making rather than taking advantage of chance wild fires. Of course, the discovery of such requires good forensic archaeology.
TO #27. Now that is a “WOMAN”. And with a spear, that is a “Super Woman”. She can bring me home a dino steak anytime and I’ll do the cooking.
Oh wait, she’s so hot that the steak would be done before she entered my man-cave. Great. I’ll cook the potatoes.
I am not as certain as you (and the authors / scientists in this article) apparently are. First, natural fires from lightning are not that uncommon in the primeval forrest. Even in wet forrest conditions, smoldering coals would be easy to find by smell alone. Learning to find, feed and preserve live coals would be an optimal survival characteristic easily in the capacity of H. antecessor.
Making fire, on the other hand is a rather complex task that I failed at many times as a Boy Scout. The most likely method available at the time would be the hand drill method, using a somewhat thin, flattened wood platform with a formed pock to hold and steady the drill. Underneath the wood platform you gather easily ignited tinder to catch fire. You take and spin the drill between your palms (it quickly hurts) in hopes that the wood of the platform (choose carefully) is dry enough and softer than the drill wood so that as you spin the drill, friction causes the bottom of the hole to reach the smoke point before you penetrate the bottom. The idea is that when you do penetrate, the semi-ignited coal at the breakthrough point will fall into the tinder to ignite it for a flame and fire.
A better method is the bow drill but I think that unlikely at this point of tool-making. It appears the H. antecessor had minimal tool making and if they had a bow, where were the arrows (joke!) I give enormous credit to our Neolithic and pre-Neolithic ancestors. They survived the natural world (red of claw and fang) as well as the Ice Ages. I just look at the circumstances and believe that retaining a live coal from a prior fire was a major survival trick for GENERATIONS. That bright boy who found out to drill for fire probably took a long time before he came along!
Teleology.
Rated R because Tommy Chong's daughter, Rae Dawn, was starkesss nekid through the whole thing.
I would go for fire and tools preceding physiological changes as these would lead to an adaptation to the lesser stresses rather than those associated with tearing raw meat off a carcass, chewing tough uncooked food, the grinding wear of working leather by the mouth.
With fire and tools, the smaller jawed individuals could survive along with the stronger jawed individuals. The stronger jawed individuals may have lived shorter lives showing off their strength by wearing their teeth out sooner thereby leaving the gene pool.
I think QUEST FOR FIRE did it better.
I’m reading a book ON THE BORDER WITH CROOK about Arizona in the 1880s. One Apache was constantly begging matches from the troops, then they found he could make fire almost as fast without a match. So they quit giving them to him.
Meanwhile, If I can get wood to just smoke I’ve almost succeeded without a match. Now I use a propane lighter.
Ah yes. Those great Ray Harryhausen special effects. I do watch that movie for them over and over again..Snort!
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