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Earliest evidence of fire making in Europe found
Science News ^ | June 2, 2016 | Bruce Bower

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 ...


TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: godsgravesglyphs
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subtitle, "Charred bone, heat-rippled stone in Spanish cave date back 800,000 years".
Shallow ripples caused by heating run across a piece of rock excavated in a Spanish cave. This and other finds indicate that an undetermined Homo species lit small fires in the cave around 800,000 years ago, researchers say. Each square on the measuring stick covers 1 centimeter.

Shallow ripples caused by heating run across a piece of rock excavated in a Spanish cave. This and other finds indicate that an undetermined Homo species lit small fires in the cave around 800,000 years ago, researchers say. Each square on the measuring stick covers 1 centimeter.

1 posted on 06/06/2016 1:47:13 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
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To: StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; decimon; 1010RD; 21twelve; 24Karet; 2ndDivisionVet; ...

2 posted on 06/06/2016 1:47:40 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (I'll tell you what's wrong with society -- no one drinks from the skulls of their enemies anymore.)
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To: SunkenCiv

The human skull and jaw began to shrink starting a million years ago. The most likely explanation was that after the discovery of fire, they didn’t need the jaw strength that they previously did. I think that an argument could also be made that, with the invention of tools to scrape meat off the bone, there was also less jaw force required.

Which do you this it is, or is it both?


3 posted on 06/06/2016 1:52:24 PM PDT by Fractal Trader
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To: Fractal Trader

The physiological changes led the way — and we adapted our methods and tools to match. To suggest the reverse is just semantically adjusted Lamarckism.


4 posted on 06/06/2016 1:53:48 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (I'll tell you what's wrong with society -- no one drinks from the skulls of their enemies anymore.)
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To: SunkenCiv
Well, we know what that leads to:


5 posted on 06/06/2016 1:55:16 PM PDT by PLMerite (Compromise is Surrender: The Revolution...will not be kind.)
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To: PLMerite

Bet it was soccer hooligans.


6 posted on 06/06/2016 1:57:43 PM PDT by dfwgator
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To: PLMerite
"A Riot is unt ugly ting!"

And I tink its just about time ve had one!


7 posted on 06/06/2016 2:00:22 PM PDT by Mat_Helm
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To: dfwgator

“Bet it was soccer hooligans.”

Soccer hooligans wearing brown shirts...


8 posted on 06/06/2016 2:01:33 PM PDT by PLMerite (Compromise is Surrender: The Revolution...will not be kind.)
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To: Fractal Trader

>> The most likely explanation was that after the discovery of fire, they didn’t need the jaw strength that they previously did. I think that an argument could also be made that, with the invention of tools to scrape meat off the bone, there was also less jaw force required.<<

The most likely explanation is that the jaw needed to be realigned to form the words “carbon credits” — thus evolved liberals.


9 posted on 06/06/2016 2:04:36 PM PDT by freedumb2003 (Don't mistake my silence for ignorance, my calmness for acceptance, or my kindness for weakness)
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To: dfwgator
 photo Harold-Kumar-Go-to-White-Castle-harold-and-kumar-14675246-853-480_zpszaywluah.jpg
10 posted on 06/06/2016 2:04:56 PM PDT by Zeneta
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To: SunkenCiv

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deB_u-to-IE

Light My Fire, The Doors , YouTube


11 posted on 06/06/2016 2:05:13 PM PDT by NormsRevenge (SEMPER FI!! - Monthly Donors Rock!!)
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To: SunkenCiv

Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar translates as
“The Cave as Black as Michelle’s Stretch Marks,”
and the discoveries therein should cause us to re-evaluate
naming an era “Stone Age.”

It is racist and approprationalist to identify a people
by their lack of martial sophistication
and their use of anything they couldn’t actually eat.
Going forward, this era will be known as Gun-Free Utopia.


12 posted on 06/06/2016 2:05:13 PM PDT by sparklite2 ( "The white man is the Jew of Liberal Fascism." -Jonah Goldberg)
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To: SunkenCiv

Without fire and tools, those with weaker jaws could not survive. Fire and tools allowed more to survive, and strong jaws no longer needed to be selected for.


13 posted on 06/06/2016 2:06:14 PM PDT by SauronOfMordor (Socialists want YOUR wealth redistributed, never THEIRS!)
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To: SunkenCiv

I thought the moslems taught the Europeans how to make fire.


14 posted on 06/06/2016 2:07:50 PM PDT by Jeff Chandler (Everywhere is freaks and hairies Dykes and fairies, tell me where is sanity?)
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To: Jeff Chandler; tx_eggman
I thought the moslems taught the Europeans how to make fire.

No. They did not invent fire.

But they sure have been taking a lot of samples for that human jaw study.
15 posted on 06/06/2016 2:14:02 PM PDT by SpinnerWebb (Winter is coming)
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To: SunkenCiv
The skeptic in me wants to ask, how do you, at this very far remove, differentiate between keeping a fire going and the act of actually generating a fire from raw materials.

This evidence is of a fire being present in a photo-Human dwelling place does not answer that question. The European area that is now Spain is believed to have populations of H. antecessor in that time frame which is currently thought to have evolved into H. heidelbergensis which was the likely ancestor to both H. neanderthalensis and later H. sapiens.

The question to me is when and how do anthropologists and paleontologists decide that these predecessors went from obtaining and preserving natural live coals to the ART of creating fire at will as is described in this article. While both acts require mental ability that is beyond that of any other animal now known, the latter is a definite aspect of tool making!

16 posted on 06/06/2016 2:15:00 PM PDT by SES1066 (Quality, Speed or Economical - Any 2 of 3 except in government - 1 at best but never #3!)
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To: SauronOfMordor

Nope, there’s “selection pressure”, it’s right in the Darwinian literature as if nothing is wrong, and it is Lamarckism.


17 posted on 06/06/2016 2:17:41 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (I'll tell you what's wrong with society -- no one drinks from the skulls of their enemies anymore.)
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To: SauronOfMordor

Without fire and tools, those with weaker jaws could not survive. Fire and tools allowed more to survive, and strong jaws no longer needed to be selected for.


Selected for?

For what?

Their future survival?

All random of course.


18 posted on 06/06/2016 2:17:57 PM PDT by Zeneta
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To: NormsRevenge

I never knew you where a Doors fan?

Awesome.


19 posted on 06/06/2016 2:19:30 PM PDT by Zeneta
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To: SunkenCiv
Actually, they captured fire in one million BC, because whoever did it first got Caril Landis!


20 posted on 06/06/2016 2:21:13 PM PDT by frithguild (The warmth and goodness of Gaia is a nuclear reactor in the Earth's core that burns Thorium)
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