This research is enlightened.
Scientists have found charred animal remains in South Africa that are up to 1.8 million years old, potentially pushing back the timeline of human fire use by hundreds of thousands of years, according to a hot new study in the journal PLOS One.
The researchers made the discovery during an investigation of South Africa’s Wonderwerk Cave, a treasure trove of ancient artifacts from stone tools to rock art.
While examining the cave’s oldest layer, Stratum 11, scientists found charred mammal bones dating from 1.07 and 1.79 million years ago.
This probably represents the oldest evidence of human pyrotechnical use, surpassing the previous record set by a 1-million-year-old bone and heat-modified tools and sediment, also found at Wonderwerk.
Learning to use fire represented a turning point in human evolution as it caused “a major change in the relationship between hominins and their natural and cultural environment,” according to the study.
By suppressing fire, people could keep warm, extend daylight hours, deter predators and scavengers, and eat a wider variety of meat and plant foods through cooking.
The development also coincided with the expansion of the brain and was said to promote the development of human societies.
The team confirmed that the bones were burned by a method called bone luminescence, where they shone a high-intensity blue light on the remains while under a microscope, causing the cooked remains to turn red when viewed through a specific filter.
The team also noted that burning remains were found 100 meters from the entrance of the cave, ruling out the possibility that the animals were victims of wildfire.
To date those eruptions, scientists date the cave’s soil with magnetostratigraphy – using the magnetic properties of the rock to identify its age – and the collection of cosmogenic burials, which determine how long the rock or sediment has been protected from cosmic rays.
By using these methods to examine flames, the scientists were able to extend “the chronology of some of the earliest paleo-fire records,” the study’s authors note in their paper.
However, they noted that the burnt bones only indicate the repeated use of fire in the cave rather than traditional cooking or pyrotechnic achievements.
Ultimately, the findings provide “the potential to improve our understanding of the evolution of hominin pyrotechnology, its behavioral significance, and its ecological support during the early Acheulean (the period from 1.76 million years ago (mya) to about 130,000 years ago),” the researchers concluded.
