‘It is the most exciting discovery in my 40-year career’: Archaeologists uncover evidence that Neanderthals made fire 400,000 years ago in England
Neanderthals were the world’s first innovators in fire-fighting technology, tiny evidence from England suggests. Spots of pyrite discovered at an archaeological site more than 400,000 years old in Suffolk, eastern England, push back against archaeologists’ evidence for controlled fire-starting and suggest that key developments in the human brain began much earlier than previously thought.
“We are a species that has used fire to really shape the world around us,” study co-author Rob Davisa Paleolithic archaeologist from the British Museum, said at a press conference on Tuesday (December 9). “The ability to make fire would have been of crucial importance” human evolutionDavis said, “accelerates evolutionary trends” such as the development of larger brains, the maintenance of larger social groups and increased language skills.
Since 2013, Davis and his colleagues have been excavating an archaeological site in England called Barnhamwhich yielded stone tools, burned sediments and charcoal dating back to 400,000 years ago. In a study published Wednesday, December 10 in the journal Natureresearchers revealed that the site contained the world’s first direct evidence of fire starting – and that this fire technology was likely developed by Neanderthals.
A big turning point
Barnham was first recognized as a Paleolithic human site in the early 1900s due to the presence of stone tools. But recent excavations have uncovered evidence of ancient human groups occupying the area more than 415,000 years ago, when Barnham was just a small seasonal watering hole in a wooded depression.
In one corner of the site, archaeologists discovered a concentration of axes broken by heat as well as an area of reddened clay. Through a series of scientific analyses, researchers discovered that the reddened clay had been subjected to repeated, localized fires, suggesting it may have been an ancient hearth.
“The big turning point came with the discovery of iron pyrite”, co-author of the study Nick Ashtoncurator of the Paleolithic collections at the British Museum, said at the press conference.
Pyrite, also known as fool’s gold, is a natural mineral that can produce sparks when ignited. struck against flint. Although pyrite is found in many places around the world, it is extremely rare in the Barnham area, meaning someone specifically brought pyrite to the site, likely for the purpose of making fire, the researchers said in the study.
Human use of fire
Because of the importance of controlled shooting, paleoanthropologists have long debated the timing of this invention.
“Fire has many obvious benefits, from cooking and protection from predators to its technological use to create new types of objects and its ability to bring people together,” April Nowella Paleolithic archaeologist from the University of Victoria in Canada who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email. “We only need to think of our own childhood gathered around a campfire to understand its emotional resonance.”
Researchers believe that early humans used wildfires for cooking. This was a crucial step in human evolution, as cooking expanded the range of foods available and made them more digestible, which in turn provided more nutrients. needed to develop a larger brainDavis said.
But there is little evidence of deliberate early-firing technology, and that evidence is often ambiguous, the researchers noted in the study.
For example, scientists have uncovered reddened sediments at Koobi Forums in Kenya which dated to around 1.5 million years ago. Researchers have suggested that this may hint at an early use of fire, as the site’s key hominin… Homo erectus – had a pretty big brain. And to two Sites in Israel, dated to around 800,000 years ago, burned animal bones and stone tools suggest possible control of fire by the human ancestors who lived there.
Fire technology then exploded about 400,000 years ago. Archaeologists have found evidence of burning in caves in France, Portugal, Spain, Ukraine and the United Kingdom, and then of more widespread use of fire in Europe, Africa and the Levant (the region around the eastern Mediterranean) by 200,000 years ago.
But those previous examples don’t show the same kind of conclusive geochemical evidence of fires as found at Barnham, Ashton argued. He called the team’s careful analysis of Barnham sediments and identification of pyrite “the most exciting discovery of my 40-year career.”
Neanderthals are “fully human”
However, all of Barnham’s bones have since disintegrated, so the “smoking gun” of butchered and burned animal bones that could prove the site was used for cooking has not been found.
This also means there are no skeletal remains of the fire producers themselves at Barnham – but study co-author Chris Stringerpaleoanthropologist at the National History Museum in London, has an idea of their identity.
“We assume the fires at Barnham were started by early Neanderthals,” Stringer said at the news conference, based on a nearby site called Swanscombewhere Neanderthal skull bones dating from the same period as Barnham were discovered.
While experts have known for about a decade that some Neanderthals could make fire, this evidence only goes back 50,000 years. Barnham’s findings push this date back 350,000 years, suggesting Neanderthals were much smarter than most people give them credit for.
Neanderthals “are fully human,” Stringer said. “They have complex behavior, they adapt to new environments and their brains are as big as ours. They are highly evolved humans.”
Nowell said the study’s findings feed into a broader debate about Neanderthal control of fire and its social and cultural use.
“There’s a lot of discussion right now about whether all Neanderthals made fire or whether only some Neanderthals made fire at certain times and in certain places,” Nowell said. The new study “is another important data point in our understanding of Neanderthal pyrotechnic abilities with all that this implies cognitively, socially and technologically.”
Who made a fire first?
If researchers are correct that Neanderthals made fire from flint and pyrite more than 400,000 years ago in England, that raises additional questions, Nowell said.
“Despite its obvious benefits, questions remain about the nature of early fire use: When did fire use become a regular part of the human behavioral repertoire? Were early humans dependent on the opportunistic use of wildfires and lightning? Was fire repeatedly rediscovered?” » said Nowell.
The ancestors of Homo sapiens were live in Africa 400,000 years ago and is unlikely to have interacted with early Neanderthals on the other side of the world.
“We don’t know if Homo sapiens at that date he had the ability to make fire,” Stringer said, because to this day there is no clear evidence of firebending before Barnham.
This means that Neanderthals may have invented ways to make and control fire somewhere in mainland Europe, which then allowed our human cousins to move further north to England, heating and lighting their way with fire.
“It is plausible that the fires became better controlled in Europe and spread to Africa,” Ashton said. “We need to keep an open mind.”
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