Solid wrote:
I got a question as well..
How can a table be on fire if the fire is on the table?
The control of fire by early humans was a turning point in the technological evolution of human beings. Fire provided a source of warmth, protection from predators, a way to create more advanced hunting tools, and a method for cooking food. These cultural advances allowed human geographic dispersal, cultural innovations, and changes to diet and behavior. Additionally, creating fire allowed human activity to continue into the dark and colder hours of the evening.
Claims for the earliest definitive evidence of control of fire by a member of Homo range from 1.7 to 0.2 million years ago (Mya). Evidence for the "microscopic traces of wood ash" as controlled use of fire by Homo erectus, beginning some 1,000,000 years ago, has wide scholarly support. Flint blades burned in fires roughly 300,000 years ago were found near fossils of early but not entirely modern Homo sapiens in Morocco. Fire was used regularly and systematically by early modern humans to heat treat silcrete stone to increase its flake-ability for the purpose of toolmaking approximately 164,000 years ago at the South African site of Pinnacle Point. Evidence of widespread control of fire by anatomically modern humans dates to approximately 125,000 years ago.
Findings from the Wonderwerk Cave site, in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, provide the earliest evidence for controlled use of fire. Intact sediments were analyzed using micromorphological analysis and Fourier Transform Infrared Microspectroscopy (mFTIR) and yielded evidence, in the form of burned bones and ashed plant remains, that burning took place at the site 1.0 Mya.
East African sites, such as Chesowanja near Lake Baringo, Koobi Fora, and Olorgesailie in Kenya, show some possible evidence that fire was controlled by early humans.
In Chesowanja archaeologists found red clay clasts dated to 1.4 Mya. These clasts must have been heated to 400 °C (750 °F) to harden. However, tree stumps burned in bush fires in East Africa produce clasts which, when broken by erosion, are like those described at Chesownja. Controlled use of fire at Chesowanja is unproven.
In Koobi Fora, sites show evidence of control of fire by Homo erectus at 1.5 Mya with findings of reddened sediment that could come from heating at 200–400 °C (400–750 °F).
Evidence of possible human control of fire has been found at Swartkrans, South Africa. The evidence includes several burned bones, including ones with hominin-inflicted cut marks, along with Acheulean and bone tools. This site also shows some of the earliest evidence of carnivorous behavior in H. erectus.
A "hearth-like depression" that could have been used to burn bones was found at a site in Olorgesailie, Kenya. However, it did not contain any charcoal and no signs of fire have been observed. Some microscopic charcoal was found, but it could have resulted from a natural brush fire.
In Gadeb, Ethiopia, fragments of welded tuff that appeared to have been burned were found in Locality 8E but re-firing of the rocks might have occurred due to local volcanic activity.
In the Middle Awash River Valley, cone-shaped depressions of reddish clay were found that could have been formed by temperatures of 200 °C (400 °F). These features, thought to have been created by burning tree stumps, were hypothesized to have been produced by early hominids lighting tree stumps so they could have fire away from their habitation site. However, this view is not widely accepted. Burned stones are also found in Awash Valley, but volcanic welded tuff is also found in the area which could explain the burned stones.
Burned flints discovered near Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, dated by thermoluminescence to approximately 300,000 years old, were discovered in the same sedimentary layer as skulls of early Homo sapiens. Paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin believes the flints were used as spear tips and left in fires used by the early humans for cooking food.
Asia
In Xihoudu in Shanxi Province, China, the black, blue, and grayish-green discoloration of mammalian bones found at the site illustrates the evidence of burning by early hominids. In 1985, a parallel site in China, Yuanmou in the Yunnan Province, archaeologists found blackened mammal bones which date back to 1.7 Mya.
Middle East
it take me 1 hour to type this
if shrek cannot destroy the panzer.......use the grenade
-Napoleon Bonaparte
