One of the most important debates among anthropologists studying the progression of man since the dawn of time is when man’s predecessors managed to first control fire. The manipulation of fire was an event that altered evolution significantly and is widely considered to be the most important invention in history. By understanding when fire came about, significant clues can be obtained that relate to many other aspects of how we, as a species, developed and came to be what we are today. Now, new discoveries have been made which put a much earlier date on fire usage among our human ancestors.
This new evidence consists of ashes from campfire which were embedded in ancient sediment discovered at Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa. This site is a former habitation of Homo erectus, which are predecessors to our own species of Homo sapiens. Wonderwerk Cave is famous for being one of the oldest known sites of Homo habitation, with more than 2 millions years of artifacts and evidence to show for it.
The ashes were found to contain plant and bone matter, meaning that the fire was used actively for something, most likely cooking. Tests date the ashes at around one million years ago. This pushes back the solid evidence of fire-making in history by more than 300,000 years than what has been previously discovered.
Aside from helping to date fire through direct physical evidence, this find is important in other ways. It can be used as an example of how to locate more of these finds and perhaps pinpoint the usage of fire more accurately. This will result in a snowball of information, such as when cooking first appeared for modern man and when the resulting increase in brain size may have occurred. Also, control of fire meant mastery over the darkness that came with night, another key factor in Homo sapiens’ development.
Despite the evidence, some doubt has been raised concerning this new evidence. Most of the dissenting voices come from scientists who believe that fire mastery could not be more than 400,000 years old. They seek to find when fire was in use on a regular basis and are concerned that this example may be but one isolated incident. Hopefully, more of these finds will appear and this mystery will be unraveled, shedding some light on the darkness of our unknown past.