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The control of fire by early humans was a critical technology enabling the evolution of humans. Fire provided a source of warmth and lighting, protection from predators (especially at night), 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 2.0 million years ago (Mya). Evidence for the "microscopic traces of wood ash" as controlled use of fire by Homo erectus, beginning roughly 1 million years ago, has wide scholarly support. Some of the earliest known traces of controlled fire were found at the Daughters of Jacob Bridge, Israel, and dated to ~790,000 years ago. At the site, archaeologists also found the oldest likely evidence of controlled use of fire to cook food ~780,000 years ago. However, some studies suggest cooking started ~1.8 million years ago. 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. Control of fire The use and control of fire was a gradual process proceeding through more than one stage. One was a change in habitat, from dense forest, where wildfires were common, to savanna (mixed grass/woodland) where wildfires were of higher intensity. Such a change may have occurred about 3 million years ago, when the savanna expanded in East Africa due to cooler and drier climate. The next stage involved interaction with burned landscapes and foraging in the wake of wildfires, as observed in various wild animals. In the African savanna, animals that preferentially forage in recently burned areas include savanna chimpanzees (a variety of Pan troglodytes verus), vervet monkeys (Cercopithecus aethiops) and a variety of birds, some of which also hunt insects and small vertebrates in the wake of grass fires. The next step would be to make some use of residual hot spots that occur in the wake of wildfires. For example, foods found in the wake of wildfires tend to be either burned or undercooked. This might have provided incentives to place undercooked foods on a hotspot or to pull food out of the fire if it was in danger of getting burned. This would require familiarity with fire and its behavior. An early step in the control of fire would have been transporting it from burned to unburned areas and lighting them on fire, providing advantages in food acquisition. Maintaining a fire over an extended period of time, as for a season (such as the dry season), may have led to the development of base campsites. Building a hearth or other fire enclosure such as a circle of stones would have been a later development. The ability to make fire, generally with a friction device with hardwood rubbing against softwood (as in a bow drill), was a later development. Each of these stages could occur at different intensities, ranging from occasional or "opportunistic" to "habitual" to "obligate" (unable to survive without it). Lower Paleolithic evidence Most of the evidence of controlled use of fire during the Lower Paleolithic is uncertain and has limited scholarly support. Some of the evidence is inconclusive because other plausible explanations, such as natural processes, exist for the findings. Findings support that the earliest known controlled use of fire took place in Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa, 1.0 Mya. Africa Findings from Wonderwerk provide the earliest evidence for controlled use of fire. Intact sediments were analyzed using micromorphological analysis. Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy (mFTIR) 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 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, found at Swartkrans, South Africa, includes burned bones, including ones with hominin-inflicted cut marks, along with Acheulean and bone tools. This site 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 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 refiring 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. This view is not widely accepted, though. Burned stones were found in Awash Valley, but volcanic welded tuff is found in the area, which could explain the burned stones. Burned flints discovered near Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, dated by thermoluminescence to around 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 evidence of burning by early hominids. In 1985, at a parallel site in China, Yuanmou in Yunnan Province, archaeologists found blackened mammal bones that date back to 1.7 Mya. Middle East A site at Bnot Ya'akov Bridge, Israel, has been claimed to show that H. erectus or H. ergaster controlled fires between 790,000 and 690,000 BP. An.... Discover the Blaze Ward popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Blaze Ward books.