Control of Fire

The control of fire was one of the first and most important discoveries made by early humans. Since humans were able to control it, fire provided heat, a way to cook food, a source of light and a way to scare dangerous animals. Fire is so vital to our existence that some mythologies have their own myths explaining how we obtained fire. One example is the Greek myth that Prometheus stole fire from Mount Olympus and gave it to man. But when did we actually learn how to control fire?

Archaeologists are still trying to discover when humans learned how to control fire. Evidence suggests that fire was controlled sometime between 400,000 and 1 million years ago during the Paleolithic, by another human species, the Homo erectus. The Wonderwerk cave in South Africa is one of the places where archaeologists have found evidence of humans using fire. The findings in the cave include burnt ashes and burned animal bones that are a million years old, making it the oldest evidence discovered so far. The evidence found also demonstrates the advancement fire was to the early humans.

Fire helped humans evolve to where we are today. Humans no longer depended solely on sunlight to carry on their activities, but most importantly the control of fire led to a dietary change. Humans began to eat cooked food, especially meat, making food safer and more nutritious. Over the years fire was also used to make weapons; heating up stones and metals. These are some of the many uses fire had to our ancestors and how it was crucial to shape human development.