Researchers excavating an ancient Neanderthal site in southern England found evidence not just of a hearth, but of its inhabitants bringing iron pyrite to the area specifically to enable them to light fires.
Archaeologists wrote in the journal Nature this week that they have unearthed the oldest-known evidence of deliberate fire-making by prehistoric humans in the English county of Suffolk.
The hearth was discovered in Barnham in the UK, near a buried site that was once a pond where Neanderthals are thought to have lived roughly 415,000 years ago.
The authors wrote that the site seems to provide “unequivocal evidence of deliberate fire-making” that “has remained elusive” because of the difficulties in distinguishing between naturally occurring fires being used by prehistoric humans and controlled fires being created on demand.
Early humans are thought to have first started making opportunistic use of naturally occurring fires, for instance from lightning strikes or forest fires, as much as a million years ago.
Heated clay, heat-shattered handaxes, and imported iron pyrite to light permanent campfire
At an old clay pit for making bricks near the village of Barnham, the researchers found a patch of heated clay, some heat-shattered handaxes and two pieces of iron pyrite.
This material creates sparks when struck against flint to ignite tinder, and is also not readily available in the vicinity, suggesting the Neanderthals brought it to the watering hole specifically for the purpose.
“We think humans brought pyrite to the site with the intention of making fire,” said archaeologist Nick Ashton, curator of Palaeolithic Collections at the British Museum in London and the leader of the research. “This has huge implications pushing back the earliest fire-making.”
The earliest-known evidence of deliberate fire-making to date had been unearthed in northern France and dated to roughly 50,000 years ago. It was also attributed to Neanderthals.
Although human remains were not found at the site, paleoanthropologist and study co-author Chris Stringer said that pieces of human skull from a similar period, characteristic of early Neanderthals, were located in the mid-20th century less than 100 miles (160 kilometers) to the south at a town called Swanscombe and at a site in Sima de los Huesos near Burgos in Spain.
“Thus the Barnham fire-makers were very likely to have been early Neanderthals, like Swanscombe and the Sima people,” Stringer said.
Neanderthals are thought to have gone extinct roughly 39,000 years ago as homo sapiens started to settle throughout Europe. But genetic remnants of the early hominid cousins to modern humans persist in many of our genes as a result of interbreeding and assimilation.
Fire expands and improves diet; hearth feeds community, language, storytelling
Controlled use of fire was a landmark in human evolution for multiple reasons.
Cooking enabled vastly improved diets and easier and safer digestion of meat and other ingredients, freeing up energy from digestion for use by the fast-expanding brains of early hominins.
It also provided warmth, enabling hunter-gatherers to survive and thrive in colder environments, like Britain, study co-author Rob Davis, an archaeologist at the British Museum, said.
Source : https://www.dw.com/en/signs-of-400000-year-old-neanderthal-campfire-found-in-uk/a-75098034
