It is not the fire, nor its ashes, but it is the lighter that turned him on. British scientists have discovered the remains of the oldest bonfire lit by man. It was made about 400,000 years ago in Barnham, southeast England, when a person collided a piece of flint with another of pyrite to produce sparks and make flames, according to their hypothesis. It was only a gesture, but it represents a revolution, because it would be the first test of absolute control of fire, something traditionally attributed to our species, the Homo sapiens. But the creators of these lights were Neanderthals, say those responsible for the work, published this Wednesday in Nature.
Fire is so ingrained in humanity that the primary meaning of home is the place where fire is made. Flames allowed us to escape the darkness, escape the cold, scare off predators, and cook food, which aided digestion and freed up resources to grow larger and larger brains. The bonfire is also the original meeting place, so the first stories, traditions and beliefs were probably invented around its heat.
“It is incredible that the most primitive groups of Neanderthals already knew the properties of flint, pyrite and tinder,” said Nick Ashton, curator of the Paleolithic collections at the British Museum and lead author of the study, in a press release. His colleague Rob Davis adds: “The ability to produce and control fire is one of the defining moments in human history,” and this discovery “delays its appearance by approximately 350,000 years.”
The study points out that there is no pyrite in the Barnham area, so humans must have brought it from somewhere else, supporting the hypothesis that they already knew of its exceptional usefulness.
The oldest evidence of the use of fire is found in Africa and dates back over a million and a half years. This shows that hominids already knew how to find a natural fire – lit by lightning, for example – and take advantage of it. In Europe and Asia, bonfires took place 800,000 years ago, such as in the Black Cave in the Quipar River Strait, in Murcia. But in no case was it possible to exclude that their origin was natural fires, the flames of which were maintained with increasing skill by man. Keeping the fire going was literally keeping the house going.
The new evidence was found in an old clay quarry exploited since the 18th century and excavated as a site since the beginning of the 20th century. After years of searching, researchers believe they have found conclusive evidence of the existence of a human camp here with fires lit and maintained over time.
Geochemical analysis of the sediments shows temperatures above 700 degrees which reinforce the hypothesis of repeated campfires. There are also burnt stone tools. But above all there are two small fragments of pyrite, a little larger than a thumbnail. This sulfur-rich mineral would have been used as a lighter, and the two small pieces discovered are believed to be shards that flew during the process.
In Europe, human campfires were already known at this time in caves in France and Portugal; as well as in open fields in Ukraine, the United Kingdom and Spain. But in none of them – nor in any of the newer ones – was pyrite found as a sparkstone, according to the authors of the new work. To find the clearest evidence of the absolute domination of fire in Europe, they point out, one must wait until around 50,000 years ago in France. Also in this case the perpetrators were Neanderthals, the closest human species to ours, which disappeared about 40,000 years ago for unknown reasons.
The big question is who were these humans who already mastered fire. Chris Stringer, a researcher at the Natural Sciences Museum in London and co-author of the study, explains that there are no human remains at this site. But about 100 kilometers to the south, three skull fragments were discovered, showing a brain capacity very similar to that of modern humans.
The remains belonged to the first Neanderthals, ancestors of this species with a physiognomy very similar to those who lived in the Sierra de Atapuerca, in Burgos, around 430,000 years ago. It’s interesting, because on this site where thousands of fossils of these humans come from, there is not even the slightest trace of fire.
Fire control probably did not originate in England, say those responsible for the discovery. “About 450,000 years ago, there was an glaciation that probably wiped out all humans” on the island, Stringer said at a news conference. A land bridge connected this territory to the rest of Europe, so these European Neanderthal ancestors repopulated it and reached “further north” thanks to the new technology they already mastered. Fire was “life insurance” and became the place to tell stories, transmit knowledge and develop language.
These discoveries “correspond to more complex Neanderthal behavior than we thought,” added the paleoanthropologist. “We’re not saying they were the only ones (capable of controlling the fire), but this is certainly the first case we can be sure of.”
“The control of fire,” recognizes historian Ruth Blasco, “is one of the most debated and controversial subjects in the field of Paleolithic archaeology.” The researcher from the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology, who was not involved in the work, believes that the evidence presented is diverse and “robust”. “The scientific community already assumed that the regular and controlled use of fire occurred in Europe between 400,000 and 300,000 years ago and that the archaeological signal is well established in the sites after 100,000 thousand years. The scientific panorama does not change much from Barnham, but a clear date is set for the intentional production of fire,” he explains.
The Barnham bonfire was lit in an open field, probably on the edge of a lagoon. After 400,000 years, it was impossible to preserve normal indicators of a fire, such as ashes or embers. To prove their thesis, the scientists used several very innovative techniques, such as magnetic analysis of sediments, infrared spectroscopy and hydrocarbon analysis, which show a different pattern when there is a natural fire and another ignited in the same place repeatedly.
“The convergence of multiple data sources and independent analytical methods lends a high degree of robustness to the study’s conclusions,” says archaeologist Montserrat Sanz, of the University of Barcelona, who served as an independent scientific reviewer of this work. “This may not be the first fire produced by humans in the strict sense, as there are indications of control and use of fire in earlier chronologies. However, the discovery is particularly relevant because it documents the oldest known lighter to date; and documenting it implies that the fire was produced by humans,” he asserts.
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