MADRID.− It is not the fire, nor its ashes, but it is that lighter that turned it on. British scientists discovered this Remains of the oldest campfire captured by people. It was made about 400,000 years ago in Barnham, southeast of England, when a human collided a piece of flint and another piece of pyrite to create sparks and create flames, it is hypothesized. It was just a gesture, but it represents a revolutionas it would be the first test of absolute control over fire, something that has traditionally been attributed to our species homo sapiens. But the creators of these lights were Neanderthals, say those responsible for the work, published on Wednesday, December 10 Nature.
Fire is so deeply rooted in humanity that The first meaning of home is the place where a fire is made.. Flames allowed us to emerge from darkness, escape the cold, deter predators, and cook, which eased digestion and freed up resources to develop ever-larger brains. The campfire is also the original gathering place, which is probably why the first stories, traditions and beliefs were invented around its heat.
“It is incredible that the most primitive groups of Neanderthals already knew the properties of flint, pyrite and tinder“, emphasizes Nick Ashton, curator of Paleolithic collections at the British Museum and lead author of the study, in a press release. His colleague Rob Davis adds: “The ability to make and control fire is one of the defining moments in human history.” This discovery “delays their appearance by approximately 350,000 years.”“.
The study highlights that there is no pyrite in the Barnham area, so people had to bring it from somewhere else, reinforcing the hypothesis You already knew it was extremely useful.
The oldest evidence of the use of fire comes from Africa and is more than a million and a half years old. That shows that Even the hominids knew how to find a natural fire – for example, struck by lightning – and take advantage of it. In Europe and Asia there are bonfires dating back up to 800,000 years ago, such as: Black Cave of Quipar Street in Murcia. However, it cannot be ruled out in any case that their origins were natural fires, the flames of which were maintained with increasing skill by people. Preserving the fire literally meant preserving the home.
The new evidence was found in an ancient clay quarry that has been exploited since the 18th century and excavated since the early 20th century. After years of searching, Researchers believe they have found conclusive evidence that there was a human camp here in which fires were lit and maintained over time.
Geochemical analysis of the sediments shows temperatures of over 700 degrees, supporting the hypothesis repeated campfires. There are also tools made from fired stone. Above all, there are two small pyrite fragments, slightly larger than a thumbnail. This sulfur-rich mineral would have been used as a lighter The two small pieces discovered were splinters that popped out.
In Europe at this time, human campfires were already known in caves in France and Portugal; and also in open fields in Ukraine, the United Kingdom and Spain. But In none of them – nor in any later ones – was pyrite found as a spark stone.say the authors of the new work. To find the clearest evidence of the absolute dominance of fire in Europe, we have to wait until about 50,000 years ago in France. And in this case too, the authors were Neanderthals, the closest human species to ours They died out about 40,000 years ago for unknown reasons..
The big question is who these people were who already controlled fire. This explains Chris Stringer, researcher at the Natural Sciences Museum in London and co-author of the study There are no human remains at this site.. But about 100 kilometers further south, three skull fragments were found that have a brain capacity very similar to that of modern humans.
The remains belonged to early NeanderthalsAncestors of this species with a physiognomy very similar to those that lived in the Sierra de Atapuerca, in Burgos, about 430,000 years ago. It’s interesting because in this very place where thousands of fossils of these people come from, There is no trace of fire.
According to those responsible for the discovery, the mastery of fire probably did not originate in England. “About 450,000 years ago there was an ice age that probably wiped out all humans” of the island, Stringer said in a press conference. A land bridge connected this area to the rest of Europe, so these European Neanderthal ancestors repopulated it and got “further north” thanks to the new technology they already mastered. The fire was “life insurance”and became a place for storytelling, knowledge transfer and language development.
These findings “are consistent with more complex Neanderthal behavior than we thought,” the paleoanthropologist added. “We’re not saying they were the only ones (able to control the fire), but of course This is the first case we can be sure of.“.
“The control of fire,” recognizes historian Ruth Blasco, “is one of the most contentious and controversial topics in the field of Paleolithic archaeology.” This is what the researcher from the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology, who was not involved in the work, believes The evidence presented is diverse and “robust”.
“The scientific community already assumed that regular and controlled use of fire occurred in Europe 400,000 to 300,000 years ago and that the archaeological signal is well established at sites after 100,000,000 years. The scientific panorama doesn’t change much after Barnham, but it is changing.” sets a clear date for the intentional start of the fire“, he explains.
Barnham’s Campfire It was made in an open field, probably on the banks of a lagoon. After 400,000 years, it was impossible to preserve the normal indicators of fire, such as ash or burning. To prove their case, scientists used several very novel techniques such as: Magnetic analysis of sedimentsInfrared spectroscopy and hydrocarbon analysis, showing a different pattern when one natural fire and another are ignited in the same location several times.
“The convergence of multiple lines of evidence and independent analytical methods gives the study’s conclusions a high degree of robustness,” says archaeologist Montserrat Sanz from the University of Barcelona, who served as an independent scientific reviewer on this work. “This may not be the first human-caused fire in the strict sense, as there are references to the control and use of fire in earlier chronologies. The finding is particularly relevant because it documents the oldest lighter known to date; and documenting it implies that The fire was caused by people“, he argues.
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