Quest for Fire Began Earlier Than Thought

[pokerfan]

Light my fire. By analyzing microscopic traces of burnt bone (inset), researchers think they have found 1,000,000-year-old evidence of human campfires at Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa.

For millions of years, our ancestors were spread thinly across the African continent. They dined on raw meat, huddled in the cold, and slept fitfully in the dark, fearing the approach of large predators. But eventually, early humans reached a crucial turning point: They learned to make fire. Kindling and controlling a small blaze, they cooked their dinners, socialized around warm hearths, and frightened off large, menacing carnivores. Now, a new study suggests that humankind tamed the flame at least 200,000 years earlier than previously thought.

"I think this research establishes as well as possible that by 1 million years ago, early humans were able to control fire," says one of the paper's authors, archaeologist Michael Chazan of the University of Toronto in Canada.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/04/quest-for-fire-began-earlier-tha.html

[Dead_Parrot]

1. Damn, Ya beat me to it.

Question is, when did we invent marshmallows?

[izquierdista]

2. Burnt bone?

Sounds like they controlled fire about as well as my uncle controls the barbecue.

[font size = 1] Very well done, or black in the center??

[TlalocW]

3. Yeah, I remember back then my friends and I were going to see it

But one of them got off work late, and we missed the 7:30 showing (we thought it started at 8) so we went to see, "Arthur," with Dudley Moore instead. Missed out on Rae Dawn Chong being nude all the time, but we still had fun.

TlalocW

[Voice for Peace]

4. not possible if the world is only 6000 years old

sorry