https://www.heritagedaily.com/2022/06/scientists-uncover-traces-of-fire-use-800000-years-ago/143971
Scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science have been able to detect nonvisual traces of fire dating back at least 800,000 years, one of the earliest
known examples for the controlled use of fire.
It has been speculated that the ancient hominins used fire as far back as 1 million years ago, a period when Homo habilis began its transition to
Homo erectus.
Called the ‘cooking hypothesis’, fire was believed to have been instrumental
in our evolution, not only for allowing hominins to stay warm, craft weapons and ward off predators, but also for cooking to eliminate pathogens and increase the digestion and nutritional value of food.
The only problem with this hypothesis is a lack of data: since finding archaeological evidence of pyrotechnology primarily relies on visual identification of modifications resulting from the combustion of objects (mainly, a colour change), traditional methods have managed to find
widespread evidence of fire use no older than 200,000 years. While there is some evidence of fire dating back to 500,000 years ago, it remains sparse,
with only five archaeological sites around the world providing reliable evidence of ancient fire.
Using a pioneering method of applying AI and spectroscopy, researchers
from Weizmann’s Plant and Environmental Sciences Department were
previously able to find indications of controlled burning on stone tools in Israel that date back to between 200,000 and 420,000 years ago.
They applied the same technique to assess the heat exposure of artefacts
found at Evron Quarry, a Palaeolithic site in Western Galilee with stone
tools and animal fossils that date back to between 800,000 and 1 million
years ago.
The results revealed that 26 flint tools had been heated to a wide range
of temperatures – some exceeding 600°C. In addition, using a different spectroscopic technique, they analysed 87 faunal remains and discovered
that the tusk of an extinct elephant also exhibited structural changes resulting from heating.
...
https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2123439119
Hidden signatures of earlyfire at Evron Quarry (1.0 to 0.8 Mya)
Significance
This study reveals the presence of fire in a Lower Paleolithic (LP) site lacking
visible signs of pyrotechnology and adds a new LP site to a handful of archaeological sites with evidence associating early hominin–produced artifacts and fire. This research highlights the possibility of extracting “hidden”
information on pyrotechnology-related activities from other sites.
Abstract
Pyrotechnology is a key element of hominin evolution. The identification of fire in early hominin sites relies primarily on an initial visual
assessment of
artifacts’ physical alterations, resulting in potential underestimation of the
prevalence of fire in the archaeological record. Here, we used a suite of spectroscopic techniques to counter the absence of visual signatures for fire and demonstrate the presence of burnt fauna and lithics at the Lower Paleolithic (LP) open-air site of Evron Quarry (Israel), dated between 1.0
and
0.8 Mya and roughly contemporaneous to Gesher Benot Ya’aqov where early pyrotechnology has been documented. We propose reexamining finds from
other LP sites lacking visual clues of pyrotechnology to yield a renewed perspective on the origin, evolution, and spatiotemporal dispersal of the relationship between early hominin behavior and fire use.
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