Starting a fire is no easy feat, but new research suggests ancient humans were doing it hundreds of thousands of years ago.
A new study, published in the journal Nature today, has uncovered the oldest-known evidence of fire-making in the world.
The date of the find — 400,000 years ago — is a staggeringly long time in the past, and is hundreds of thousands of years older than previous evidence.
At that time, our species Homo sapiens was likely not yet evolved, and wouldn't leave Africa for another 300,000 years.
A team of archaeologists discovered evidence of burnt clay and heat-shattered hand axes at a site at Barnham about 140 km north-east of London.
It's uncertain which species of early human the mysterious fire makers belonged to, but the team speculates it could have been Neanderthals.
Nicholas Ashton, Curator of Palaeolithic Collections at the British Museum and one of the researchers on the new paper, noted that the discovery might just be the tip of the iceberg.
"We suspect that fire-making was routine across Europe and further field, but at Barnham we happen to have the right set of conditions, and long-term investigation, to have the evidence," Professor Ashton said.
"This is the most remarkable discovery of my career."
Early humanity uses fire
According to Michelle Langley, an archaeologist at Griffith University not involved in the recent discovery, early human species used fire as an important tool when they could access it.
"If you are cooking your meat and other foods, you're getting a lot more nutrition out of it with less effort, but it also keeps away predators, so it can make us safer, provide warmth," Dr Langley said.
"It does make a significant difference to humanity."
However, early humans didn't necessarily need to make the fire to use it.
The early use of fire by human species probably involved them opportunistically taking advantage of natural wildfires.
They also deliberately harvested fire, and then kept it going long-term in what's known as "habitual" use of fire.
Evidence from sites in Kenya and across Africa and the Middle East suggests that this was being done more than a million years ago.
But making fire from scratch is much harder to do, and was thought to have occurred much later.
Making fire involves striking flint and pyrite together to produce sparks that can then be used to light tinder and produce fires.
Until now, the earliest evidence of making fire was from Neanderthals in Northern France around 50,000 years ago.
At that site, researchers found evidence of hand axes that showed traces of being struck with pyrite — presumably to make sparks for a fire.
But the new discovery suggests that fire-making was occurring hundreds of thousands of years earlier in what is now England.
Red clay evidence of campfire
The area where the new discovery was made is part of a site called the East Farm, Barnham in Suffolk.
"It's a site known since the early 1900s, with the first large-scale excavations in the early 1990s," Professor Ashton said.
"The first hints of fire use were in 2014 with the recovery of concentrations of heated flint, and the discovery of the first piece of pyrite in 2017."
[location of East Farm]The researchers suggested the pyrite may have been brought to the area for its fire-making properties.
"Pyrite … is extremely rare in the region," he said.
"Of 26 sites examined, with 121,000 stones identified, not a single piece was pyrite. So the only time we discover it is in association with a campfire and heat-shattered hand axes.
"In other words humans brought the pyrite to the site with the intention of making fire."
This is all important evidence, but there was a missing piece — the fire itself.
Then, in 2019, the team found the smoking gun. They found evidence of a campfire, or hearth.
"I decided to investigate a small area of ancient soil that had been fleetingly exposed in 2019," Professor Ashton said.
"[When] the reddened clay was exposed, I knew from previous experience that this could indicate heating of the clay. It was a moment of caution, but also great excitement."
Tests by the team showed the area had been heated to temperatures over 700 degrees Celsius, and heating had occurred multiple times.
"This is supported by the concentration of heat-shattered hand axes around the campfire, providing a direct link with humans," Professor Ashton said.
"In combination and the fact that it is an isolated patch, they strongly suggest human, rather than natural burning."
Mystery species of human
No human bone fragments were recovered at the site, making it difficult to know which species of human the mysterious fire makers belonged to.
But while the team has not been able to provide a definitive answer, they do have theories.
"[Our] best guess is early Neanderthals," Professor Ashton said.
"There are no fossil human bones from Barnham, but there is an early Neanderthal skull from Swanscombe in the Thames Valley of the same age, 400,000 years ago."
According to Dr Langley, the picture is more complicated.
"The problem is that you've got a few different types of Homo around, and we're still trying to work out who's who and where in that period."
She said it could also be older human species, such as Homo heidelbergensis.
Oldest evidence so far
Dr Langley suggests that this discovery of 400,000-year-old fire-making is lucky but not "startlingly surprising".
"While 400,000 years is pretty old, it's not [that much] older than some of the sites that have habitual use of fire," Dr Langley said.
However, finding more evidence of fire use and fire-making is likely to be hard.
"It's very difficult to work out when people are using fire, and it's just as difficult to work out when they're making it," Dr Langley said.
She said this made the research another "puzzle piece" in the question of when early humans first made fire.
Professor Ashton noted that the site just happened to have the right set of conditions that led to the discovery.
"This is the oldest evidence so far, but it almost certainly is not the first," he said.
Dr Langley said that if there was evidence of something at one location, it was likely much more widespread than just one site.
"It's a sample size [issue] … if it's only happening very occasionally, we're probably not going to find it," she said.
"Once something becomes visible in the archaeological record, it's probably happening quite a lot."
She noted that other sites may have evidence of pyrite that had previously been overlooked.
The team of researchers is now looking at whether it can uncover any older evidence — both at Barnham and at other sites around Europe.
