Fire

Most scientists agree on one thing. Namely that early man’s discovery and ability to use fire was mankind’s greatest discovery and that without it—our species probably would not have survived and thrived. The control and use of fire would have greatly changed early man’s life in many ways in a hostile world where man was more prey than predator.

His ability to use fire would provide heat and light on cold nights, it would protect him from the many predators who all had a great fear of fire, and he could now cook the meat, fish, and wild vegetables he ate providing him with a healthier diet and easily digestible food. Cooking of foods widened the diet since with cooking tougher plants and meats could be tenderized by cooking, with the added benefit that cooking released more proteins.

Socialization while cooking and eating food around the protective fire helped to spur communication—which led to language and the exchange of ideas. Man’s day no longer ended with the dark night. By the light of a fire stories would be told and information exchanged. Ideas for better hunting strategies or making a better tool or shelter or…abstract thought. Fire literally lit up the night and just because the sun had set man could now still work on his tools or create new ones. Of course fire would have many other uses, such as fire-hardening the sharp tip of a wooden spear so it would be stronger and sharper. Cauterize a wound. Heating flint cores for striking sharper tools. He could use fire to stampede a herd of deer or bison or even woolly mammoth culling off the slowest or driving them into a box canyon or off a cliff. Man would have found many helpful ways to use fire to his advantage. All he had to do was think.

Scientists don’t agree on when man first learned to master fire and theories range over vast periods of time ranging from a million to two hundred thousand years ago. By the time of Cro-Magnon some 50,000 years ago, fire had been mastered by both Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon and they would have been able to create fire whenever they wanted. They more than likely would carry a small container, like a hollowed-out bull horn, filled with some hot coals on a bed of moss if they were traveling. Otherwise they would carry a small fire kit with them consisting of flint, iron pyrite, and dry kindling to get a fire started. With readily available fire at his cave or portable, man became a much more difficult adversary for the many animal predators who possessed their own deadly advantages like speed, keen eyesight, scent recognition, size, sharp teeth, night vision, and deadly claws. With the mastery of fire man finally had a tool the lions, saber cats, wolves, and hyenas feared. In time, more tools would follow which transformed man from prey to apex predator. In CRO-MAGNON  25,000 BP man has become the apex predator who still must be wary of the animal predators. In turn, they have learned to be very wary of him.

Most archeologists, anthropologists, and scholars accept the evidence that Homo Erectus had controlled use of fire some 400,000 years ago. There are some claims that go back to almost two million years ago, but the hard evidence seems to be lacking for most scholars. When dealing with prehistory one does have to look for the scant evidence available and evidence is usually what a scientist depends on.

 Natural fires (lightning or wildfires) were a fairly common occurrence in the dry Pleistocene and my guess is someone collected some burning branches or brush and continued to fuel that fire realizing he was feeding it. At first the fire probably went out, but he knew that fire was a great power. At some point another natural fire occurred and man was able to feed it and keep it burning. Maybe for the whole night. What a moment! What power man possessed! Near to the large fire it was warm and it kept the night chill away. The wild animals feared the roaring fire and would not come near to the fire. He was warm, he could see in the dark, and the wild predators feared his fire and he was safe.

This time he would not let the fire go out. The fire would have probably been fed for many days and nights as the people tried to understand this great power they had captured. They found they could take a few hot coals out and build another fire somewhere else with those coals if they fed it fuel. They learned they could take fire with them wherever they went and that rain would put the fire out and so they learned how to protect their fire so they always had it. In time they would have discovered cooking or maybe they already knew because some animals they scavenged must have been burned in the wildfires. In time they became intimate with fire because their very lives depended on fire. I don’t know when or how man was first able to create his own fire from either friction (bow-drill) or using iron pyrite striking flint. It may happened when making a tool and striking flint with a hammerstone and it was iron pyrite. 

During the Pleistocene wood for fuel was not available everywhere in Europe. Over that two hundred thousand year period the landscape and climate was different than today during many periods of the Pleistocene. The northern treeline would vary depending on temperatures, elevation, wind-chill, and rainfall. Sometimes the treeline would stop in Belgium and sometimes it would stop in Southern France. Sometimes trees were a wide belt on the map and sometimes a very narrow band.

On the great plains of Central Europe and Russia there were vast dry plains and steppes with very few trees. Very little rainfall to support trees. Some trees would have been near the rivers and lakes. Wood is not the only fuel and on the plains the people would have used dry animal dung and dry bones for fuel. This was the domain of the Woolly Mammoth and Woolly Rhinoceros, herbivores who would eat about four hundred pounds of food per day. The daily dung from each mammoth would have been a four hundred pound mountain, which when dry would be fuel for many fires. The dung deposits of herds of mammoth must have littered the plains and steppes. I doubt the few Cro-Magnon’s living at any one time usually experienced a lack of fuel problem. Transporting it was a different matter.

Great Pyramid & Sphinx

Very recently archaeologists and others have realized that we haven’t given people of the ancient world enough credit for what they were able to do and how they were able to do it. Everything happened earlier than we like to believe. It becomes increasingly clear that most ancient people were more advanced than we had been taught. They were capable of so much more than we give them credit for. So many things happened earlier than we think or were developed earlier than we like to think. Even for relatively recent ancient times. For example, for hundreds of years it was thought that just 5400 years ago the Ancient Egyptians built their pyramids with slave labor. This is despite the fact that the Egyptians had writings that told this was not the case. But, still many experts believed only slave labor could have produced such an architectural work. How could they be so wrong on a recent work? 

For decades it was scientific doctrine and mantra and it was thought only the brutal enslavement of tens of thousands for many decades could have produced the Great Pyramids of Giza. Books and movies supported the view and there are many books and movies depicting the slaves toiling under the cruel lash of Ancient Egyptians and begging for a drink of water or a crust of bread before they expired from weakness and starvation. They would have needed and endless supply of slaves arriving each week to replace those who had died each week from the cruel treatment of the Egyptians.

Today we know the opposite is the truth. The Great Pyramids of Giza were built by the Egyptians themselves. There are long term settlements that have been discovered near to the pyramids where thousands of skilled artisans and workers lived while they were building the pyramids. Not only did they live and work and grow families there—many were buried there in tombs that were very well crafted. Slaves? It appears they were very well paid and provided for to do their work.

We now know there were very organized crews or gangs that competed against each other to prove who could do the most work or move the most stones. They happily carved their bragging rights into stone. Would slaves do that? No. In short—they took pride in their work and were well paid by Pharaoh. The same went for temporary workers who were farmers and would come and work seasonally when they were not busy farming. Rather than slavery—the building of the pyramids was a giant public works project funded by the Pharaoh or king of Egypt. This continued throughout The Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms for many building projects. Even in The Valley of The Kings, where the tombs of Pharaohs of the New Kingdom were entombed there is a massive village nearby with all the amenities of the time. 

 Plakias--view from the east. Providence College

Everywhere one turns we find new digs and new information from today’s modern archaeologists disputing time worn inaccuracies. Usually we find that many things happened much earlier than they were supposed to. A little over a year ago a couple archaeologists were digging on the island of Crete seeking human artifacts that were approximately 10,000 years old. The belief was that it was not until 10,000 years ago the island had been settled by humans, since it was far from land and not easily accessible by raft or primitive boat. If you look at Crete on a map you can easily see it is far from the Libyan coastline in North Africa and also far from the coastline of Asia Minor to the east.

The archaeologists found exactly what they were not expecting to find. They found stone tools radio carbon dated to over 120,000 years ago. I think the most recent dating put the tools at 110,000 years ago. Our ancient ancestors were certainly better sailors than anyone had imagined.  I can only think that they built rafts or very primitive boats to reach this island over 200 miles off the coast of North Africa. I am sure they didn't swim the Mediterranean Sea.

I don’t really know how they got to Crete or where they sailed from. The easiest answer is that they left from North Africa and by luck or skill or both reached Crete. Were they feeling lucky paddling into the unknown? The next easiest answer is that they departed from Turkey or Syria, though that is also a very long distance in the open sea. Or they could have walked down to the Southern Greek coastline and island hopped from there since there are countless islands in the Aegean Sea—and finally made it to Crete 110,000 years ago. Take your pick.

Probably more interesting are the various stone tools found on Crete and on several islands near to Crete which date from 300,000 to 700,000 years ago. The older appear to be Mousterian or Neanderthal stone tools, while more recent stone tools seem to be of more recent origin. Clearly we must look at our ancient ancestors in a new light and wonder how both Neanderthals and early Homo Sapiens made their sea voyages so long ago. Even more interesting is why? Was it a drive for discovery that inspired them to take to the sea in their rafts or small boats? Was there climatic or geological stress? What drove them to the sea?

I am going to take a wild guess that these successful sea voyages all probably occurred at different periods of glacial maximum when the sea level was 300 or 400 feet lower than present and some scattered islands existed which are submerged today. Even if that is the case these ancient sea voyages are remarkable to consider from such primitive people. I have a feeling these voyages were not isolated events and some groups would become skilled at island hopping and exploring the countless islands in the Aegean Sea. 

It is remarkable to think that early Homo Sapiens made those voyages 120,000 years ago, but it is amazing to think that they were following previous primitive people like the Austrolopithicenes or Neanderthals.  

I get a picture in my mind of our ancient Early Modern Homo Sapien ancestors setting off to sea on a small 

craft or a few logs lashed together paddling like crazy. There is no land looming on the horizon and they are 

paddling in the unknown.

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Here Is A Larger Version

This is an Ice Age Map of Southern France created by Don Hitchcock which shown the topography, rivers, mountains, glaciers and valleys. The green areas show how far further out the ocean and seas projected from France due to there being less water available. Much was locked-up in the northern glaciers resulting in the sea level being over 400 feet lower than it is today. These coastlines are now 30 miles out under the seas. I am sure there were Cro-Magnon inhabitants there 25,000 years ago. Unfortunately I doubt we will ever find evidence of them. The red dots indicate settlements in Southern France, though all were not inhabited at the same time. CRO-MAGNON  25,000 BP takes place in this area and both the Lion and Bear Tribes live in a river valley protected from the winds out on the plains. This is their neighborhood. Note the glaciers on the surrounding mountains.

Amazon Kindle Book

Thank you for your emails and my apologies for being late to begin this blog. Thank you for your questions too and I will try to answer a few of them here and now.

It is really difficult for us to understand what life was like 25,000 years ago and in CRO-MAGNON  25,000 BP I have tried my best at trying to understand our ancient ancestors and what their lives may have been like.  Of course my story is fictional, but I have tried to keep as near to what may be accurate in most instances. Unfortunately, so much about these people is lost and we have really little concrete knowledge about them. Archaeologists have bones, stone tools, carvings and paintings which theories and inferences are made and there are many experts who have very different theories, which they defend.

We have to imagine a world where there were very few humans and the land was teeming with herds of herbivores, various deer species, horses, bison, aurochs, woolly mammoth, ibex, woolly rhinoceros, and many other grazers and browsers. They were the prey animals, although both the mammoths and rhinoceros would have been very difficult prey. The predators would have included lions, saber-cats, bears, wolves, panthers, hyenas, and humans. Neanderthals who had populated Europe for a couple hundred thousand years seem to have all but vanished by 25,000 years ago, with the last of them living in Southern Spain.

In our setting in Southern France in which today millions of people live there may have only been a couple thousand humans living at the time at the most. Understanding their world and the climate and weather helps us to understand their life, at a time when most only lived until they were thirty-five.

Answer for Deb in CA: Yes, I do mention cloth a few times in CRO-MAGNON and there is evidence of it in Czechoslovakia dating to 30,000 years ago. Don't confuse it with a fine cotton shirt of today though. They probably used twisted vegetable fibers on a small hand loom and would have had the softness of burlap.

Answer for Megan in VA: Dogs in CRO-MAGNON?  Yes. I am sure they did have dogs, although many experts argue people did not have dogs until 15,000 years ago. I think that is old and out-dated information, like much information about the period. There are the two graves of a dog which have been found and they were very large dogs. The one is Russia had a mammoth bone place in its mouth. The dog found in Belgium was also found in a grave inside a cave and they both date to 30,000 years ago.

Answer for Owen in FL: Animal migrations? They would have migrated much like modern day animals do in Africa. Usually seeking the best combination of food, water, and grasses. Depending on the seasons, climate, and food availability. They would have ranged far and wide probably heading north for the summer and south for the winter. Yes, the animals could outstrip available food rather quickly in a given area. Like a modern day elephant a mammoth also probably needed 400 lbs of food per day. That is an awful lot of grass and leaves.

I will get to some of the other questions I've received this week and continue building this site and blog so please do stop back soon. If you have a question you may post it here or email me at JackRourk@gmail.com

Hang in there, the Christmas Holidays do have me bogged down with too little time and too much to do. CRO-MAGNON  25,000 BP is up on Amazon as an ebook and soon the paperback will follow in a couple weeks. I'll be adding more to this site as I get the time. Thank you for stopping by,

 Happy Holidays,  Jack Rourk