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.