Most animals appear to have an innate fear of fire and yet humans managed to domesticate it. By the domestication of fire, I mean not only the ability to use fire, but also to make fire. In his 1936 book Man Makes Himself, V. Gordon Childe talks about the importance of fire:
“The control of fire was presumably the first great step in man’s emancipation from the bondage to his environment. Warmed by the embers, man could endure cold nights, and could thus penetrate into temperate and even arctic regions. The flames would give him light at night and allow him to explore the recesses of sheltering caves. Fire would scare away other wild beasts. By cooking, substances became edible that would be indigestible if eaten raw.”
More recently, in his 2014 book Humans: From the Beginning, Christopher Seddon puts it this way:
“The ability to use fire was surely a key breakthrough in human evolution. Fire can be used to deter predators, to provide heat and lighting, and for cooking. Human activities can be carried on through the hours of darkness, and fire would certainly have been an asset in the colder regions beyond Africa.”
Cooking may have helped in the evolution of the large and complex human brain which made language and religion possible. Not only does cooking allow humans to exploit food sources which would be otherwise inedible, it also makes meat a more efficient source of energy. In his book Human Evolution, Robin Dunbar reports:
“…cooking increases nutrient extraction rates from meat by about 50 per cent.”
In their book Thinking Big: How the Evolution of Social Life Shaped the Human Mind, Clive Gamble, John Gowlett, and Robin Dunbar write that:
“…cooking breaks down the structure of food components—the packages of starch in tubers and the strands of protein in meat—so that they can be more easily dealt with in the gut. It also destroys noxious microorganisms.”
In addition to cooking food, fire can also be used in the process of making the tools used for obtaining food. For example, fire can be used to burn the end of a digging stick to give it a point and to harden it. Fire can also be used in making stone tools: heat treating the stone makes it easier to flake and results in a much sharper edge.
Fire may have also been important in the development of language. In addition to providing heat, fire also provides light. This means that the length of the active day can be extended. Modern humans who have experienced the pleasure of sitting around a campfire while camping often engage in a number of important language-related activities: story-telling, gossiping, planning the next day’s events, and singing. The campfire communications often involve the past and the future, objects and people who are not present, abstract ideas, and mythological entities. Clive Gamble, John Gowlett, and Robin Dunbar write:
“Once we see people performing activities by the fireside, it is easy to think of communication and conversation. Was language indeed a part of our early picture? Did it shape human evolution far back in time?”
The possible role of gossip in the development of language is described in more detail in the essay Gossip in the section on Language in this book.
Fire may have played an important role in the development of religion. Some evidence of this may be found in the religious role of fire in some religious traditions. In one of the world’s oldest monotheistic religions, Zoroastrianism, fire is seen as a representation of God’s light or wisdom. In this religious tradition, fire is seen as the supreme symbol of purity and sacred fires are maintained in the temples.
One of the common elements of the spirituality among the Indians of the American Southeast is the sacred fire as a symbol of purity and the earthly representative of the sun. Among the Cherokees, for example, the fire and the sun were viewed as old women. Out of respect, the fire was fed a portion of each meal, for if she were neglected she might take vengeance on them. Writing about the Cherokee in his book Where the Lightning Strikes: the Lives of American Indian Sacred Places, anthropologist Peter Nabokov reports:
“Fire was the medium of transformation, turning offerings into gifts for spiritual intercessors or the four quarters of the earth.”
The sacred fires are fed with the wood from the seven sacred trees: beech, birch, hickory, locust, maple, oak, and sourwood.
Among the Creek Indians in the American Southeast, all fires in the village were extinguished for the Green Corn Ceremony held in July-August. Then a new fire would be ceremonially kindled in the town square. Joel Martin, in his book Sacred Revolt: The Muskogees’ Struggle for a New World, writes:
“A pure fire enabled the people to communicate their wants to the Maker of Breath, the purifying power that rebalanced the cosmos.”
In many religious traditions that incorporate concepts of animism, fire is seen as an important spirit. In some hunting and gathering cultures, the person who cared for the fire, particularly when moving from one campsite to another, was a spiritual leader or shaman.
Sitting around a fire encourages story-telling and story-telling is often a part of religious ceremony and religious belief. Robin Dunbar explains:
“Story-telling forms an essential component of all religions: they all tell stories about long-dead ancestors or the beings that occupy the spirit world; hagiographies of their charismatic founder(s) and saints are often a central feature.”
Sitting around a campfire, either alone or with close friends, and focusing on the flickering flames it is possible to get a spiritual feeling that can be described as a mystical experience (see Religion 101: Mystical Experiences). Staring at the flames can also allow some people to enter into a trance state which is important in many religious traditions, particularly the shamanistic traditions (see Religion 101: The Shaman).
We don’t really know when humans first domesticated fire, but it is generally assumed that this happened sometime before humans left Africa. It has been suggested by some scholars that Homo erectus probably had fire when it left Africa more than a million years ago (see The Ancient World: An Overview of Homo Erectus). In their book From Lucy to Language, Donald Johanson and Blake Edgar write:
“Typically, Homo erectus is credited with the first use of fire, in part because the earliest evidence falls within the time period when this species lived and because it was considered essential for the widespread dispersal of Homo erectus outside of Africa.”
The earliest evidence that humans were using fire dates to about 1.6 million years ago and is found at the sites of Koobi Fora and Chesowanja in Kenya. Using fire, however, is not the same as domesticating fire. At this time, the people may have been exploiting natural fires by bringing burning branches back to their campsite rather than starting their own fires. Robin Dunbar reports:
“It seems that fire was fully mastered around 400,000 years ago, and once mastered could be maintained and rekindled anywhere and at will. This step-change in fire use seems to coincide with the appearance of regularly used home bases (including caves as well as huts).”
With regard to the use of fire for cooking, Robin Dunbar also writes:
“In sum, although there is certainly putative evidence of cooking much earlier—usually in the form of charred bones of seeds—the evidence strongly suggests that cooking did not become a regular feature of the diet until after 400,000 years ago.”