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.
Bernard Campbell, in his chapter in the Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution, says of the domestication of fire:
“Its capture, handling, and control may have been difficult and unreliable at first, for natural fires are rare; but its use was probably essential for survival through harsh north temperate winters. The control of fire is one of H. erectus’s or early H. sapiens’s most remarkable achievements, and was a necessary precursor of highly advanced lithic technology.”
In his 1936 book Man Makes Himself, V. Gordon Childe talks about the importance of fire in human evolution:
“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.”
In his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Harari simply writes:
“When humans domesticated fire, they gained control of an obedient and potentially limitless force.”
Fire has been, and continues to be, an important element in culture. Archaeologist Anders Kaliff, in his chapter in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion, writes:
“The shaping of human culture is closely linked to the domestication of fire. The art of making fire has given humans the ability to survive in environments where it would not otherwise have been conceivable and has made it possible to cook food whose nutritional value could not otherwise have been fully utilized. This has formed us as a people, shaping our conceptual world.”
The domestication of fire requires a couple of things. First, the fire must be contained so that it can be used and not spread. The concept of the basic hearth—such as a circle stones or a pit—is well-known to modern campers and was widely used in the past. Fires can go out and thus must be continually provided with fuel. This means that selection of campsites has to include adequate fuel. And finally, early humans were somewhat mobile and had to be able to move fire with them. For short distances, a burning branch might last long enough to be used to start a fire. For longer moves, coals might be placed in a special container so that they could be used in starting a fire. At some point in the past, people learned to start fires, perhaps by using some version of a fire drill—this basically involves friction between two pieces of wood which creates heat which can become hot enough to ignite tinder.
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. 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. In his book Human Evolution, 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).”
There are reports of possible fire use by humans earlier than 400,000 years ago. For example, at a site dated to about a million years ago, Christopher Seddon reports:
“At Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape Province, South Africa, a habitation layer known as Stratum 10 contains ash, minute bone fragments, and complete or fragmented bones that show signs of burning. These finds were associated with Acheulean artefacts, and persist through the whole of Stratum 10. Burned bone fragments are widely distributed in the cave. Overall, these finds suggest that fires occurred in the cave with a frequency too great to be accounted for by natural causes.”
There are some reports, not universally accepted, of fire in other early African sites, including Koobi Fora at 1.5 to 1.4 million years ago and at Swartkrans Cave at 1.5 million years ago. Christopher Seddon reports:
“The Swartkrans site, where Homo erectus remains have been found, does present a good case for human use of fire, because burned bones are only present in the higher levels. Had natural fire been responsible, these would also be found in lower levels.”
Cooking
While fire has many different uses, perhaps its most important use was in cooking food. In his book The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack and Other Cautionary Tales from Human Evolution, Ian Tattersall reports:
“Cooking almost anything makes contained nutrients more readily available to the digestive tract; and it also has the advantage of killing the toxins that accumulate rapidly in decaying carcasses under the tropical sun, rending even scavenging a more attractive proposition.”
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 his book Lone Survivors: How We Came to be the Only Humans on Earth, Chris Stringer writes:
“In most cases, cooking reduces the time and energy needed to chew and digest foods, although heat also reduces their vitamin content, and nutrients are lost in the fat and water that are driven away. The process not only helped to provide a broader diet and more fuel for a growing and energy-sapping brain, but also reduced the effect of harmful toxins and pathogens such as parasites, bacteria, and viruses that are present in many raw foods.”
Chris Stringer also writes:
“Once cooking became central to human life, it would have influenced our evolution, leading to changes in digestion, gut size and function, tooth and jaw size, and the muscles for mastication.”
With regard to when people began use of fire for cooking, Robin Dunbar writes:
“In sum, although there is certainly putative evidence of cooking much earlier—usually in the form of charred bones or seeds—the evidence strongly suggests that cooking did not become a regular feature of the diet until after 400,000 years ago.”
Tool-Making
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.
Managing the Landscape
Fire can also be used to manage the landscape and to increase carrying capacity. This use of fire has been well documented for American Indians in North America prior to the European invasion in the sixteenth century. By deliberately setting fire to forests and prairies, Indian people increased plant growth and thus increased the number of animals who fed upon these plants. There is no reason to believe that the use of fire in ecological management was an American Indian innovation, and archaeological data from other parts of the world confirms this. Yuval Harari, in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, suggests that by 300,000 years ago human ancestors were using fire in this way:
“A carefully managed fire could turn impassable barren thickets into prime grasslands teeming with game. In addition, once the fire died down, Stone Age entrepreneurs could easily walk through the smoking remains and harvest charcoaled animals, nuts and tubers.”
The Evolution of Language
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?”
Language is both a social lubricant and a social glue that helps people come together. Sitting around a fire is not only a good place for informal conversation, it is also, at least in modern humans, a place of laughter. The domestication of fire may have enhanced the evolution of language and laughter. In his book Words on the Move: Why English Won’t and Can’t Sit Still (Like, Literally), John McWhorter writes:
“Human speech is a laughy-ass business: we prefer communication within an ongoing reassurance that there is no impending social threat, that everyone is on the same page.”
In noting that laughter seems to be instinctive and that it has the hallmarks of social chorusing, Robin Dunbar reports:
“The fact, that this seems to be instinctive suggests that it has a very ancient origin; the fact that we don’t need verbal jokes to trigger laughter suggests that it long predated the evolution of language.”
What better place to engage in laughter, letting it bring the group together, than sitting around a warm, safe, hypnotic fire. Perhaps this helped the emergence of language.
The Evolution of Religion
Fire may also 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. Many different mythologies tell of culture heroes, supernatural beings, and others who brought fire to the people. In many traditions, fire has a central role in ritual, with ceremonies held around fire pits and hearths. It is not uncommon to have ceremonies which begin with a ritual lighting of fire, including the lighting of candles. Marking the end of life, many religions cremate the body believing that the life force is released by fire.
From the archaeological record it is difficult to document when humans first began using fire as a type of religious symbolism. Anders Kaliff reports:
“It is often difficult, based solely on material remains, to determine whether a fire was used for sacred, ritual purposes or had a secular function.”
The household hearth, for example, may serve both secular functions (warmth, light, cooking) as well as religious functions (the focus of household ceremonies, the preparation of religious feasts).
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. Fire is also a part of rituals in the home. In his book Religions, Philip Wilkinson reports:
“Another important act of worship is to light a fire in a ceremonial fire urn, feeding it with incense and reciting blessings as the smoke permeates the home. This fire symbolizes Ahura Maazda’s divine light, energy, truth, and law.”
In Europe, ritual fires in the Scandinavian traditions had to be lit with a fire drill. In a similar fashion, a fire drill had to be used to start the bonfire for the Celtic Beltane festival held on the first of May.
In their book Dictionary of Native American Mythology, Sam Gil and Irene Sullivan write:
“The qualities of fire—its resemblance to living things, its creation of light, and its relationship to the sun—make it an important element in many Native American stories and rituals.”
One of the common elements of 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. 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.
More About Human Origins
Human Origins: Cannibalism
Human Origins: Menopause
Human Origins: The Great Chain of Being
Human Origins: Cultural Evolution
Human Origins: The Mind
Human Origins: The Large Brain
Human Origins: The Human Hand
Human Origins: Bipedalism