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In Barnham, Suffolk, United Kingdom, archaeologists found fire-cracked flint hand axes near two fragments of the mineral iron pyrite in soil dated to 400,000 years ago. Striking flint against iron pyrite has been long used as a method of producing a spark that can then be used to light an ember that can in turn be used to build a fire. The previous oldest find for such items was 50,000 years ago, so this find extends human knowledge of the technology to make fire by 350,000 years.
Ancient finds showing human use of fire dates back to more than one million years ago, but this doesn’t mean that humans were making that fire on their own. Early humans or earlier hominins would have captured fire in nature, say, as the result of a lightning strike, and then preserve it for the purposes of cooking food and keeping warm. If that fire ever went out, they would have to wait for another lightning strike, or some other natural fire-making event, to possess fire again. Actually making fire from scratch is a much more challenging process, requiring knowledge of materials that can produce a spark, and the patience and skill necessary to propagate a tiny ember into a fire. However, being able to make fire for yourself eliminates one’s dependence on a random lightning strike in order to obtain fire. Having ready access to fire makes other technologies possible, such as the production of glue.
“The people who made fire at Barnham at 400,000 years ago were probably early Neanderthals, based on the morphology of fossils around the same age from Swanscombe, Kent, and Atapuerca in Spain, who even preserve early Neanderthal DNA,” said Professor Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at Natural History Museum, London.
It was more surprising to me that the previous earliest evidence for fire-making technology was only 50,000 years ago, as I would have thought that knowledge was much older, perhaps from the dawn of modern Homo sapiens about 200,000 years ago. (This is not based on any expertise on my part, mind you, but just a sense of what reasonably intelligent members of my species ought to be capable of given access to the resources and a few millennia to figure it out.) While it’s a little surprising that Neanderthals that lived before the emergence of modern humans had this capability, technology and tool-making were hallmarks of all hominin species, so it’s entirely credible that Neanderthals were able to do this.
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Top Comments (December 13-14, 2025):
From pixxer1:
Here is a comment I found interesting and useful this morning. It's by Soaked Ferret, an ex-firefighter, from the important diary by sabrina haake on the Hong Kong high-rise fire. Here is one snippet, but read the whole thing:
There is a little known fact that most people are unaware of and that is kind of a blow to the egos of many firefighters (because we love to think of ourselves as much more important than we really are): Fire Marshalls and building code inspectors save WAY more lives than line firefighters do.
From inkstainedwretch:
TexasTom replies to amoverton in Lisa Needham's diary about the FDA adding to Bobby Brainworm's body count.
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