| ▲ | doctoboggan 6 hours ago |
| Yes it's definitely further back than homo sapiens have existed (200k - 300k years), but our ancestor species were known to have used tools and control fire. I believe we have evidence of tool use going back 1 million years. So this article is referencing the oldest known _wooden_ tools, which are obviously much less likely to be preserved across the ages. |
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| ▲ | adgjlsfhk1 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| We have 3.3 million year old stone tools https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14464. They're very simple (even more so than the Oldowan stone tools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan) and basically just look like rocks, but there is clear evidence of intentional shaping by hominins (somewhere in the fuzzy late Australopthis/early homo transition). |
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| ▲ | drakythe 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Thanks for these sources. Archeology definitely is a big known unknown for me, so even getting started reading basic info about this is rough. I appreciate the links and terms. | | |
| ▲ | sophacles 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | This youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/stefanmilo has a lot of good stuff. I don't know enough to know where he's right or wrong, but provides entry points for to looking more into it. I have gone down a couple rabbit holes based on his videos and while it seems like he's occasionally gotten some facts wrong or misunderstood an argument, I'm pretty confident he's doing a decent job accurately representing the archaeology. | | |
| ▲ | drakythe 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Awesome. I've watched plenty of Miniminuteman (Milo Rossi) videos, but his tend to be more pop-sci/debunking outrageous claims and less foundationally educational. I'll check this channel out too. |
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| ▲ | throwup238 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| We have evidence of control over fire (but not fire starting) at about 1 million years. Stone tools go even further back, at least 2 million years. |
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| ▲ | drakythe 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Wait hang on, would they "control" file by finding natural sources (volcano, lightning strike wildfire, etc.) and then make use of that source for controlled sources of light/heat/etc? I guess I've always thought of "control" of fire including the intentional starting thereof. | | |
| ▲ | adgjlsfhk1 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Wait hang on, would they "control" file by finding natural sources (volcano, lightning strike wildfire, etc.) and then make use of that source for controlled sources of light/heat/etc? Pretty much. Being able to transfer/build a fire is a lot easier than starting one. Fire starting requires bow/flint&steel and a lot of patience. Control basically means using simple torches to transfer fire from one place to another (where the initial source is either lightning/wildfire or embers of a previous fire). | | | |
| ▲ | sethammons an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Firehawks spread fire to scare out game; that count? https://wildlife.org/australian-firehawks-use-fire-to-catch-... | |
| ▲ | riffraff 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | ah, there's a very good movie about this exact topic (not scientifically accurate, one presumes, but still very good) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_for_Fire_(film) | | | |
| ▲ | sophacles 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | There's pretty strong evidence that the use of fire to cook food is what enabled modern humans, with their short (and relatively fragile) digestive systems and giant energy hungry brains to evolve. Cooking food makes more calories bio-available in food and also reduced the amount of energy the body needs to expend on that food to harvest calories... so there's more energy available for thinking (etc). | | |
| ▲ | dbcurtis 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | When is the first evidence for cooking? | | |
| ▲ | throwup238 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | That’s a complicated question. The Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa where we found the first evidence of controlled fire also contained burned plant remains and bones, which could be interpreted as evidence of cooking. There were also burned fish remains found at the Gesher Benot Ya’aqov site in Israel, dated to about 780 kYA, which could also be interpreted as evidence of cooking. By far the strongest evidence is the Qesem Cave in Israel, which had a central hearth and so many burned animal remains that it couldn’t have been accidental. Unfortunately the dating on that is controversial and the error bar is huge at 300 +- 100 kYA (200,000-400,000 years ago). | | |
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| ▲ | sandworm101 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And cooking kills like 99+% of pathogens, which freed us from much of the parasite/disease stress other animals must live with. | |
| ▲ | awesome_dude 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I had thought (perhaps wrongly) that our brains got a massive "boost" in capacity when our ancestors moved to coastal areas and the diet was dominated by (Omega 3 heavy) shellfish and crustaceans. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9505798/ |
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