Well, today I learned something! Thanks for the information, I guess I know which rabbit hole I'm going down today.

throwup238 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Just edited to add two paper citations for the phytoliths and microwear studies. Have fun! It’s a deep rabbit hole largely ignored by popsci publications so there’s lots to explore.

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niwtsol 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

As you seem knowledgeable of this topic and it is super interesting, any books you would recommend that gives a good broad overview of all of this?

	▲	throwup238 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don’t read popsci but if you’re interested in a rigorous treatment I’d recommend The Human Career by Klein which has the broad overview and The Human Past edited by Scarre which is more of a textbook. I mostly just read the papers as they are published but I’ve heard good things about those two books (they’re on my reading list but I haven’t read enough to form an opinion)

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drakythe 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Thanks! I'll add them to my reading list for today. Its going to be interesting, I can already tell.

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wil421 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

To put it into perspective, we did not invent fire.

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Sharlin 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Well, nobody did, because fire was likely used for tens or hundreds of thousands of years before anyone figured out how to make fire on demand.

	▲	dredmorbius an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Use of fire considerably pre-dates H. sapiens, with anthropological evidence dating to 1.7 -- 2 million years ago. Sapiens diverged from common ancestors about 600,000 years ago. "We" (Homo sapiens) did not invent fire. Our predecessor species were already using it. Firestarting is harder to pin down and may be within the scope of homo evolution. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_human...> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human#Evolution>
	▲	taejavu 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Which is what the comment you’re replying to means by “invent”.