A newly discovered hearth full of ash and charred bone in a cave in
modern-day Israel hints that early humans sat around fires as early as
300,000 years ago — before Homo sapiens arose in Africa.
In and around the hearth, archaeologists say they also found bits of stone tools that were likely used for butchering and cutting animals.
The finds could shed light on a turning point in the development of culture
"in which humans first began to regularly use fire both for cooking
meat and as a focal point — a sort of campfire — for social gatherings,"
said archaeologist Ruth Shahack-Gross of the Weizmann Institute of
Science in Israel.
"They also tell us something about the impressive levels of social and
cognitive development of humans living some 300,000 years ago,"
Shahack-Gross added in a statement.
The centrally located fire pit is about 6.5 feet (2 meters) in diameter
at its widest point, and its ash layers suggest the hearth was used
repeatedly over time, according to the study, which was detailed in the
Journal of Archaeological Science on Jan. 25. Shahack-Gross and
colleagues think these features indicate the hearth may have been used
by large groups of cave dwellers. What's more, its position implies some
planning went into deciding where to put the fire pit, suggesting
whoever built it must have had a certain level of intelligence.
Controversial cave
Qesem Cave was discovered more than a decade ago during the
construction of a road some 7 miles (11 kilometers) east of Tel Aviv. At
the site, excavators had previously uncovered other traces of fire
(scattered deposits of ash and clumps of soil that had been heated to
high temperatures) as well as the butchered bones of big game like deer, aurochs and horse left their by the prehistoric cave dwellers, possibly up to 400,000 years ago.
Anthropologists have debated what constitutes the earliest evidence of
controlled fire use — and which hominin species was responsible for it.
Ash and burnt bone in Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa suggests human
ancestors used fire at least 1 million years ago. Some researchers,
meanwhile, have speculated that the teeth of Homo erectus suggest this early human was adapted to eat food cooked over a fire by 1.9 million years ago. A study out last year in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal
argued that fire-builders would have needed some sophisticated
abilities to keep their hearths burning, such as long-term planning
(gathering firewood) and group cooperation.
It's not entirely clear who was cooking at Qesem Cave. A study
published about three years ago in the American Journal of Physical
Anthropology described teeth found in the cave dating to between 400,000
and 200,000 years ago. The authors speculated the teeth might have
belonged to modern humans (Homo sapiens), Neanderthals or perhaps a different species, though they noted they couldn't draw a solid conclusion from their evidence.
Nonetheless, study researcher Avi Gopher, an archaeologist from Tel Aviv University, said in an interview with Nature
at the time, "The best match for these teeth are those from the Skhul
and Qafzeh caves in northern Israel, which date later [to between 80,000
and 120,000 years ago] and which are generally thought to be modern
humans of sorts."
That interpretation is at odds with the predominant view that modern
humans, the only human species alive today, originated about 200,000
years ago in Africa before dispersing to other parts of the world.
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