Archaeological hearths in Europe suggests that the oldest date to just 400,000 years ago!

[Don2222]

Hello

Humans may have been much later to master fire than we thought. A review of supposed archaeological hearths in Europe suggests that the oldest date to just 400,000 years ago. The finding suggests that humans expanded into cold northern climates without the warmth of fire – and that cooking was not the evolutionary trigger that boosted our brain size.

See more info here
http://www.newscientist.com/article...-spark-human-colonisation-of-cold-europe.html

 

[Mrs. Krabappel]

New scientist is not peer reviewed, and it's ideas are often hypothetical and not garnered from peer reviewed articles. Just ideas rolling, which is fine as long as it's not interpreted as solid science. That being said; there are good ideas there, and homonid evolution is a fascinating subject.

 

[BrotherBart]

Homonid control of fire dates back to the invention of the Super Cedar.

 

[Delta-T]

i would think one would want to look in Africa....not Europe, for really old hearths. I doubt they will be easy to find though. Leave it to the Europeans to try to claim fire all for themsleves...they also invented paper, gunpowder, and the boomarang.

 

[Adios Pantalones]

I remember a hypothesis that standing on hind legs to look for predators in tall grass was a major step in brain size. The additional benefit was that we could carry stuff with our hands if we balanced well on 2 stems.

Von Daniken thinks it was introduction of alien DNA. Here's one of my recent interpretations of what those ancestors may have looked like

The Earth is only 6000 years old though- so this is all hooey.