Ancient Humans Learned to Use Fire 1 Million Years Ago As Detected in Animal Fossils, Tools That Heated Over 400 Degrees Celsius

In new research, scientists used an artificial intelligence or spectroscopic thermometer to detect minute chemical changes examined by deep learning algorithms, which can estimate the stones and fossils' exposure to heat.

As specified in a ScienceAlert report, mastering fire "cleared the way into whole new worlds" for ancient humans, from accessing more nutrients using cooking, fueling an increase in the size of the brain, to making the dark hours useful, as well as surviving migrations into harsher, climates.

Nonetheless, the manner and time this mastery occurred have been lost to time, with remnants of burnt material hinting the flame taming may have started up to 1.5 million years back.

Now, the researchers used machine learning to detect hidden hints of campfires from a Lower Paleolithic area in Israel, dating back roughly one million years ago.

AI Thermometer Used

Identifying fire at archeological places typically depends on visual hints such as soil reddening, cracking, warping, discoloration, and shrinking materials.

According to Isreal-based Kimmel Center for Archeological Science's Zane Stepka and colleagues, they used the said thermometer on flint artifacts from a place in Israel, dated between one and 0.8 million years back.

The artifacts were discovered alongside fossils of animals within yellow-gray sand and sat on top of red loam. There was no evidence or visual specification of fire use at this site.

However, according to a Mail Online report, the AI thermometer showed subtle chemical signatures, suggesting several stone tools and pieces of tusk had been heated to an assortment of temperatures, some higher than 400 degrees Celsius. Thai then proposes they had come in contact with fire.

Early Hominins Controlled the Fire

While the team warned that they could not rule out wildfires at this point, as the place was in an open area, the tools and bones' clustering suggested early hominins were, in fact, controlling the fire.

It was thought that the use of fire by hominins prior to roughly 150,000 years ago was only opportunistic, like the Australian raptors intentionally spreading flames to contribute to the flushing out of prey. However, if these fires are certainly confined to campsites, this suggests otherwise.

Essentially, just a handful of archeological places feature signs of ancient artifacts alongside evidence of fire, adding weight to the notion that the ancestors were already using such a powerful technology back then.

Further utilization of the new approach could help scientists reveal more about the time, and manner humans tamed the flames, according to the researchers.

Reassessing artifacts unearthed from other Lower Paleolithic sites, including those in the Levant, may broaden the "spatiotemporal understanding of the relationship between early hominins and fire, the researchers wrote in their study published in the PNAS journal.

Related information about ancient humans making fire is shown on Slate's YouTube video below:

Check out more news and information on Archeology in Science Times.