NEW YORK — When did our ancestors first use fire? That has been a long-running debate, and a new study concludes the earliest firm evidence comes from about 1 million years ago in a South African cave.
The ash and burned bone samples found there suggest fires frequently blazed in that spot, researchers said Monday.
Over the years, some experts have cited evidence of fire from as long as 1.5 million years ago, and some have argued it was used even earlier, a key step toward evolution of a larger brain. It’s a tricky issue. Even if you find evidence of an ancient blaze, how do you know it wasn’t just a wildfire?
The ancestors probably brought burning material from natural blazes into the cave to establish the fires, said study co-author Michael Chazan of the University of Toronto. Stone tools at the site suggest the ancestors were Homo erectus, a species known from as early as about 2 million years ago.
It’s not clear what the fires were used for. While the charred bones suggest cooking, the ancestors might have eaten the meat raw and tossed the bones into the fire.
