The ability to make fire on demand has long been seen as a turning point in our evolutionary story. It unlocked benefits like cooking food, staying warm, and protection from predators. For thousands of years, our ancestors progressed from scavenging flames around wildfires to tending them and, eventually, sparking them deliberately.
Nick Ashton, a researcher working with the British Museum – which lead the study – told New Atlas that harvesting fire was reliant on natural events, particularly lightning strikes, and there would have been significant difficulties and costs in maintaining the fire. However, making fire allowed early humans to have it where and when they wanted, which led to routine use.
Pinpointing exactly when this kind of fire use evolved is tricky, since the traces of natural burns and human-made ones look alike. Now, a new study reports on a concentrated patch of heated sediment and burned stone tools from the East Farm Barnham archeological site.
The researchers found two fragments of pyrite, a mineral that can produce sparks when struck against flint, indicating that the early Neanderthals used them as “a fire-making kit.” These ancient deposits mark the earliest known evidence of fire-making, roughly 400,000 years ago.
“Full control of fire through manufacture was achieved 400,000 years ago by early Neanderthals,” co-author Ashton told New Atlas.
The Barnham site lies in a disused clay pit in Suffolk, UK, preserving traces of the period around 427,000 to 415,000 years ago. In this area, the team found a small patch of reddened sediment, about the size of a modest campfire, surrounded by two pyrites, 19 flints, and four broken hand axes, showing clear signs of heating. Pyrites are rare locally, and the early Neanderthals likely carried them in from elsewhere.
To confirm whether the red sediment’s discoloration and the altered artefacts were a deliberate human hearth rather than a natural occurrence, Ashton and his colleagues performed specific laboratory tests. The tiny-scale tests revealed that these were human-made fires and the area was used for repeated fire-making, with some sediment samples exceeding 750 °C (1,382 °F). Ashton told us that these are the sort of temperatures that would be reached in a campfire.
"[Early Neanderthals] had the knowledge to source pyrite, which was extremely rare in the area, and they knew about its properties in creating sparks when struck to ignite tinder,” said Ashton. “Even the tinder had to be carefully selected – certain dried fungi are particularly effective. This reflects a high level of cognition for early Neanderthals, not just in Britain, but more broadly across Europe.”
Previous evidence of fire-making was dated at about 50,000 years ago so this find pushes back our record by 350,000 years. The finding also suggests intentional fire-making was a skill that emerged before Homo sapiens evolved.
The study was published in Nature.
Source: British Museum
