A whole bunch of 1000’s—if not over one million—years in the past, people discovered make fireplace. This could show to be probably the most vital developments in prehistoric human improvement, however the origin of this important discovery stays a contentious subject amongst students.
In a study printed final month within the journal Frontiers, researchers from Tel Aviv College proposed a brand new concept for what prompted people to begin making and controlling fires: to guard their meals from animals, and, most notably, to increase the prehistoric shelf lifetime of their meat by means of smoking and drying. In different phrases, prehistoric speck. The scientists declare to be the primary to suggest this speculation, which aligns with a broader concept they’ve been growing: that humans’ consumption of large animals—after which smaller ones when the megafauna turned extinct—drove vital prehistoric developments.
“The origins of fireplace use is a ‘burning’ subject amongst prehistory researchers world wide. It’s usually agreed that by 400,000 years in the past, fireplace use was widespread in home contexts—most probably for roasting meat, and maybe additionally for lighting and heating,” co-author Ran Barkai defined in a statement. “Nevertheless there may be controversy concerning the previous million years, and varied hypotheses have been put ahead to clarify why early people started utilizing fireplace. On this examine, we sought to discover a brand new perspective on the problem.”
Earlier than round 400,000 years in the past, early people comparable to Homo erectus used fireplace solely often, “in particular locations and for particular functions,” co-author Miki Ben-Dor defined. Beginning and sustaining a fireplace was an arduous course of that required a “compelling, energy-efficient motive.”
To analyze this motive, Barkai and Ben-Dor studied earlier analysis on all identified prehistoric websites with proof of fireplace use from between 1.8 million and 800,000 years in the past, amounting to 9 places. Their evaluation revealed that each one 9 websites featured an abundance of huge animal stays, together with elephants, hippopotamuses, and rhinoceroses.
“From earlier research, we all know that these animals had been extraordinarily vital to early human diets and offered many of the vital energy. The meat and fats of a single elephant, for instance, comprise hundreds of thousands of energy, sufficient to feed a gaggle of 20–30 individuals for a month or extra,” Ben-Dor stated. A efficiently hunted elephant or hippopotamus was “a sort of meat and fats ‘financial institution’ that wanted to be protected and preserved for a lot of days because it was coveted not solely by predators but in addition by micro organism.”
The researchers’ evaluation of the 9 prehistoric websites, mixed with their calculations of the potential “energetic benefit” of preserving giant sport and observations of contemporary hunter-gatherer societies, culminated in the concept people had been motivated to make fireplace to each defend their meat “banks” from different animals and to smoke and dry them for long-term preservation. As soon as people adopted fireplace to serve these means, they might have additionally used it for cooking “at zero marginal energetic value,” Barkai added. In different phrases, fireplace was initially used to smoke and dry meat, and solely later repurposed for cooking.
The researchers say their method backs a much bigger concept they’ve been growing—one which sees main prehistoric adjustments as reactions to shifts in weight-reduction plan. Early on, that meant searching large animals, however as these species dwindled, individuals began relying extra on smaller sport for meals.
Whereas we already knew that historic people, together with the enduring Ötzi the Iceman and ancient Native Americans in southwest Florida, had been curing and smoking meats 1000’s of years in the past, the researchers’ new concept predates this method by a whole bunch of 1000’s of years, and contextualizes it inside probably the most vital prehistoric human developments identified to science.
