4 ms·
We didn't come to rule the world with our intelligence... we came to rule it with fire. Fire, control over it and the ability to make it, is the one thing huma
by jbotz 6y ago
We didn't come to rule the world with our intelligence... we came to rule it with fire.
Fire, control over it and the ability to make it, is the one thing humans have that no other animal has. We may (or not) be more intelligent, have a more complex capacity for language, etc., but those are differences of degree. Only fire is truly a difference of kind. We are the animal that makes fire.
Fire is literally what made us what we are... it is probable that increased availability of food calories from cooking was what allowed us to grow our big and calorically expensive brains. So fire comes before our vaunted intelligence. And then fire made us the most powerful creatures on earth, and enabled what we call civilization and technology and progress, each new stage in our development enabled by ever greater dissipation of energy gradients... mostly through fire. Although we did also harness other energy sources throughout history, such as wind and running water, and lately, nuclear fission, always fire was primary, the real driver of our dominion over the planet, even today.
And as it looks, fire will be our end as well, as we use it to release the fossil energy nature stored up over millions of years in mere decades and turn our lovely earth into an inferno.
- cercatrova 6y agoI really do wonder how humans would've adapted had we been aquatic animals. Energy usage via fire is not possible, and it seems other energy usage under water is much harder than simply creating fire, so we could still have the same level of intelligence as now, yet be so far behind technologically than we are now.
- treeman79 6y agoWater is crazy competitive. Octopi ate probably pushing the limits on useful intelligence.
- groby_b 6y agoExcept for Australian Hawks, who use wildfire to flush out smaller animals.
- minitoar 6y agoDo the hawks create or aid the spread of fire? One could say Redwood trees are similar for having evolved to take advantage of fire.
- groby_b 6y agoIIRC, Australian hawks intentionally spread fires by dropping burning pieces of wood. They do this cooperatively, too. (Don't piss off Australian Hawks, I guess ;) https://bioone.org/journals/journal-of-ethnobiology/volume-37/issue-4/0278-0771-37.4.700/Intentional-Fire-Spreading-by-Firehawk-Raptors-in-Northern-Australia/10.2993/0278-0771-37.4.700.full https://bioone.org/journals/journal-of-ethnobiology/volume-3...
- liability 6y agoProbably neither. The evidence for any of this is about as strong as the evidence for Bigfoot. A bunch of tall tails from people who swear they're sincere.
- throwaway889900 6y agoI wonder if the Black Kite will ever come to rule the world one day then.
- benlivengood 6y agoThe alternative for intelligent species without fire is to evolve fancier biochemistry; it's hard to know where this might evolve but several species have independently produced harsh acids, venoms, and even combustion (bombardier beetle). When it comes down to it you can grow your tools or you can make them out of the environment, and arguably being able to grow effective tools is superior (which likely means it's more complex and why it didn't evolve before fire use). My bet would be on the cephalopods; they've already got ink and venom and intelligence and prehensile limbs with chromatophores that could potentially evolve into tiny manipulable chemical factories. They would probably also need to evolve the longevity and social and communication abilities to pass knowledge on in a society.