10 ms·

Ancient human relative used fire, discoveries suggest

89 points by benbreen 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
polishdude20 4y ago
Is this that surprising? There was certainly lava in those times. Lightning strikes, bushfires. Any intelligent creature would be aware of the phenomenon and would be able to use it.
- usrusr 4y ago
  Lava is a very rare occurrence, the vast majority of all pairs of eyes that have ever lived have never seen any. And intelligent awareness of fire is hardly an inevitable path to utilization, individuals might just as well use all that to keep a safe distance. I guess what I'm trying to say, to my own surprise I might add, is that the key evolutionary requirement for for utilization is perhaps not so much intelligence, but a mating process involving a certain element of bravado.
  - polishdude20 4y ago
    Over the span of thousands of years and many many of these beings, it only takes a few to witness lava and learn about it. It's like ants finding sugar. Give it time and they'll come across it and then the whole nest will know about it fairly quickly.
    - kadoban 4y ago
      How many places do accessible pits of lava even exist? Isn't it rare enough that you'd have to live in exremely few places for that information to even be helpful?
- dotnet00 4y ago
  The surprising bit seems to be that this ancestor had a much less developed brain (according to the article, a brain the size of an orange). Besides that, the importance is that it further pushes back the point where our ancestors initially learned to harness fire. Plus, I think this might demonstrate a bit more advanced thinking than expected because they would've been using these fires to light the path into apparently fairly dangerous caves. Suggesting planning ability and some amount of comfort making and manipulating fire.
  - nomel 4y ago
    Seeing how unnecessarily intelligent the human brain is, for most environments, I would be more surprised if earlier humans (maybe later than these) didn't use fire than if they did. It's very doubtful that there was some step function in intelligence, to make that possible, since step functions are extremely rare in evolution.
    - dotnet00 4y ago
      The "unnecessarily intelligent" nature of a lot of humans was something I was thinking about too. For example, crows obviously have significantly smaller brains, yet demonstrate enough intelligence for at least basic tool use. So, in a biological sense it shouldn't be too surprising to find fire use at that point in evolution. But perhaps it's more interesting because of how that would relate to human level intelligence in general. If they were capable of manipulating fire and were capable of enough planning to use them to maintain a path within a deep cave, they would probably have had some ability to communicate as well. In which case, was our larger brain mass due to it simply not being enough of a detriment to survival or was there some big cognitive difference between these ancestors and modern humans that was also so much more advantageous to lead to our much larger brains? Yes, step functions don't really exist in evolution, but even for gradual changes it's worthwhile to understand why we specifically were successful in comparison to others which seem to meet the requirements we think might be important.
- adzm 4y ago
  Black Kites will carry burning twigs and fly them elsewhere to spread fire and force prey into the open.
singularity2001 4y ago
Be careful, there were distinct developmental steps: opportunistically using fire keeping and transporting fire making fire, intentionally and controlled the last step may have been discovered only in the last 10-100000 years, expert opinions diverge a lot here
- edgyquant 4y ago
  No way this is true. This would mean humans domesticated animals and began to develop farming before (or right as) they discovered how to make fire. A big reason humans developed our modern brains ~35kya is because of them cooking food (which makes digestion on proteins easier on the stomach)
  - bena 4y ago
    A lot of these things we don't have accurate timelines for because they're all pre-history. We find evidence of things, but no records.
  - yumraj 4y ago
    > A big reason humans developed our modern brains ~35kya is because of them cooking food (which makes digestion on proteins easier on the stomach) Probably a bizarre question/thought experiment , and no way we'll know in our lifetime - if we start feeding cooked food to some animal, will it develop a larger brain?
    - chitowneats 4y ago
      My guess is that it would depend on the animal. Most carnivore stomachs are highly optimized for digesting raw meat. My layman's understanding is that because humans are fairly balanced omnivores, we get more benefit from cooking meat.
      - glyphosate 4y ago
        The pH of human stomach acid is on par with that of many scavengers, such as vultures. Anthropological evidence indicates that early hominids, as they began their transition to a more carnivorous diet, were feeding on the left overs from other carnivorous predators - which would explain the need for such an extremely acidic stomach
Phithagoras 4y ago
I'll believe it when they release geochemical data for the soot and plot the locations of the "hearths" on the cave map. Where is the published peer reviewed paper associated with this announcement? This discovery was made in 2013, in a cave that was believed by the SA caving community to be well understood. Where are the hearths they claim to have found? Why did nobody in the previous 9 years of exploration and decades of caving see this? What makes them certain these are not carbide dumps from humans in the last 50 years? [1] Or organic matter that may have fallen from roof cracks? Also, what has happened to the 1500 bone fragments they have excavated Baboons in modern times are known to navigate caves without fire [2], the paleoanthropology community should still consider the possibility that H. Naledi had no need for light to place their dead these caves. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbide_lamp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbide_lamp [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9letjf7ZZGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9letjf7ZZGA
- ProjectArcturis 4y ago
  Yeah, I'm very skeptical. Just the decision to announce this by press release rather than peer reviewed paper suggests there are a lot of uncomfortable questions, similar to what you raised, that the authors are trying to avoid.
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    Berger's been taking some heat on Twitter where he announced this [1]. Apparently he considers a public-interest lecture and a publicity tour equivalent to a preprint on something like SSRN. Can't say I agree, but it seems to have been effective in getting people to talk about it. [1] https://twitter.com/LeeRberger/status/1599965297993129984?s=20&t=OcTy8jwBi4IdCMHF0cioUg https://twitter.com/LeeRberger/status/1599965297993129984?s=...
    - tokai 4y ago
      I mean he's kind of right. A preprint is just a badly formatted blog post published in a pdf. Until its finished and published. At least if one see peer-review journal literature as the gold standard of scientific discourse. Maybe this Berger thing has more to it, but scientists can (and maybe even should) talk about their ongoing research before there is a paper behind it.
groffee 4y ago
Of course they did, even birds use fire [0] [0] https://wildlife.org/australian-firehawks-use-fire-to-catch-prey/ https://wildlife.org/australian-firehawks-use-fire-to-catch-...
contingencies 4y ago
Consider fire for light vs. warmth vs. cooking vs. ritual vs. safety vs. hunting. One hypothesis: They lit fires to scare out bats to eat, possibly catching them in nets at the cave mouth. After decimating the population, they were forced to push deeper in to the cave system.
jjtheblunt 4y ago
off topic, but the title made me think of my dad with the Weber charcoal grill, instead of last decades of microwave for most everything
guessbest 4y ago
I would really like to plat a RTS game where instead of wizards it is homonid evolution
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hulitu 4y ago
> Ancient human relative used fire, discoveries suggest and the wheel.

89 points by benbreen 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Is this that surprising? There was certainly lava in those times. Lightning strikes, bushfires. Any intelligent creature would be aware of the phenomenon and would be able to use it.

usrusr 4y ago
Lava is a very rare occurrence, the vast majority of all pairs of eyes that have ever lived have never seen any. And intelligent awareness of fire is hardly an inevitable path to utilization, individuals might just as well use all that to keep a safe distance. I guess what I'm trying to say, to my own surprise I might add, is that the key evolutionary requirement for for utilization is perhaps not so much intelligence, but a mating process involving a certain element of bravado.
- polishdude20 4y ago
  Over the span of thousands of years and many many of these beings, it only takes a few to witness lava and learn about it. It's like ants finding sugar. Give it time and they'll come across it and then the whole nest will know about it fairly quickly.
  - kadoban 4y ago
    How many places do accessible pits of lava even exist? Isn't it rare enough that you'd have to live in exremely few places for that information to even be helpful?
dotnet00 4y ago
The surprising bit seems to be that this ancestor had a much less developed brain (according to the article, a brain the size of an orange). Besides that, the importance is that it further pushes back the point where our ancestors initially learned to harness fire. Plus, I think this might demonstrate a bit more advanced thinking than expected because they would've been using these fires to light the path into apparently fairly dangerous caves. Suggesting planning ability and some amount of comfort making and manipulating fire.
- nomel 4y ago
  Seeing how unnecessarily intelligent the human brain is, for most environments, I would be more surprised if earlier humans (maybe later than these) didn't use fire than if they did. It's very doubtful that there was some step function in intelligence, to make that possible, since step functions are extremely rare in evolution.
  - dotnet00 4y ago
    The "unnecessarily intelligent" nature of a lot of humans was something I was thinking about too. For example, crows obviously have significantly smaller brains, yet demonstrate enough intelligence for at least basic tool use. So, in a biological sense it shouldn't be too surprising to find fire use at that point in evolution. But perhaps it's more interesting because of how that would relate to human level intelligence in general. If they were capable of manipulating fire and were capable of enough planning to use them to maintain a path within a deep cave, they would probably have had some ability to communicate as well. In which case, was our larger brain mass due to it simply not being enough of a detriment to survival or was there some big cognitive difference between these ancestors and modern humans that was also so much more advantageous to lead to our much larger brains? Yes, step functions don't really exist in evolution, but even for gradual changes it's worthwhile to understand why we specifically were successful in comparison to others which seem to meet the requirements we think might be important.
adzm 4y ago
Black Kites will carry burning twigs and fly them elsewhere to spread fire and force prey into the open.

singularity2001 4y ago

Be careful, there were distinct developmental steps: opportunistically using fire keeping and transporting fire making fire, intentionally and controlled the last step may have been discovered only in the last 10-100000 years, expert opinions diverge a lot here

edgyquant 4y ago
No way this is true. This would mean humans domesticated animals and began to develop farming before (or right as) they discovered how to make fire. A big reason humans developed our modern brains ~35kya is because of them cooking food (which makes digestion on proteins easier on the stomach)
- bena 4y ago
  A lot of these things we don't have accurate timelines for because they're all pre-history. We find evidence of things, but no records.
- yumraj 4y ago
  > A big reason humans developed our modern brains ~35kya is because of them cooking food (which makes digestion on proteins easier on the stomach) Probably a bizarre question/thought experiment , and no way we'll know in our lifetime - if we start feeding cooked food to some animal, will it develop a larger brain?
  - chitowneats 4y ago
    My guess is that it would depend on the animal. Most carnivore stomachs are highly optimized for digesting raw meat. My layman's understanding is that because humans are fairly balanced omnivores, we get more benefit from cooking meat.
    - glyphosate 4y ago
      The pH of human stomach acid is on par with that of many scavengers, such as vultures. Anthropological evidence indicates that early hominids, as they began their transition to a more carnivorous diet, were feeding on the left overs from other carnivorous predators - which would explain the need for such an extremely acidic stomach

Phithagoras 4y ago

I'll believe it when they release geochemical data for the soot and plot the locations of the "hearths" on the cave map. Where is the published peer reviewed paper associated with this announcement? This discovery was made in 2013, in a cave that was believed by the SA caving community to be well understood. Where are the hearths they claim to have found? Why did nobody in the previous 9 years of exploration and decades of caving see this? What makes them certain these are not carbide dumps from humans in the last 50 years? [1] Or organic matter that may have fallen from roof cracks? Also, what has happened to the 1500 bone fragments they have excavated Baboons in modern times are known to navigate caves without fire [2], the paleoanthropology community should still consider the possibility that H. Naledi had no need for light to place their dead these caves. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbide_lamp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbide_lamp [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9letjf7ZZGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9letjf7ZZGA

ProjectArcturis 4y ago
Yeah, I'm very skeptical. Just the decision to announce this by press release rather than peer reviewed paper suggests there are a lot of uncomfortable questions, similar to what you raised, that the authors are trying to avoid.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  Berger's been taking some heat on Twitter where he announced this [1]. Apparently he considers a public-interest lecture and a publicity tour equivalent to a preprint on something like SSRN. Can't say I agree, but it seems to have been effective in getting people to talk about it. [1] https://twitter.com/LeeRberger/status/1599965297993129984?s=20&t=OcTy8jwBi4IdCMHF0cioUg https://twitter.com/LeeRberger/status/1599965297993129984?s=...
  - tokai 4y ago
    I mean he's kind of right. A preprint is just a badly formatted blog post published in a pdf. Until its finished and published. At least if one see peer-review journal literature as the gold standard of scientific discourse. Maybe this Berger thing has more to it, but scientists can (and maybe even should) talk about their ongoing research before there is a paper behind it.

groffee 4y ago

Of course they did, even birds use fire [0] [0] https://wildlife.org/australian-firehawks-use-fire-to-catch-prey/ https://wildlife.org/australian-firehawks-use-fire-to-catch-...

contingencies 4y ago

Consider fire for light vs. warmth vs. cooking vs. ritual vs. safety vs. hunting. One hypothesis: They lit fires to scare out bats to eat, possibly catching them in nets at the cave mouth. After decimating the population, they were forced to push deeper in to the cave system.

jjtheblunt 4y ago

off topic, but the title made me think of my dad with the Weber charcoal grill, instead of last decades of microwave for most everything

guessbest 4y ago

I would really like to plat a RTS game where instead of wizards it is homonid evolution

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

hulitu 4y ago

> Ancient human relative used fire, discoveries suggest and the wheel.