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

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.

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.