When our distant ancestors first started using fire as a technology, they would have initially been using naturally occurring fire, probably from lightning stri

When our distant ancestors first started using fire as a technology, they would have initially been using naturally occurring fire, probably from lightning strikes (unless the tribe lived near an active volcano). The opportunity to harvest natural fire from lightning doesn't occur very often, so it was necessary to maintain an eternal fire. This was a very important job, passed down from one generation to the next, so of course it would become ritualized, and stories and myths about the importance of the job would be created. Myths and rituals are how you conserve and propagate culture in a pre-literate society. Actually, the first tribe to do this was probably before the invention of modern language, so who knows what this would have actually looked like. Are there myths in a pre-oral culture? There are other modalities of thought and communication other than modern oral language, so maybe! We know from the archeological record that the rate of tech progress in stone tools was extremely, almost incomprehensibly slow during the earliest stone ages. Likewise, it's probable that many long generations passed from the creation of firekeeping rituals (the eternal fire) to the discovery of techniques for making fire on demand. My guess is that the eternal fire has ancient roots, was strongly culturally conserved, and re-invented multiple times.