The world’s most Ancient bonfire ever discovered

A four-hundred-thousand-year-old bonfire has been found in the south of England. If we talk about when people actually began to use fire in some way, then here we fall a million years into the past, when there was still no Homo sapiens. At that time, various hominins roamed Africa, which is the name of a group of primates to which the genus Homo belongs. Some of those ancient hominins seemed to be able to handle fire.

But what does “manage” mean? Most likely, it was a fire that broke out for natural reasons, and the ancestors of people could support it for a while and move it from place to place. Visit. A F R I N I K. C O M . For the full article. If we talk about man-made fire, which is kindled regularly with the help of special tools (for example, stones that give sparks on impact), then until now, reliable traces of such fire date back to about 50 thousand years ago.

During excavations in southern England, archaeologists discovered something similar to a campfire. There was no coal, ashes, or burnt bones, but there were stones with a distinctive red coating, which could indicate that they had been on fire. Until recently, it was impossible to determine from such scant evidence whether it was a man-made fire or the remnants of a natural fire. But now researchers have methods that make it possible to understand whether a fire appeared in a particular place once or several times, how strong it was and what combustion products remained after it.

The combined data showed that the red coating on the stones was the result of intense heat and that it was most likely a bonfire that burned several times and each time for a short time than a natural fire. The ratio of polycyclic hydrocarbons also indicated that the fire was the work of man. In addition, pieces of the pyrite mineral were found around the stones, which, as a rule, is extremely rare in the area where the excavations were carried out.

Pyrite emits sparks on impact, and it could have been placed there intentionally to start a fire. Over time, it oxidizes and no longer gives off sparks, but the pyrite found next to the ancient bonfire oxidized after it was brought there. The age of the finds is said to be approximately 400,000 years old.

However, the researchers were unable to find the stones from which pyrite was extracted, which would have the appropriate markings. If such stones existed, they would be direct and unequivocal evidence that the fire was caused by humans. Nevertheless, the combination of circumstantial evidence seems convincing enough to declare this place the oldest example of the regular use of fire, which, if necessary, was ignited using improvised means.

It was lit not by Homo sapiens, which did not exist at that time, but, most likely, by Neanderthals. Previously, experts assumed that fire became commonplace among members of the genus Homo sometime between 400,000 and 300,000 years ago, and now these assumptions have been more or less reliably confirmed by an archaeological find.