Earliest Controlled Use of Fire by Homo erectus
- Date
- c. 1,000,000 BCE
- Category
- Science, technology & invention
- Region
- Africa
- Era
- Prehistory
- Significance
Around one million years ago, Homo erectus became the first hominin species for which there is widely accepted archaeological evidence of the deliberate use and maintenance of fire.
The clearest signs come from Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa, where microstratigraphic and spectroscopic analysis of Acheulean strata revealed burned bone and ashed plant remains produced by in situ burning deep inside the cave, dated to roughly 1.0 million years ago. Earlier candidate sites such as Koobi Fora (c. 1.5 Ma) and Chesowanja (c. 1.4 Ma) in Kenya, marked by reddened and heat-altered sediments, suggest the practice may extend back further, though their evidence is more contested. Rather than igniting fire from scratch, these early humans most likely captured embers from natural wildfires and kept them burning, a critical first step toward later mastery of fire-making. Control of fire transformed human evolution by enabling cooking, which increased dietary energy, providing warmth and protection from predators, and ultimately allowing hominins to expand into colder environments and develop more complex social behaviour.
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Further reading
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