Fire Used 1 Million Years Ago

[Anonymous No.4536019]

>Researchers think they have found 1,000,000-year-old evidence of human campfires at Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa.
>http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/04/quest-for-fire-began-earlier-tha.html
I just thought /sci/ would find this interesting.

[Anonymous No.4536031]

>>4536027
Yes.

[Anonymous No.4536027]

>1,000,000 year old human campfires
>human
>1 million years ago

[Anonymous No.4536035]

>>4536031
>>4536027
Homo sapiens wasn't around, but our ancestors were.

[Anonymous No.4536033]

>>4536027
Why so punctuated equilibrium?

[Anonymous No.4536041]

>>4536035
this

"Human" isn't utterly synonymous with homo sapiens.

[Anonymous No.4536068]

No one finds this interesting?

[Anonymous No.4536084]

>>4536068
I do but have nothing to say. Neat data point.

[Anonymous No.4536091]

>>4536068
yea but what do you want me to say?

i find the human classification debate more interesting and worthy of discussion

[Anonymous No.4536099]

It was probably OP's mom smoking in bed. After I fucked her. In the ass.

[Anonymous No.4536102]

have monkeys been seen using fire before?

[Anonymous No.4536114]

>>4536019
Certainly puts the present rate of scientific advancement in perspective. What's the next big human milestone after fire?

[Anonymous No.4536115]

From my anth textbook...
>Suggestive evidence of the deliberate use of fire comes from Kenya in East Africa and is over 1.4 million years old.
So I think we already knew this.

[Anonymous No.4536121]

>spontaneous combustion of bat guano--an event that is rare but has been documented elsewhere

[Anonymous No.4536138]

>>4536121

don't underestimate the power of guano. That's some really potent shit

[Anonymous No.4536150]

>>4536138

It just causes me to picture bats flying around and flaming bat turds flying toward the ground.

[Anonymous No.4536157]

>>4536115
Name of book please.

Better yet, source if it has one within the text.

[Anonymous No.4536164]

>>4536121
>>4536138
Bat guano was once the major source of nitrates for explosives and fertilizers. Then it got replaced by the Haber-Bosch process.

[Anonymous No.4536175]

>>4536102
Kanzi the bonobo understands the concept, but he uses matches or a lighter.
http://dailypicksandflicks.com/2011/12/30/kanzi-the-bonobo-chimp-lights-fire-and-cooks-food-video/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanzi

[Anonymous No.4536186]

>>4536175
Yeah, but he was trained to do that.

[Anonymous No.4536190]

>>4536186
That's a fuzzy gray area. Now that he knows about it, he occasionally wants to do it and initiates the process himself.

[Anonymous No.4536193]

>>4536190
Well, maybe it would be a step in the right direction if he could teach that to other mokeys, preferably without human intervention.

[Anonymous No.4536197]

>>4536190
>>4536186
>>4536175
More of Kanzi cooking.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/howaboutthat/8985122/Amazing-photos-of-Kanzi-the-bo
nobo-lighting-a-fire-and-cooking-a-meal.html

[Anonymous No.4536198]

>>4536190
just like masturbating
i wonder which species masturbated first

[Anonymous No.4536199]

>Researchers think

well that says a lot

[Anonymous No.4536201]

>>4536198
first one to have genitalias?

[Anonymous No.4536200]

>>4536193
The problem is that apes don't seem to do this. They don't actively teach each other - though they will watch and copy each other if they see a reason for it.

[Anonymous No.4536205]

Listen guise.. guise...

[Anonymous No.4536214]

>>4536200
Just get them addicted to nicotine and leave them alone with cigarettes and matches, nature will do the rest.

[Anonymous No.4536218]

>>4536214
They have to already have a smoking habit, or they won't know that cigarettes help their nicotine cravings.

That said, there *are* chimps with smoking habits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viVqPVVzOUU

[Anonymous No.4536221]

>Other researchers challenged Beaumont's finding. The ash and burnt bits, critics suggested, could have blown into the cave from a forest fire or resulted from the spontaneous combustion of bat guano

really man? really? how thick can some people get

[Anonymous No.4536226]

>>4536221
It's apparently been documented. Rare, weird, but possible.

[Anonymous No.4536230]

>>4536157
Name of book is "Human Evolution and Culture"
Source is "The Archaeology of Human Origins: Studies of the Lower Pleistocene in East Africa."
But remember it is just suggestive evidence not conclusive.

[Anonymous No.4536232]

>>4536114

>What's the next big human milestone after fire?

scientific method. unless of course people fuck it up, which they seem to be.

[Anonymous No.4536235]

>>4536232
Nah, that would be the wheel.

[Anonymous No.4536243]

>>4536235
Or writing. Some cultures didn't use wheels for a while.

[Anonymous No.4536244]

>>4536226
It's not rare, almost anything decaying can catch fire in the right conditions. I've seen compost bins catch fire.

[Anonymous No.4536245]

>>4536243
Or agriculture

[Anonymous No.4536256]

>>4536245
Oh, whoops. Yeah, agriculture probably predates writing just about anywhere. Oral tradition is just fine until you have the larger populations and stability that agriculture brings. Some nomadic North American plains tribes didn't have writing until very recently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee#Language_and_writing_system

[Anonymous No.4536262]

Fire
Agriculture
written language
???
Scientific method (or maybe electricity or the printing press or something)

After that inventions get so rapid who know; computers and the internet changed the shit out of society in like 10 years.

[Anonymous No.4536265]

>>4536262
>Fire
>Agriculture
>written language
religion
>Scientific method (or maybe electricity or the printing press or something)

At least, that's how it worked for us.

[Anonymous No.4536269]

>>4536262
In the middle you have domesticating animals, selective breeding, irrigation, crop rotation, astronomy and calendars (closely tied to agriculture), many tiers of metalworking, primitive chemistry and medicine...

[Anonymous No.4536276]

>>4536265
But there are/were nomads without written language or agriculture that have religion. All you need is basically an oral tradition about your relationship to the natural world.

[Anonymous No.4536278]

>>4536269
Don't forget sailing.

[Anonymous No.4536280]

>>4536276
yeah, alright, let's be a little more specific
>organized religion

[Anonymous No.4536282]

>>4536269

would consider a lot of those minor milestones; Was thinking along the lines of inventions that drastically shaped us as a whole.

[Anonymous No.4536285]

>>4536280

I'd consider religion as more of a side effect than a milestone; though I guess it was important for keeping the masses in check back in the day.

[Anonymous No.4536286]

>>4536282
Hmmm.

Money replacing barter?

[Anonymous No.4536289]

>>4536265
>God
>Fire
>Agriculture
>written language
religion
>Scientific method (or maybe electricity or the printing press or something)

At least, that's how it worked for us.

[Anonymous No.4536290]

>>4536286
Came and went as the governments behind the currency did. Unless you're just talking about gold itself, and not coinage.

[Anonymous No.4536296]

>>4536286
>>4536290
A codified set of laws then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi

Most human social endeavors rely on everyone following a set of pro-social norms and punishing defectors.