The living
creatures consisting with five elements and fire is one of them. If we think
from the side of historian or archeologists then fire come to the knowledge
during Homo erectus. If we think from the side of scientists then the fire was
existed prior that.
Nature creates fire different way
There is two way the nature create
fire
During the rain lighting
During summer at forest
During the Rain, lighting
It is a natural
process when two clouds comes to each other create lighting. This lighting is
much more powerful then high voltage electric. Some time this lighting burn the
forest, trees even living creatures.
Fire during summer day
During summer day
everywhere in the forest can seen dry like Dry wood, dry leafs etc. The
sunlight in the forest during summer created hit for which when two dry wood
comes to each other create fire. In this fire every year many creatures were
born. During era of Sahelanthropus, they were not aware about fire and
many sahelanthRopus die due to fir.
During sahelanthropus era they were
lived like as hunter. Only they consumed fruits and raw meat.
The sahelanthropus
once consumed burn meat and the said meat was very tasty. They tried to
control the fir and diverted the said fire for the benefit of there. The
sahelanthropus knew that the all animals / creatures had fear to the
fire.
Sahelanthropus
think about how to save fire for that they saved the fire by way of burn for
altime. During that time sahelanthropus were lived on tree due to fear of
dangerous animals who can kill them. Slowly they know how to use the
fire. Initially they saved the fire and on that fire they burn the meat
and the said meat they eat. And they used the fire as protector (bodyguard)
from the animals.
All cultures, from
the Inuit of the frozen Arctic to the hunter-gatherers of sub-Saharan Africa,
are sustained by food that has been chemically and physically transformed by heat.
It was an incredible invention. Cooking makes food more digestible and kills
off the bacteria that cause food poisoning. But where and when it started is
hotly debated. You might call it a food fight.
At Trinil, Java,
burned wood has been found in layers that carried H. erectus (Java Man) fossils
dating from 830,000 to 500,000 years ago. The burned wood has been discovered
by archeologists and those materials used of fire by early hominids.
More over the archeologists found some evidence dating to approximately 164,000 years ago and that early humans living in South Africa in the Middle Stone Age used fire as an engineering tool to alter the mechanical properties of the materials they used to make tools and improve their lives. Researchers found evidence that suggests early humans applied a method of heat treatment to a fine-grained, local rock called silcrete. Once treated, the heated rocks were modified and tempered into crescent shaped blades or arrowheads.
The evidence which were discovered that early humans probably used the modified tools for hunting or cutting meat from killed animals. Researchers postulate that this may have been the first time that the bow and arrow was used for hunting, an advancement that had a significant impact on how early humans may have lived, hunted, and existed as community groups.
According to a 2012
study in the journal Science, at the site in Israel, dating back about 800,000
years ago, archaeologists have found hearths, flint and burned wood fragments.
According to a 2012 study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences another site, this one called Wonderwerk Cave at R31, Kuruman, 8460, South Africa, scientists found
evidence that humans used fire about 1 million years ago. In that cave, they
found remnants of burned bone and plants and what appear to be hearths.
Though Wonderwerk is the earliest site where most experts agree
humans used fire, in theory they should have been using it much earlier. Around
2 million years ago, the gut of the human ancestor Homo erectus began
shrinking, suggesting that something such as cooking was making digestion a lot
easier. Meanwhile, its brain was growing, which requires a lot of energy.
Wonderwerk Cave, by
contrast, is a protected environment less prone to spontaneous flames. What’s
more, an analysis by Berna and his colleagues showed that sediment clinging to
charred items there was also heated, suggesting fires were kindled onsite. For
these reasons, the team described the singed traces unearthed at Wonderwerk as
“the earliest secure evidence for burning in an archaeological context.”
The next stage
involved interaction with burned landscapes and foraging in the wake of
wildfires, as observed in various wild animals. In the African savanna, animals
that preferentially forage in recently burned areas include savanna chimpanzees
(a variety of Pan troglodytes verus), vervet monkeys (Cercopithecus aethiops)
and a variety of birds, some of which also hunt insects and small vertebrates
in the wake of grass fires.
Archeologists have
found some evidence which shows that the cooking pot initially used by china
dating back of 20.000 years. Thereafter the creating and use of pot technology
spread other part of world.
This would have
enabled more regular and managed use, allowing the development of cooking,
expanding our diet. According to British primatologist Richard Wrangham,
cooking may have played a role in the expansion of our brains. The hearth would
have probably formed a social focus, helping the development of language. The
use of flints to start fire may have occurred as far back as 400,000 years ago,
but concrete evidence only comes from as recently as 40,000 years ago.
The British
archeologist John Gowlett has described the discovery of fire by humans as a
convoluted process that took place over a long period of time.
The earliest firm evidence that the species item was cooking dates back just 20,000 years, when the first pots were made in China. The scorch marks and soot on their outer surfaces point to their use as cooking utensils. But all in all, archaeological evidence doesn’t have a clear picture. But whenever cooking was invented, it has evolved into one of the most varied and inventive elements of human culture. We cook thousands of different types of animal, plant, fungus and algae using a dazzling array of techniques. We spend far more hours planning and preparing food than actually eating it, and then sit down to watch programs about it, hosted by people who have become millionaire household names.
In Dr. Gowlett's
analysis, our ancestors' first interaction with fire probably came following a
lightning storm or other weather event that triggered natural wildfires. These
wildfires would cause animals to scatter, making them easy pickings for early
humans waiting on the periphery. (Other animals, such as hawks, are known to
engage in such behavior.)
In the Middle Awash River Valley (paleoanthropological research area), cone-shaped depressions of reddish clay were found that could have been formed by temperatures of 200 °C (392 °F). These features, thought to have been created by burning tree stumps, were hypothesized to have been produced by early hominids lighting tree stumps so they could have fire away from their habitation site. However, this view is not widely accepted.[15] Burned stones are also found in Awash Valley, but volcanic welded tuff is also found in the area which could explain the burned stones.
The most powerful evidence comes from
Kalambo Falls in Zambia where many things related to the use of fire by humans
had been found, like charred wood, charcoal, reddened areas, carbonized grass
stems and plants, and wooden implements which may have been hardened by fire.
The place was dated through radiocarbon dating to be at 61,000 years ago and
110,000 years ago through amino acid racemization.
There are many
sites in Europe like Torralba and Ambrona, Spain, and St. Esteve-Janson, France
have found evidence of use of fire by later versions of H. erectus. The various
site in England at the site of Beeches Pit, Suffolk; uranium series dating and
thermoluminescence dating place the use of fire at 415,000 years ago which is
vary oldest. At Hungary, while no charcoal has been found, burned bones have
been discovered dating from c. 350,000 years ago. At Torralba and Ambrona,
Spain, objects such as Acheulean stone tools, remains of large mammals such as
extinct elephants, charcoal, and wood were discovered. At Saint-Estève-Janson
in France, there is evidence of five hearths and reddened earth in the Escale
Cave. These hearths have been dated to 200,000 years ago. Evidence for fire
making dates to at least the Middle Paleolithic, with dozens of Neanderthal
hand axes from France exhibiting use-wear traces suggesting these tools were
struck with the mineral pyrite to produce sparks around 50,000 years ago.
