EVER watched a bunch of city slickers trying to light a campfire? Dancing around a tottering pile of wood with spluttering matches and singed fingers. Huffing and puffing to turn a faint glow into a proper flame. Filling the air with curses and eventually, perhaps, choking clouds of smoke.
Humans are adept at many things. Our brains and bodies are adapted for talking, spear throwing, handling tools and communal living. But lighting fires just doesn't seem to be on the list. Yet, astonishingly, there is growing evidence that humans – or at least our ancestors – have been using fires for an incredibly long time, as long as 1.6 million years.
Within palaeoanthropological circles, many people will be crossing their fingers, hoping the latest findings just aren't true. This is because hominid control of fire over a million years ago poses huge problems for current thinking about human evolution. The ...
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