Taming Fire: the First Scientist? Article Summary

Scientist have always estimated that the first time humans used fire was up to 250 thousand years ago. But new studies suggest that fire was used up to one million years ago by Homo Erectus due to the evidence of charred bones and a hearth in just about every Homo Erectus camp. One of the ways that archaeologists can tell whether animal bones have been cooked and not burned in a forest fire is by looking at the heat that it was exposed to. Wildfires create a lot less heat than hearth fires. Scientists can't really tell why our ancestors started using fire, maybe it was because it warded off predators and prey. Maybe it was because it made food a lot tastier and easier to digest. Cooking meat on the fire also gets rid of parasites like intestinal worms. Scientists think that the reason we started to eat cooked meat was because before we could harness fire we would scavenge for the corpses of animals after forest fires because they would taste a lot better than raw, uncooked meat. So as you can see scientists still arent sure when and why we started using fire but we do know that if we didn't we might not be here today.

MLA Citation: Cox, Mary Beth. "Taming Fire: the First Scientist?" Odyssey 1 Oct. 2009: 29-30. Print.