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Article: Charred Fossils Suggest Fire May Have Been Tamed 1.5 Million Years Ago
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- December 1, 1988
- Author:
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Charred bones from a South African cave are the first direct
evidence that ancestors of humans had tamed fire as long ago as 1.5
million years, according to a report yesterday in the British journal
Nature.
The earliest previous direct evidence of fire use had come from a
Chinese site dated about 400,000 years ago. A site in Kenya has
showed baked earth that might have been a campsite 1.4 million years
ago.
The evidence reported yesterday is not just scorched ground.
Many burned bones of different animals are distributed throughout a
cave.
The evidence from the new study is "certainly the strongest to
date in favor of early human-controlled fire," said Eric Delson, a
professor of ...