Fire is indeed eternal, it has been on Earth since the beginning of time…
So what if man did not discover fire?
Did you know that the discovery of fire changed us as a race?
So what would have happened if fire never entered our lives, would we even be here today?
That is the question.
Fire is the Beginning and the End
Fire exists in nature that much we know…
But the moment when a human figured out how to create fire completely changed everything for our species.
In fact, if humans had not discovered how to create fire, practically everything throughout the course of history would have changed or maybe even not have happened at all.
A question you have always wanted to know the answer to understand what human life might have been like if we had never discovered how to create fire.
Fire is existence…
We have got to go to an island in the Bay of Bengal North Sentinel island, there is a tribe that lives on North Sentinel island have not figured out how to create fire.
Really!
Yes, they still use fire but they have to wait for lightning to strike on the island then they simply keep the embers lit as long as possible until lightning strikes again.
These North sentinels live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and they avoid contact with the outside world.
And even there are other local tribe’s life like the North Sentinelese has not changed much in 60,000 years.
They are completely untouched by civilization, this can give us some insight into what life would have been like for humans if we had never mastered fire.
Around 1.8 million years ago hominids began to experience a growth in brain size this of course was not by accident.
Intelligence Through Fire
It was because hominids began consuming more calories.
The first encounter that early humans had with fire probably came after some sort of lightning storm or wildfire.
The food that became cooked by the fire was found and tried, and it was almost likely a lot more appetizing than raw food.
And when Homo erectus figured this out for themselves… They probably wanted to replicate it.
And why wouldn’t they?
They then took the embers of the old fires and sheltered them from rain.
Now the exact time that humans mastered fire is debated among many anthropologists.
Some say it happened around six hundred thousand years ago, while others say three hundred thousand and others even 125 thousand years ago.
There has been evidence discovered of charred bones and primitive stone tools in a cave in South Africa which suggests that some of our ancestors figured out how to master fire around 1 million years ago.
Regardless of whether or not humans could create fire.
They still used it for cooking by keeping old embers lit as long as possible, creating fire meant being able to cook.
This was the real breakthrough of being able to cook meant being able to consume more different types of food which led to better nutrition and calorie intake.
This is where it led to the advancement of the brain in Homo sapiens.
And cooking food also meant less bacteria and fewer diseases.
Which in turn meant that humans started to live longer lives.
If it were not for fire our entire species might not even exist today.
This is just how important fire has been to our species!
Yet, if we did find a way to evolve without fire, we would most likely still be living in the Stone Age…
And still making many different types of ancient tools and weapons to survive.
Early man needed fire!
There were ancient spears that had been found to have been fire-hardened. Creating spears meant that humans could change the way they hunted as well…
Fire would also have created warmth for stone-age man. It can be said that fire took away our need to keep our bodies warm with hair.
And here we are, hairless today.
Perhaps humans that lived further away from the equator where it was colder would have most probably evolved differently.
Then there is also the thought that perhaps humans would not have ventured to colder climates had they not found a way to create fire…
In fact, fire allowed humans to travel and settle in colder climates because it meant that they could follow a herd of animals, hunt them, and then return to a campfire to warm up and seek shelter at night time.
Civilisation Because of Fire
The fire led to the creation of larger settlements and cultural advancements.
Humans began to be more social they began to gather around fires and create base campsites.
Animals were afraid of fire so having a fire close by was a good way to ward off predators.
Hominids also discovered that meat could be dried using fire and could then have been preserved for times when meat was scarce.
The fire was also used to create art.
It was probably the shared remains of sticks that stone age man found that left a mark on a surface.
You could say that this was the first writing tool of man.
And so they started to draw what they saw, leaving the first recognised sign of a recorded sight or imagination.
And a society with art means that society is a society with culture, clay pottery and statues are just a couple of examples of this.
The earliest discovery of pottery was from 20,000 years ago in China.
In short…..
Modern civilization as we know it today, would not have existed without the ability to control fire.
Fire is a part of our lives still, and most probably always will be. I think that people just have no idea how fire has shaped man through the ages.
And it is a fascinating insight to have a window back in time to teach us just how integral fire has been to the shaping of our civilizations till today.