How did we discover fire?
CrowdScience
BBC
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 February 2022
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Controlling fire was a turning point in the development of human civilisation. But how did fire become part of the human toolkit? It's a question that has got Crowdscience listener Joseph wondering. He wants to know how humans first made fire and how that knowledge spread around the world, eventually developing into our industrial civilisations today.
Archaeologists have many different ideas and theories about this. Did humans learn the skill millions of years ago, and carry it with them as they migrated out of what is now Africa? Or was it a skill developed much later, after different groups had settled in different locations? Did people share the skill with each other or did different groups of people discover it individually?
Marnie Chesterton speaks to experts to try to piece together the archaeological clues to discover what kindled humankind's relationship with fire and flame. She hears about the early evidence of fire from Anand Jagatia, who visits Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa, and she speaks to an archaeologist who has found remains of burned flint suggesting campfire locations dating back hundreds of thousands of years in Israel. Marnie also tries her hand at making fire, Neanderthal style.
Contributors: Dr Andrew Sorensen, Leiden University Prof Nira Alperson-Afil, Bar-Ilan University Prof Richard Wrangham, Harvard University Dr David Morris, McGregor Museum Candice Koopowitz, Simon Fraser University Dr Katharine MacDonald, Leiden University
Presented by Marnie Chesterton and Produced by Hannah Fisher for BBC World Service
Image Credit: Getty Images
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.5 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC sounds. |
| 0:29.7 | I would say hold it from the edges like this okay and then this part here and then just |
| 0:37.9 | down yeah watch your show welcome to crowd science from the BBC World Service. I'm Marnie Chesterton. |
| 0:47.0 | Faster isn't necessarily better. |
| 0:51.0 | And that is Dr Andrew Sorrenton from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. |
| 0:55.0 | We're in a loading dock, hunched over a shell filled with brown fluffy stuff trying to light a fire. The wet and windy Dutch weather |
| 1:05.5 | means that my chances of lighting a fire outside are zero. And as you can hear, |
| 1:10.9 | I'm not doing a great job inside either, probably because I'm not allowed to use matches or a lighter. |
| 1:17.0 | I'm trying to create a spark which should land on the tinder. |
| 1:24.0 | And while hitting two stones together is making sparks, |
| 1:28.2 | none of them are turning into anything more than that. |
| 1:30.7 | What's the longest it's taken to you? Infanity? |
| 1:34.0 | The reason for trying to light a fire the old-fashioned way is because crowd science wants to go back to the very |
| 1:40.8 | beginning, the start of fire starting. Why? Because that's what we do when we |
| 1:47.1 | get a question like this. |
| 1:48.6 | My name is Joseph. I live in Kerala in India. And my question to crowd science is how did humans master the art of making fire at will and whether the invention can be attributed to one community who mastered it and then passed it on to others as they migrated from place to place, |
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