Ancestors 'controlled fire'
2004-03-24 14:38
Johannesburg - Research suggests that our ancestors, living in Africa up to 1.5 million years ago, may have known how to control fire, according to a report on the BBC website.
South African and US experts reportedly analysed burnt bones from Swartkrans - less that a kilometre away from the Sterkfontein caves where hominid fossils have been found - using the technique of electron spin resonance.
It showed the bones had been heated to high temperatures usually only achieved in hearths, possibly making it the first evidence of fire use by humans.
The results will be presented at the 2004 Paleoanthropology Society Annual Meeting in Montreal, Canada, in March.
The research is a collaboration between Dr Bob Brain and Dr Francis Thackeray of the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria, and researchers at Williams College in Williamstown, US.
The burnt bones were first described by Dr Bob Brain and Dr Andrew Sillen of the University of Cape Town in 1988.
It is not known which hominid species made the fires at Swartkrans. There seem to have been two hominid species present at Swartkrans around two million years ago.
These were Australopithecus (or Paranthropus) robustus and an early species of Homo, possibly Homo erectus.
The next oldest evidence for controlled use of fire may come from Zhoukoudian in China, dating to between 400 000 and 250 000 years ago, the BBC reports.