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Comment by doctoboggan | Hacker News Reader

Yes it's definitely further back than homo sapiens have existed (200k - 300k years), but our ancestor species were known to have used tools and control fire. I believe we have evidence of tool use going back 1 million years. So this article is referencing the oldest known _wooden_ tools, which are obviously much less likely to be preserved across the ages.

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We have 3.3 million year old stone tools https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14464. They're very simple (even more so than the Oldowan stone tools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan) and basically just look like rocks, but there is clear evidence of intentional shaping by hominins (somewhere in the fuzzy late Australopthis/early homo transition).

Thanks for these sources. Archeology definitely is a big known unknown for me, so even getting started reading basic info about this is rough. I appreciate the links and terms.

This youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/stefanmilo has a lot of good stuff. I don't know enough to know where he's right or wrong, but provides entry points for to looking more into it.

I have gone down a couple rabbit holes based on his videos and while it seems like he's occasionally gotten some facts wrong or misunderstood an argument, I'm pretty confident he's doing a decent job accurately representing the archaeology.

Awesome. I've watched plenty of Miniminuteman (Milo Rossi) videos, but his tend to be more pop-sci/debunking outrageous claims and less foundationally educational. I'll check this channel out too.

David Miano and Flint Dibbles channels are also great. Both educational and debunking.

https://www.youtube.com/@worldofantiquity

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC27vDmUZpQjuJFFkUz8ujtg

you can get a lot of good resources here (https://humanorigins.si.edu/education/recommended-books) specifically "The Botanic Age" is about this, challenges the stone based representation and goes into how it was probably a lot of wood and other materials that would rot away etc.

Milo is great! Stefan Milo is also a great resource on youtube, i also really enjoy a youtuber called Fig Tree. there is a lot of good educational stuff on early humanity and early civilizations out there!

We have evidence of control over fire (but not fire starting) at about 1 million years. Stone tools go even further back, at least 2 million years.

Wait hang on, would they "control" file by finding natural sources (volcano, lightning strike wildfire, etc.) and then make use of that source for controlled sources of light/heat/etc? I guess I've always thought of "control" of fire including the intentional starting thereof.

> Wait hang on, would they "control" file by finding natural sources (volcano, lightning strike wildfire, etc.) and then make use of that source for controlled sources of light/heat/etc?

Pretty much. Being able to transfer/build a fire is a lot easier than starting one. Fire starting requires bow/flint&steel and a lot of patience. Control basically means using simple torches to transfer fire from one place to another (where the initial source is either lightning/wildfire or embers of a previous fire).

Some very recently published research (Dec 2025) claims evidence of fire starting among homo neanderthalensis. This would push back fire starting know-how (not only control) from 50k to 400k years ago. Cool stuff!

[1] https://www.nhm.ac.uk/press-office/press-releases/groundbrea...

There's pretty strong evidence that the use of fire to cook food is what enabled modern humans, with their short (and relatively fragile) digestive systems and giant energy hungry brains to evolve. Cooking food makes more calories bio-available in food and also reduced the amount of energy the body needs to expend on that food to harvest calories... so there's more energy available for thinking (etc).

When is the first evidence for cooking?

That’s a complicated question. The Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa where we found the first evidence of controlled fire also contained burned plant remains and bones, which could be interpreted as evidence of cooking. There were also burned fish remains found at the Gesher Benot Ya’aqov site in Israel, dated to about 780 kYA, which could also be interpreted as evidence of cooking.

By far the strongest evidence is the Qesem Cave in Israel, which had a central hearth and so many burned animal remains that it couldn’t have been accidental. Unfortunately the dating on that is controversial and the error bar is huge at 300 +- 100 kYA (200,000-400,000 years ago).

Thanks! That is much farther back than I thought, even 200 kYA.

And cooking kills like 99+% of pathogens, which freed us from much of the parasite/disease stress other animals must live with.

I had thought (perhaps wrongly) that our brains got a massive "boost" in capacity when our ancestors moved to coastal areas and the diet was dominated by (Omega 3 heavy) shellfish and crustaceans.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9505798/

ah, there's a very good movie about this exact topic (not scientifically accurate, one presumes, but still very good)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_for_Fire_(film)

Not to mention the Iron Maiden song! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF7cWpBTZ6s

Firehawks spread fire to scare out game; that count?

https://wildlife.org/australian-firehawks-use-fire-to-catch-...

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