Earliest evidence of making fire
Article Date: 2025-12-10
Article URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09855-6
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Summary
This article assembles and discusses evidence and methods used to identify the earliest controlled use of fire by hominins. It surveys classic and recent case studies (Wonderwerk Cave, Swartkrans, Koobi Fora, Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Schöningen, Beeches Pit, Gruta da Aroeira and others) and summarises methodological approaches: microstratigraphy, FTIR, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), mineral magnetism, geochemistry and microwear analyses. The piece highlights ongoing debates about timing and habitual versus opportunistic fire use, and emphasises how multiple independent proxies are needed to distinguish human-lit hearths from natural or reworked burning.
Key Points
- Multiple lines of evidence (microstratigraphy, PAHs, magnetic mineral signatures, FTIR, micromorphology and microwear) are required to reliably identify in situ hearths and anthropogenic burning.
- Notable early sites (Wonderwerk, Swartkrans, Koobi Fora, Gesher Benot Ya’aqov) provide some of the strongest claims for controlled fire, but interpretations remain contested at many locations.
- Newer techniques (high-resolution spatial analysis, sedimentary PAH fingerprinting, mineral magnetism, ESR/U-series dating) strengthen claims but also reveal preservation and taphonomic challenges.
- There is an ongoing debate about when habitual fire use emerged; evidence suggests a long, complex prehistory rather than a single origin point.
- Evidence for deliberate fire production (e.g. strike-a-light technology or microwear consistent with fire-making) is rarer but growing, with implications for behavioural complexity.
- Fire use intersects with major questions in human evolution: cooking and diet change, social interaction around hearths, landscape management and even brain-size trajectories.
Content summary
The article is essentially a synthesis: it reviews older foundational studies and integrates more recent analytical advances. It outlines the strengths and limitations of different proxies for burning, provides examples of contested and robust claims from across Africa, Europe and the Levant, and stresses that single proxies can be misleading. The authors argue for combining microstratigraphic context with chemical and magnetic signatures, and careful chronological control, to build convincing cases for human-lit fire.
Examples summarised include microstratigraphic evidence for hearths at Wonderwerk Cave, magnetic and PAH signals at other sites, microwear evidence suggesting Neanderthal fire-making, and experimental work on how fire signatures preserve in soils and sediments. The review also covers methodological guides and laboratory approaches that improve identification of anthropogenic combustion.
Context and relevance
This review matters because controlled fire is a cornerstone in debates about hominin behaviour, diet and social life. Resolving when and how fire use became habitual affects interpretations of cooking’s role in nutrition and brain evolution, the emergence of night-time sociality, and how early humans managed landscapes. For archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists the paper acts as a practical roadmap: it outlines which combinations of evidence are most persuasive and where future fieldwork and lab analyses should focus.
Author style
Punchy: the authors cut through a sprawling literature and make the case that “the evidence is nuanced” — not because there’s no data, but because single indicators rarely tell the whole story. If you care about human origins, this is an important synthesis worth reading closely; it points to the best methods to settle longstanding disagreements.
Why should I read this?
Short version: if you’re curious about when humans first mastered fire (and why that matters), this piece saves you time. It pulls together decades of contested claims, explains what actually counts as convincing evidence, and highlights the newer lab tricks that are changing the game. Ideal if you want a clear guide to where the strongest claims stand and what to trust (and what to be sceptical of).