Four hundred thousand years ago, near a water hole on grasslands bordering a forest in what is now southern England, a group of Neandertals struck chunks of iron pyrite against flint to create sparks, lighting campfires on multiple occasions. A new analysis of those remnants — including fire-striking tools and geochemical traces of the burns — reveals the oldest clear evidence of archaic humans intentionally making fire.
“You get a tingle down your spine,” says archaeologist Nick Ashton of the British Museum in London. “This is a major change in how human societies begin to operate.”
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