The taming of fire is credited with sparking humanity's evolutionary journey towards our modern levels of intelligence. Fire gave early humans access to a broader range of safe foods, fueling the ...

Archaeologists working in eastern England say they have uncovered the earliest known evidence of humans deliberately making fire, pushing the origin of this technology back to roughly 400,000 years ...

Something about a warm, flickering campfire draws in modern humans. Where did that uniquely human impulse come from? How did our ancestors learn to make fire? How long have they been making it?

Fragments of iron pyrite, a rock that can be used with flint to make sparks, were found by a 400,000-year-old hearth in eastern Britain. (Jordan Mansfield | Courtesy Pathways to Ancient Britain ...

The oldest accepted signs of people making fire on demand used to come from France, dated to 50,000 years ago. Experts saw this skill as a late development that needed smart planning. But the Barnham ...

New research led by the British Museum has found evidence of the world’s oldest human fire-making activity on a humble field in Barnham in the U.K. county of Suffolk. According to Chris Stringer of ...

A research team at the British Museum, led by Nick Ashton and Rob Davis, reports evidence that ancient humans could make and manage fire about 400,000 years ago. The findings, published in Nature, ...

It's easy to take for granted that with the flick of a lighter or the turn of a furnace knob, modern humans can conjure flames — cooking food, lighting candles or warming homes. For much of our ...