How did ancient man get fire? How and when people learned to make fire: history and interesting facts

Primitive man was familiar with fire, but did not immediately learn to use it. At first, he was dominated by the instinctive fear inherent in all animals. But gradually he began to use fire for his own needs, for example, to drive away animals. True, at that time he did not yet know how to make fire.

During a storm, when lightning struck dry branches or a tree, they caught fire. Then the ancient people collected burning pieces of wood. Then they had to constantly maintain the fire. For this purpose, a special person was usually allocated in the tribe, and if he could not keep track of the fire, he often faced the death penalty.

And finally, after a long period of time, people asked themselves the question of how they could make fire. Thanks to the excavations of scientists, we know how various prehistoric tribes, such as the Neanderthals, lived. Some researchers believe that it was then that man first began to receive fire.

Other, small tribes of primitive people, whose way of life is not yet sufficiently studied, lived in or near caves. Drawings were found on the walls of the caves.

Of course, in order to draw inside the caves, it was necessary to illuminate the place of the future drawing. So, the conclusion suggests itself: the artists of that period already worked by torchlight and knew fire.

About 10,000 years ago, the population of Europe was still nomadic, and much depended on successful hunting. In this case, the meat was most often eaten raw, but gradually people learned to fry it in the flame of a fire.

It probably all started with meat accidentally falling into the fire. Having tasted it, the man saw that fried meat was softer and tastier than raw meat. In addition to meat, primitive people fried fish and small birds.

Around the same time, man animated fire. Considering it a living creature that needed to be fed all the time, man worshiped fire, seeing its destructive power.

A long time ago, man tamed fire. Primitive people warmed themselves by the fire, cooked food on it. From those distant times to the present day, fire day and night serves man. Without fire, people would never be able to travel quickly on earth rivers and seas. Coal was burned in the furnaces of locomotives and steamships. The fire heated water, the steam powered steam engines. Fire also works in the engine of a car. Only here it is not coal that burns, but gasoline.

Primitive people can hardly be called homebodies: they led a wandering - nomadic - life and constantly moved around the earth in search of new food. They were rather weakly armed - only with a stick and a stone, but even with their help the ancient people managed to hunt large animals. If no animals were found, primitive people could easily be content with plant foods - berries and fruits.

Before primitive man learned with my own hands to make fire, he carefully preserved the flame given by nature: received during a lightning strike, fire, etc.

The earliest people for a long time communicated with each other only through different sounds, however, as soon as they became able to use in separate words, their development proceeded at a rapid pace.

Sources: 900igr.net, potomy.ru, otherreferats.allbest.ru, leprime.ru, sitekid.ru

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Scientists believe that Homo erectus began to make fire. This happened about half a million years ago. Until this time, people only knew how to maintain the fire that arose as a result forest fires if the flame went out, they could not relight it and were left without fire. However, over time, they discovered that if two twigs were rubbed against each other for a long time, they became very hot and eventually caught fire, and if two pieces of flint were struck against each other, they could create sparks that could be used to set fire to dry grass and leaves .

In the old days, people thought that small fire lizards—fire spirits—lived in fire. And there were those who considered fire to be a deity and built temples in its honor. For hundreds of years, lamps burned in these temples without going out, dedicated to god fire.

The custom of maintaining an unquenchable fire is one of the most ancient on earth. Many tens of thousands of years ago people did not know how to make fire. They did not make fire, but found it, as they find it now. gems. It’s no wonder that fire was then treasured. If it went out, there would be nowhere to get another one: after all, people did not know how to make fire.

It happened that lightning set a tree on fire. People looked at with fear fire beast, which devoured the tree, breaking branches with a crash and licking the bark with its tongue. It was scary to come closer, but I didn’t want to leave: on a cold night it was warm and cheerful near the burning tree.

Primitive man was a brave creature. He often had to engage in battle with both a huge shaggy mammoth and a mighty cave bear. In the end, there were brave men who were not afraid to approach the dying fire. We do not know who was the first to decide to grab the burning branch and bring home this strange loot. This was probably done not by one person, but by several in different places. Be that as it may, there were brave, inventive people who tamed fire, just as wild animals are tamed.

The invention of Edison, who made the first light bulb, nothing compared to the invention of these furry, long-armed, club-footed people. Without fire, we would still be little different from orangutans or gorillas.

A bright fire illuminated the caves and dugouts of primitive people. But many more thousands of years passed before people learned to make fire. Having learned to make fire, a person could not be afraid of losing it. If a storm or rain extinguished the fire, you could always light a new one.

But for a long time unquenchable lamps burned in the temples, recalling the time when they did not know how to make fire, when fire was a rare and precious find.

Oddly enough, the most ancient way making fire has survived to this day. Primitive people made fire by rubbing one wooden stick about another. We also make fire by friction - matches on boxes. But there is a difference, and a very big one. Lighting a match is a matter of an instant, but to light a piece of wood, even very dry, you need to tinker for about five minutes, or even more. Yes, and you need to be able to. Anyone can light a match, but try to make fire using the primitive method. I seriously doubt that anything will work out for you.

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It is difficult to imagine the life of a modern person without the use of fire. Thanks to it, people live in comfortable conditions - in warm houses, well-lit rooms, eat delicious food and daily use objects created with the help of flame. The process of producing and subduing fire was very complex and lengthy. Thanks to ancient man, we can use this resource.

The role of fire in the life of primitive man

One and a half million years ago, man was able to control fire. Ancient man was able to create himself with lighting, a warm home, delicious food and protection from predators.

Taming fire by man is a rather long process. According to legends, the first fire that man could use was heavenly fire. The phoenix bird, Prometheus, Hephaestus, the god Agni, the firebird - they were gods and creatures that brought fire to people. Man deified natural phenomena- lightning and volcanic eruptions. He made fire by lighting torches from other, natural fires. The first attempts to make fire gave man the opportunity to warm himself in winter time, illuminate areas at night and defend against constant attacks of predatory animals.

After using natural fire for a long time, people began to need to independently extract this resource, because natural fire was not always available.

The first way to produce a flame was to strike a spark. A man observed for a long time how the collision of certain objects caused a small spark, and decided to find a use for it. For this process, people had special devices made of prismatic stones, which were fire-making devices. The man hit the flames with rough prismatic knives, causing a spark. Later, fire was produced in a slightly different way - using flint and steel. Moss and fluff were set on fire with flammable sparks.

Friction was another way to make fire. People quickly rotated dry branches and sticks inserted into a tree hole between their palms. This method of producing flame was used by the peoples of Australia, Oceania, Indonesia, and the Kukukuku and Mbowamba tribes.

Later, man learned to make fire by drilling with a bow. This method made life easier for the ancient man - he no longer had to put a lot of effort into rotating the stick with his palms. The ignited hearth could be used for 15 minutes. From it, people set fire to thin birch bark, dry moss, tow and sawdust.

Thus, fire played a dominant role in the development of mankind. In addition to the fact that it became a source of light, warmth and protection, it also affected intellectual development ancient people.

Thanks to the use of fire, man had the need and opportunity for constant activity - it had to be produced and maintained. At the same time, it was necessary to ensure that it did not spread to houses and was not extinguished by a sudden downpour. It was at this moment that the division of labor between men and women began to take shape.

Fire served as an indispensable means in the manufacture and processing of weapons and utensils. And most importantly, it gave man the opportunity to develop new lands.

The role of fire in the life of modern man

The life of a modern person cannot be imagined without fire. Almost everything that people use is based on fire. Thanks to him, houses are warm and light. Man uses the energy of fire every day in everyday life. People cook, wash, clean. Light, electricity, heating and gas - none of this would exist without a little spark.

Various enterprises also use fire energy. In order to make a car, an airplane, a diesel locomotive and an ordinary fork, metal is needed. It is with the help of fire that a person extracts it - smelts ore.

An ordinary lighter burns using a slightly modified method of ancient people - improved fire. IN gas lighters A mechanical spark is used, while electric lighters use an electric spark.

Fire is used in almost any human activity- ceramic production, metallurgy, glass making, steam engines, chemical industry, transport and nuclear energy.

This paradoxical conclusion was reached by archaeologists whose article was published on the PNAS journal website on March 14.

One of two flint wafers coated with black resin from the site of Campitello, Italy (Campitello Quarry), over 200 thousand years old. Illustration for the article under discussion

The “taming” of fire is certainly one of the most important innovations in the history of ancient mankind. It was fire (seemingly) that allowed people to master northern regions of our planet (how else could one survive in latitudes where the winter temperature dropped below zero?). According to the hypothesis Richard Wrangham(Harvard University, USA), it was the transition to heat processing of food that contributed to the accelerated growth of the brain in hominids (cooking food over fire made it easier to digest, which contributed to the release of energy necessary to power a large brain).

When did it appear this technology, and when did the use of fire become commonplace for people? The first (but not indisputable) evidence of the use of fire is 1.6 million years old (we will talk about this evidence later). It is also believed that much later, particularly advanced technologies for the use of fire allowed African sapiens to conquer Old World, displacing the Neanderthals...

The problem is that, unlike toolmaking, controlled fire technologies are much more difficult to recognize from archaeological materials.

What do archaeologists usually find at ancient sites? Stone tools or their fragments, and sometimes the remains of meals. If there was a hearth here, little remains of it. If the site was located in an open area, then wind or water could easily erase all traces of the use of fire. In a cave, there is a greater chance that something will be preserved. Most often, such traces can be the deposits on which the hearth was located (they can be identified by color and changes in structure); stone tools with traces of heating; charred bones and charcoal.

However, not only humans could leave such traces.

And if there was volcanic eruption? Lightning strike, forest fire? The charred bones could have entered the cave along with the water flow. You never know what could have happened in tens of thousands of years! Now, if there are a lot of such finds in the cave, if they are concentrated in one place, combined with obvious traces of a long human stay, if all this, judging by the geological context, was not mixed, but lies “in its place” - only in this case is it possible consider that the fire here was probably started by a person.

Authors of the publication - Paola Villa from the University of Colorado at Boulder (USA) and Wil Rubruks from the University of Leiden (Netherlands) conducted a detailed analysis of 141 Paleolithic sites in search of such reliable evidence. The authors of the study focused on Europe, where there is large number well-studied archaeological sites of different ages.

It is known that people appeared in southern Europe more than a million years ago (the oldest location is in Spain). And people moved to the north of Europe more than 800 thousand years ago (the English location dates back to this age Happysburgh/ Happisburgh 3).

It’s amazing, but with all this, clear evidence of the use of fire by humans is no more than 300-400 thousand years old! Such dating was obtained for two locations – Beeches Pete(Beeches Pit) in England and Schoningen(Sch?ningen) in Germany.

More ancient evidence of Europeans’ friendship with fire is extremely scarce and unreliable. If we talk about open locations, the absence of traces of fire can be attributed to the short duration of people’s stay on them, or to geological processes. But a similar picture is observed in caves. The authors consider 6 famous caves: Triangular (Russia), Kozamika (Bulgaria), (Italy), (Spain), (France), (Spain).

Particularly surprising is the absence of traces of the use of fire at sites as rich in archaeological materials as . A large quantity was found in Arago stone tools and bone remains. Traces of fire were found in Arago only in upper layers, younger than 350 thousand years. In the lower levels (starting from about 550 thousand years ago) there was no coal, no burnt bones... Despite the fact that people lived here continuously for several hundred thousand years! In Gran Dolina the situation is the same, with the exception of a few coals that clearly came from outside. “This is amazing,” the article’s authors write. It turns out that people lived in Europe, where winter was not at all hot, for 700,000 years, without knowing fire!

It was only in later eras that the use of fire, judging by archaeological data, became commonplace. In particular, a large amount of combustion products was found at Neanderthal sites. Both wood and bones were used as fuel. And apparently, the Neanderthals did not at all wait for a lightning strike or a “meteorite fall”; they themselves knew how to make and store fire.

Particularly interesting are the findings indicating that 200 thousand years ago Neanderthals not only “warmed themselves by the primitive fire,” but also used fire to extract resin from tree bark, which was used to attach stone tips to wooden handles (see photo).

Similar technologies are also known among African ancient sapiens (site Pinnacle Point V South Africa, 164 thousand years old). It turns out that Neanderthals were able to figure this out earlier than sapiens. Therefore, there is no reason to talk about the technological superiority of ancient sapiens, at least in the field of “pyrotechnics”.

And outside of Europe?

The authors also consider sites of ancient people in Asia and Africa. In Asia, apparently, the use of fire - just as in Europe - became commonplace between 400 and 200 thousand years ago. For example, in the Qesem Cave in Israel () wood ash is main part cave deposits associated with traces of human activity, i.e. Fire was constantly used here.

The authors cite, however, one exception - the location in Israel, age 780 thousand years. Charred wood and many small fragments of tools (up to 2 cm in size) with obvious traces of heating were found here. Such fragments usually remain if the tools were made near a fire. Archaeologists believe that such micro-artifacts with traces of burning are the best indicators that there was once a hearth here.

We can conclude: already 780 thousand years ago some populations people used fire, but this technology became universal to mankind much later.

This hearth is not a hearth at all?...

Now - about the oldest traces of the use of fire in Africa. These include numerous burnt bones in, a number of finds in and, age 1.5 – 1.6 million years.

According to the authors of the article, although these finds were made in places where hominids lived, “there is no evidence that hominids used this fire.” Maybe, we're talking about about fire natural origin. Thunderstorms with lightning in Africa, by the way, occur much more often than in Europe, the authors write.

Very strange. In Chesovanye, it seems, a whole one was even found... Did it also appear from a lightning strike?

So, at least in Europe, people began to regularly use fire quite late, not earlier than the second half of the Middle Pleistocene. "This certainly does not rule out the possibility of occasional and episodic use of fire by people in earlier eras."

But how can one live without fire in Europe?

And here it is. "We believe that early hominids did NOT require fire to colonize northern areas," the paper's authors write. Active lifestyle and rich in protein food helped people survive the cold. They ate raw meat and fish (like some modern hunter-gatherers), and apparently this did not stop their brains from growing.

After all, what do we know about the endurance of our distant ancestors? Maybe they could sleep in the snow in winter? After all modern people is “the product of long-term adaptation to changes in their diet and lifestyle,” and very little is known about how our bodies have changed as a result of such adaptation...

Doesn't exist exact date, when hominids ( apes) learned to use fire. It should be noted that initially they did not make fire, but found it: for example, they used smoldering brands formed by lightning strikes or volcanic eruptions.

Only thousands of years later did man learn the secret of making fire. The fire changed my life dramatically. It provided warmth, scared off predators, and made it possible to cook food that became more varied and tastier.

In addition, the fire united people. Sitting around a burning fire, they communicated with each other more, and this contributed to their mental and social development.

The ability to use fire originated more than a million years ago. Fire could be produced by spontaneous combustion of peat, hitting a tree, fires or volcanic eruptions. Burning coals were probably stored in special containers and used when necessary.

As a result, people became less dependent on natural conditions. Fire gave him the opportunity to warm himself, increasing his chances of survival in a cold and unfavorable climate.

With the development of fire, the art of cooking was born. This led to a significant improvement in her taste qualities and allowed to expand the diet. Using flame, people were able to make more advanced tools.

Making fire

But it took tens of thousands of years for people to understand that fire can also be ignited and controlled. Realizing this, the ancient people invented the hearth and then brought it into their home.

In order to intensively twist the stick inserted into the hole, use the bow string. A string wound around a stick continually twists it in the hole until smoldering particles appear. These particles flare up briefly and therefore must fall on the long-smoldering tinder.

How to make fire

But how exactly did primitive man make fire? The first methods of starting a fire were based on prolonged rubbing of two dry pieces of wood against each other.

Later, a dry stick was inserted into the hole of a dry board, which was continuously rotated between two thumbs with downward pressure until the dry grass in the hole flared up from friction. This method required skill. It is still used by the natives of Australia and Africa.

There is another way - non-stop rubbing of a dry stick in the groove of a piece of wood.

But it was also possible to make fire using a bow. To do this, wrap the string around a stick inserted into a hole in the board, moving the bow towards and away from you, you need to make the stick rotate quickly in the hole until a light flares up in it, which should immediately be transferred to the reed inside the candle or lamps.

Also, ancient people knew how to make fire by striking sparks. When they hit flint on pyrite (iron sulfide), the spark struck fell on previously prepared tinder (dry grass, leaves or dry sawdust), which began to smolder. It was carefully fanned into flame.

A more advanced method was invented by the ancient Greeks - making fire using a magnifying glass or mirror, which was used to focus the sun's ray on tinder. This method is familiar to many yard boys.

The latest invention related to making fire is the familiar matchbox, invented in the 19th century.

Even today, some peoples use the simplest methods of starting a fire. The photo below shows natives from the African tribe of Botswana making fire by rotating a stick in a board with their thumbs.

Prehistoric people did not know how to make fire, so their fire burned day and night. They cooked food on it, it warmed people and protected them, scaring away wild animals.

Now you know how to make fire in prehistoric times. If you liked this article, share it on social networks. If you like it at all, subscribe to the site IinterestingFakty.org. It's always interesting with us!