Study suggests Neanderthals started fires
New research suggests that as early as 50,000 years ago, Neanderthals wielded the power to start a fire.
The work, published in Scientific Reports, provides new evidence that Neanderthals may have created flames-ondemand by striking a small piece of pyrite against a biface — their favourite multipurpose stone tool.
Scientists already knew that Neanderthals were able to control and use fire, but controlling it and producing it are not the same thing, said Andrew Sorensen, a doctoral student in archeology at Leiden University who led the work.
“There is an ongoing debate in the world of early fire research as to whether Neanderthals could make fire for themselves, or if they were reliant on natural sources like wildfires started by lightning strikes from which they could collect fire later,” he said.
Early humans created fire by striking steel or pyrite against flint to create a shower of sparks, Sorensen said. The sparks fell on tinder, causing it to smoulder. Then they would place a piece of that smouldering material into a bundle of dried grass, for example, and gently blow it into a flame.
Sorensen wondered if Neanderthals might have employed a similar technique.To answer that question, he experimented with creating fire himself by striking a piece of pyrite against a replica of a biface. Then he compared the marks he made on his biface to marks on 50,000-year-old bifaces collected in several locations in France.
He also found that the microscopic mineral traces made by striking or rubbing flint against his modern-day biface to create sparks were similar to those found on the ancient bifaces he examined.
Indeed, he found that the same miner- al traces that were left on the ancient tools most closely compared with the traces produced when he struck or forcefully rubbed pyrite against his own biface.
“The traces made by pyrite were the ‘best fit,’” he said. “But there could be some other mineral material that we just didn’t think of that could create similar traces.”
For now, he said, fire-making appears to be the best interpretation.