Evidence for the Use of Fire at Zhoukoudian, China

Weiner, Steve; Xu, Qiang; Goldberg, Paul; Liu, Jinyi; Bar‐Yosef, Ofer

doi:10.1126/science.281.5374.251

Cited by 172 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 18 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The revised dating of Pleistocene glacial cycles (e.g., Shackleton et al, 1990;Bassinot et al, 1994) and the stratigraphy of Zhoukoudian (Grü n et al, 1997) make the argument for H. erectus habitation of northern China during glacial periods questionable (Antón, 2002a). Likewise, the argument that H. erectus was probably using and controlling fire (e.g., Black, 1931;Wu, 1999; a claim questioned by recent microstratigraphic work by Weiner et al, 1998Weiner et al, , 1999Goldberg et al, 2001), as well as using clothing, shelter, and perhaps stored food remains (e.g., Turner, 1992) in order to survive the cold climate, is unnecessary (Huang, 1997).…”

Section: Asiamentioning

confidence: 79%

Natural history ofHomo erectus

Antón

2003

Am. J. Phys. Anthropol.

412

154

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Our view of H. erectus is vastly different today than when Pithecanthropus erectus was described in 1894. Since its synonimization into Homo, views of the species and its distribution have varied from a single, widely dispersed, polytypic species ultimately ancestral to all later Homo, to a derived, regional isolate ultimately marginal to later hominin evolution. A revised chronostratigraphic framework and recent work bearing either directly or indirectly on reconstructions of life-history patterns are reviewed here and, together with a review of the cranial and postcranial anatomy of H. erectus, are used to generate a natural history of the species. Here I argue that H. erectus is a hominin, notable for its increased body size, that originates in the latest Pliocene/earliest Pleistocene of Africa and quickly disperses into Western and Eastern Asia. It is also an increasingly derived hominin with several regional morphs sustained by intermittent isolation, particularly in Southeast Asia. This view differs from several current views, most especially that which recognizes only a single hominin species in the Pleistocene, H. sapiens, and those which would atomize H. erectus into a multiplicity of taxa. Following Jolly ([2001] Yrbk Phys Anthropol 44:177-204), the regional morphs of H. erectus may be productively viewed as geographically replacing allotaxa, rather than as the focus of unresolvable species debates. Such a view allows us to focus on the adaptations and biology of local groups, including questions of biogeographic isolation and local adaptation. A number of issues remain unresolved, including the significance of diversity in size and shape in the early African and Georgian records.

show abstract

Section: Asiamentioning

confidence: 79%

Natural history ofHomo erectus

Antón

2003

Am. J. Phys. Anthropol.

412

154

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…There are a few claims for earlier use of fire in Asia, however, with the case of Zhoukoudian Locality 1 being the most contested one. Although this site was considered for a long time to be the fire-lit home of Homo erectus, studies by Weiner and colleagues (56,57) showed that the "ashes" supposedly reflecting former hearths were not ashes at all: samples from Layers 10 through 3 showed extensive water deposition of fine silt-sized material (reworked loess), including fine-grained organic matter. The dark, organic-rich unit in Layer 10, often cited as some of the earliest evidence of fire, is in fact a water-laid accumulation.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the earliest evidence for habitual use of fire in Europe

Roebroeks

Villa

2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

569

317

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The timing of the human control of fire is a hotly debated issue, with claims for regular fire use by early hominins in Africa at ∼1.6 million y ago. These claims are not uncontested, but most archaeologists would agree that the colonization of areas outside Africa, especially of regions such as Europe where temperatures at time dropped below freezing, was indeed tied to the use of fire. Our review of the European evidence suggests that early hominins moved into northern latitudes without the habitual use of fire. It was only much later, from ∼300,000 to 400,000 y ago onward, that fire became a significant part of the hominin technological repertoire. It is also from the second half of the Middle Pleistocene onward that we can observe spectacular cases of Neandertal pyrotechnological knowledge in the production of hafting materials. The increase in the number of sites with good evidence of fire throughout the Late Pleistocene shows that European Neandertals had fire management not unlike that documented for Upper Paleolithic groups.human evolution | Paleolithic archeology | fireplaces | hafting adhesives T he emergence of stone tool manufacture and the control of fire are undoubtedly the two most significant events in the technological evolution of early humans. Although stone tool use and manufacture were regular activities from at least 2.6 million y ago (1), the timing of the human control of fire is a controversial issue (2), with some claims for regular fire use by early hominins in Africa at ∼1.6 million y ago (3-5). Longer chronologies for the use of fire include Wrangham's recent hypothesis that fire was a central evolutionary force toward larger human brains (6-9): eating cooked foods made early hominin digestion easier, and the energy formerly spent on digestion was freed up, enabling their energy-expensive brains to grow. Using fire to prepare food made early humans move away from the former feed-as-you-go-and-eat-raw-food strategy and toward the sharing of cooked foods around fires, which became attractive locations for increased social interaction between individuals. Wrangham situates these developments around the time of the emergence of Homo erectus, approximately two million y ago. Most archeologists would agree that the colonization of areas outside of Africa, especially of regions such as Europe where temperatures at time dropped below freezing (10), was tied to the use of fire to bridge gaps in the energy budget and in resource availability during winter (11). For much later periods, a greater control and more extensive use of fire is seen by some (12, 13) as one of the behavioral innovations that emerged in Africa among modern humans, favoring their spread throughout the world and their eventual evolutionary success.How strong are these hypotheses? To what extent are they backed up by archeological data on hominin use of fire? Our focus in this review is on Europe, an area of the Old World for which we have a rich record with a large number of sampling points distributed in time and space, w...

show abstract

“…Although cooking is clearly an important innovation in hominid evolution that served to increase dietary digestibility and quality, there is very limited evidence for the controlled use of fire by hominids prior to 1.5 Ma (Brain and Sillen, 1988;Bellomo, 1994;Pesini, 1999). The more widely held view is that the use of fire and cooking did not occur until considerably later in human evolution, probably closer to 200-250,000 years ago (Straus, 1989;Weiner et al, 1998), although possibly as early as 400,000 years ago (Preece et al, 2006). In addition, nutritional analyses of wild tubers used by modern foragers (e.g., Schoeninger et al, 2001) suggest that the energy content of these resources is markedly lower than that of animal foods, even after cooking (Cordain et al, 2001).…”

Section: Diet Qualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Energetics of Encephalization in Early Hominids

Snodgrass

Leonard

Robertson

2009

The Evolution of Hominin Diets

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Bioenergetics, the study of the use and transfer of energy, can provide important insights into the ecology and evolution of early hominids. Despite a relatively large brain with high metabolic demands, contemporary humans and other primates have resting metabolic rates (RMRs) that are similar to those of other mammals. As a result, a comparatively large proportion of their resting energy budget is spent on brain metabolism among humans (~20-25%) and other primates (~8-10%) compared to other mammals (~3-5%). To understand this shift in energy budget, Aiello and Wheeler's Expensive Tissue Hypothesis (ETH) posits a metabolic trade-off-a reduction in gut size with brain size increase-to explain this phenomenon. Here, we explore the interrelationships between brain size, body size, diet, and body composition using comparative data for humans, non-human primates, and other mammals. Among living primates, the relative proportion of energy allocated to brain metabolism is positively correlated with dietary quality. Contemporary humans fall at the positive end of this relationship, having both a high quality diet and a large brain. Thus, high costs associated with the large human brain are supported, in part, by energy-rich diets. Although contemporary humans display relatively small guts, primates as a group have gut sizes that are similar to non-primate mammals. In contrast, humans and other primates have significantly less skeletal muscle for their size compared to other mammals. These comparative analyses suggest that alterations in diet quality and body composition were necessary conditions for overcoming the constraints on encephalization. Fossil evidence indicates that brain expansion with the emergence of Homo erectus at about 1.8 million years ago was likely associated with important changes in diet, body composition, and body size.

show abstract

Evidence for the Use of Fire at Zhoukoudian, China

Cited by 172 publications

References 18 publications

Natural history ofHomo erectus

Natural history ofHomo erectus

On the earliest evidence for habitual use of fire in Europe

The Energetics of Encephalization in Early Hominids

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About