Evidence of Hominin Control of Fire at Gesher Benot Ya`aqov, Israel

Goren‐Inbar, Naama; Alperson, Nira; Kislev, Mordechai E.; Simchoni, Orit; Melamed, Yoel; Ben-Nun, Adi; Werker, Ella

doi:10.1126/science.1095443

Cited by 417 publications

(153 citation statements)

References 18 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

146

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…There is however, one well-established case for earlier repetitive fire use in western Asia: the Acheulian site of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov (GBY) in Israel, dating to ∼780 ka ago (59)(60)(61). Most of its many find levels might be correlative with MIS 19, i.e., twice as old as the oldest sites with fire indicators in Europe.…”

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.

566

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

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.

566

317

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Further back in time, few people would reject evidence for control of fire at 400 kya from such sites as Beeches Pit (Gowlett et al, 2005;Preece et al, 2006), Schöningen (Thieme, 2000;Thieme, 2005), and Ménez-Drégan (Monnier et al, 1994). Evidence for control of fire is also impressive at 790 kya at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov on the Jordan River (Goren-Inbar et al, 2004;Alperson-Afil, 2008), and there are several African sites older than 1 mya where control of fire has been reported as plausible or likely (Wrangham, 2006). But the interpretation of these older sites is open to question (James, 1989).…”

Section: The Impact Of Cooking On Human Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The energetic significance of cooking

Carmody¹,

Wrangham²

2009

Journal of Human Evolution

334

220

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While cooking has long been argued to improve the diet, the nature of the improvement has not been well defined. As a result, the evolutionary significance of cooking has variously been proposed as being substantial or relatively trivial. In this paper, we evaluate the hypothesis that an important and consistent effect of cooking food is a rise in its net energy value. The pathways by which cooking influences net energy value differ for starch, protein and lipid, and we therefore consider plant and animal foods separately.Evidence of compromised physiological performance among individuals on raw diets supports the hypothesis that cooked diets tend to provide energy. Mechanisms contributing to energy being gained from cooking include increased digestibility of starch and protein, reduced costs of digestion for cooked versus raw meat, and reduced energetic costs of detoxification and defense against pathogens. If cooking indeed consistently improves the energetic value of foods through such mechanisms, its evolutionary impact depends partly on the relative energetic benefits of non-thermal processing methods used prior to cooking.We suggest that if non-thermal processing methods, such as pounding, were used by Lower Paleolithic Homo, they likely provided an important increase in energy gain over unprocessed raw diets. However, cooking has critical effects not easily achievable by nonthermal processing, including the relatively complete gelatinization of starch, efficient denaturing of proteins, and killing of foodborne pathogens. This means that however sophisticated the non-thermal processing methods were, cooking would have conferred incremental energetic benefits. While much remains to be discovered, we conclude that the adoption of cooking would have led to an important rise in energy availability. For this reason, we predict that cooking had substantial evolutionary significance.

show abstract

“…1.6 Ma), and remains controversial for some of the reasons explained below (Brain and Sillen, 1988;Gowlett et al, 1981;Bellomo and Kean, 1997;Clark and Harris, 1985). Additional archaeological discoveries, however, as at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov in Israel, give further indications of a long timescale for fire use (Goren-Inbar et al, 2004).…”

Section: Evidence Of Fire Usementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, the rock fissure of La Cotte de St Brelade, Jersey, is another MIS 7 locality with evidence for hearths (Callow et al, 1986), whereas Grotte du Lazaret (archaeological unit UA25), near Nice, has been attributed to MIS 6 (de Lumley et al, 2005). Much earlier evidence has recently come from the Acheulian site of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel, where localised burning in sediments nearly 790 kyr old has been attributed to the controlled use of fire by humans, including possible hearths (Goren-Inbar et al, 2004). Deep caves, such as Tabun, also preserve hearths back into the Middle Pleistocene (Ronen and Tsatskin, 1995).…”

Section: Evidence Of Fire Usementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sergant et al (2006) have argued that non-structured hearths may be 'invisible' in the archaeological record. In the absence of discrete hearth structures, diagnosis of fire use is frequently based on the patterning of burnt material, such as microdebitage at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel (Goren-Inbar et al, 2004). However, this evidence is often ambiguous as it may be difficult to eliminate the possibility that the burning resulted from natural fires ignited by lightning strikes or spontaneous combustion.…”

Section: Evidence Of Fire Usementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Humans in the Hoxnian: habitat, context and fire use at Beeches Pit, West Stow, Suffolk, UK

Preece

Gowlett

Parfitt

et al. 2006

J Quaternary Science

109

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A Lower Palaeolithic industry at Beeches Pit, West Stow, Suffolk, occurs within an interglacial sequence that immediately overlies glacial deposits, referable to the Anglian Lowestoft Formation. There is strong biostratigraphical evidence from both vertebrates and molluscs that the interglacial represented is the Hoxnian (MIS 11). This conclusion is supported by uranium series dates from carbonate nodules (>400 kyr), TL dates from burnt flint (414 AE 30 kyr) and a range of amino acid racemisation data. The archaeology consists of flint artefacts of Acheulian character, including many refitting examples. Charred material is abundant in three stratigraphical units and many bones and flints have been burnt, indicating repeated occurrence of fire. Several discrete areas of burnt sediment appear to be hearths. This interpretation is supported by: (1) the intensity of burning (600-8008C) implied by the charred and calcined bones; (2) the intersection of two of the burnt areas, implying separate burning events at slightly different, overlapping locations; (3) the discovery of two burnt flakes that refit onto an adjacent group that are unburnt, indicating that the burning was highly localised; and (4) the spatial distribution of artefacts respects the features interpreted as hearths, suggesting fireside knapping. Fossils associated with the archaeology indicate occupation within closed deciduous forest in a fully temperate climate. Attractions to this unusual environment would have included the fresh water provided by springs, a rich supply of potential food and a prolific source of good quality flint for tool manufacture. The archaeological evidence therefore suggests that the site repeatedly served as an area of focused activities (perhaps a 'home-base') during much of the interglacial. The upper levels of the sequence provide clear faunal evidence of climatic deterioration during which human occupation and fire use persisted. Biostratigraphical correlations with other Lower Palaeolithic sites lend support to the suggestion that Acheulian and Clactonian industries occurred in Britain during the same substage of the Hoxnian, although not necessarily at precisely the same time.

show abstract

Evidence of Hominin Control of Fire at Gesher Benot Ya`aqov, Israel

Cited by 417 publications

References 18 publications

On the earliest evidence for habitual use of fire in Europe

On the earliest evidence for habitual use of fire in Europe

The energetic significance of cooking

Humans in the Hoxnian: habitat, context and fire use at Beeches Pit, West Stow, Suffolk, UK

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About