Science / Medicine : Earliest Use of Fire

Scientists say they have found the earliest direct evidence for use of fire by ape-men or early humans, bone fragments that were burned as long as 1.5 million years ago.

Andrew Sillen, of the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and C.K. Brain of the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria, South Africa, said in the British journal Nature that the fires may have been set by human ancestors called Homo erectus , or by ape-men called Australopithecus robustus , which are not direct human ancestors.

The researchers used bones recovered from South Africa’s Swartkrans cave, well-known for providing remains of H. erectus and the ape-man robustus.

Then they used the chemical and microscopic characteristics found in the heated slices to analyze the fossils. They concluded that 270 fossil fragments had been burned, with most identifiable ones from antelope. Fragments from zebra, warthog, baboon and a finger bone of robustus were also identified. The robustus bone does not necessarily mean an ape-man was eaten, since the purpose of the fires is unknown, Sillen said.