AI finds evidence of ancient human fires from 1 million years ago
I know this is not typical content for IH, but I came across it and thought some of you might find it interesting. The possibilities with AI really are endless.
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I can't even comprehend that much time - crazy. Our ancestors were pretty amazing.
I know, right? This actually isn't even the oldest - there's evidence of homo erectus using fire as far as 2 million years ago.
Wow, that's super cool.
A good example (if true) - we humans are limited in our perception and it is time to make room for ai tools to help us out.
This can be a real deal. One of the last episodes of Lex Fridman's podcast is about how humans suck in decoding reality.
They say we mastered it a million years ago, but I don't buy it. People are still getting into wild fires today.
My bet is that people discovered fire by accident, or they saw a natural fire and then became efficient at managing it, i. e they kept the flame going. While most animals were trying to get away from the fires, the humans were the only crazy enough to go torwards it and use it as a tool.
There's a lot of evidence out there that neanderthals (and other archaic humans) did controlled burns, which I find fascinating. Because you're right, wildfires are still giving us a run for our money!
They would have of course known what fire was, it's a natural phenomenon, so there was no 'discovery'. I do agree that it's likely that some fire would have been sourced from the embers of wildfires etc, but it's also not actually that much of a cognitive leap to figure out how to 'create' fire in my opinion - after all, anyone can rub two objects together (even their hands) and see that this generates an increasing amount of heat. To think "I wonder what happens if I just keep rubbing these sticks together so it becomes even hotter" is not actually that far-fetched.
True. And there's also the fact that they used to bang rocks together to create tools — if they had the right rocks, it would create a spark.
I bet it was a mix, because it's unlikely that one person figured it out and spread the knowledge — lots of people probably figured it out at different times and places. Some with rocks, some with sticks, some with wildfires.