Clues That Neanderthals Didn't Know How to Make Fire (2017)
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
While none of this explicitly rules out the possibility that Neanderthals lacked the ability to make fire, that a hominin so similar to us that we could potentially crossbreed could survive in arctic climates without fire is an extraordinary claim, and absence of evidence for fire at these locations is not necessarily evidence of absence.
In cold climates, I wouldn't expect forest fires to happen in any given location more than once per hundred years.
Hence, I can totally believe that once forest fires get below a certain frequency, people lose the skill to contain it.
Meanwhile, the supposed collective knowledge in books is constantly second guessed and taken with grains of salt ("bronze age army sizes couldn't possibly be the size they write that they are", "the winner writes the history", etc).
Being aware of that and being aware of point of view is important part of historical work.
Besides, "ancient historians" were not historians in our sense of the word at all, so I don't understand why are you asking for historian specifically. They wrote a lot of obvious myths (falus appearing out of fire) and there is no expectation for those texts to be accurate.
Ancient texts were written for purpose and with limited knowledge (just like any contemporary text) and it would be oddly naive to think anything else.
Edit: to be clear, I'm asking for a specific example, not an argument that an example probably exists out there somewhere.
What do you think happens with truth tellers and their work if it is not aligned with the current elites version of the truth?
For example, who do you think has been worse for whistleblowers , Bush or Obama?
Here's a story I remember reading recently: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-16/research-gives-merit-...
The key takeaway from all I've seen is it's not just telling stories, but like some of the more recent pre-literacy Western oral traditions, is more like a formal passing on, testing, repeating to ensure the message is passed on accurately.
Imagine explaining a complex process, like how to change the ink cartridge on a printer, via a chain of chinese whispers. Now put 20 years between each step of the chain, and remember all the intermediate people can't practice or try the skill they are described - they simply have to imagine it, since they have no fire to play with.
If the knowledge lasts that long, when a forest fire does happen, people only have one chance to figure out how to keep it alive. Accidentally put wet wood on it just once, and it's dead again for another 100 years.
You're not arguing with what you're responding to, are you? Knowledge with no practical use can accommodate a lot more imprecision. Reliability in a context where details aren't tested is a fuzzy concept.
Imagine explaining a complex process, using language carefully structured to be memorable, to the next generation. Then spending hours repeating, testing and checking their recollection over the coming days and years to ensure their memory is as yours. Rather like rote learning of tables and other "modern" learning. 2x2=4 doesn't become something else that way.
Each generation gets a complex story they may not see the applicability of, but if it's evolved to be important in the culture to remember, maybe they figured ways to remember until it is useful again. Africans did, pre-Medieval Europeans did, and for the longest period known, aborigines did. Why not these?
My counter-example is various failures to reproduce early industrial-revolution processes... from memory, wasn't there a stage when the French were pushing to catch up in iron-making, and sent spies to England, from whose accounts they could not make the process work? Despite having not just words, but materials and examples of the result. (The solution, eventually, was to pay people who had the knack to move there.)
I presume this was also true of the making of stone tools, or pottery. And of the recognition of edible plants & mushrooms. All of these are skills which I'd be surprised to see transmitted over a long time-lapse. (Without being at all surprised by the memorisation of stories, at a level I could never match.)
Speculating wildly here, we don't know the Neanderthals didn't ritualise the activity into a dance or an act to retain some of the process as well as the words. As we do with dancing, martial arts, even theatre or early stages of ancient apprenticeships. That might transmit the muscle memory of golf or stone tool making -- without the practised skill. How far that remains applicable using a stick in place of a golf club, or pine cone in place of a lump of flint is impossible to guess, but puts you closer than mere words.
I have to assume they wouldn't suffer the Wikipedia tendency to explain the technical so technically perfect (including all obscure jargon) that it's often bordering on impossible for an intelligent outsider, deeply skilled in other technical fields, to follow. :)
OK, ritualising a "how to ride a bicycle dance" seems like it could be a way to pass more information than a perfectly repeated poem / book. (Perhaps thinking of oral tradition as meaning Homer not how to chip flint is a blind spot in how we think about such things?) Would still be extremely curious to know of any examples where this actually happened.
I've heard this as well, but I never heard any convincing evidence that the native's myth didn't happen to align with reality. Further, this sort of 10,000 year old knowledge seems to be the exception rather than the rule.
The remainder of the people generally live near the ~2 roads or on a river
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/study-suggests-nea...
http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/neanderthals-start-fire-...
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/10/neanderthal-glue-was...
Fire didn't need discovering. It happens naturally from lightning, and you can speculate that our first "taming" of it was simply to grab it from a burning forest fire and then keep it alive for as long as possible.
To make fire from scratch is a harder project. And what you really meant, I know :)
I don't think it's far fetched to think of it as bleeding-edge technology that only a few (of a certain species) had control over at the time. It would be similar to us meeting humanoid aliens and watching them master nuclear fusion.
It takes some effort and patience (mostly in preparing a good environment for a spark to light something small and dry on fire), and you need to know what are good conditions for a fire to start (which may not be obvious if you've never had fire), and you need a desire to make a fire as opposed to fearing it; so there's some barrier to overcome in inventing/attempting the process, but once that's done and you see how others are using and maintaining fire (even if the 'magic' initial process is obscured) then the technique would spread out like literal fire.
It takes practice but steel & flint isn't necessary, here's a video of a friend of mine who does what you're saying, teach kids survival skills. She uses particular kinds of wood you would need to learn to recognize but of course people have been doing it for a million years
Warning: very enthusiastic audience; having been off the grid for a couple weeks, seeing a fire started by hand was big entertainment
Then if you do manage to get a fire, you have to have enough resources around to fuel it and get some coals for your giant sloth sirloin. If you camp in an area over time, eventually you will exhaust all the available firewood. Plus, every time you light a fire you risk other groups of people and predators poking around for that giant sloth sirloin of yours.
If I've been getting by ok eating sloth sushi fresh off the kill for millions of years, why even risk it? Homo sapiens probably didn't have the gut microbiota to manage. Food poisoning could be a death sentence back then.
In terms of fire making, like all other survival skills it's about prep. I have pockets full of dry tinder, straw and splinters. They would have too, and caches of dry wood.
One explaination here might simply be that these sites became untenable in the winter and were used as summer hunting camps. Short summer night fires would leave a fraction of the evidence of a constantly stoked winter hearth.
Yes, it takes time and effort to collect the right fire starting material in wet conditions - you might need a couple hours and a longer walk, but that's what hunter-gatherers do much of their day anyway.
And yes, it takes some "wilderness lore" specific to your local environment to recognize what's suitable and what's not, what's available and in what locations. That can be transferred reasonably quickly (i.e. the very basics in an hour or so) by showing stuff on-site but not easily over a ten minute youtube video that's likely taken far away in a different environment; but again, getting to know the local flora and fauna is a big part of young hunter-gatherer 'education' no matter if they use fire or not.
That said, I agree with OP(s) post, in general. A fire isn't really that difficult to make with the right tools (a flint would be great) "Friction fires" are indeed much more difficult, but if it's important to you, it's relatively easy to learn.
Also, once you get a good fire going, there are ways to mitigate these issues. Coals can be re-used, and wood can be dried. This is basic wilderness survival. I wouldn't necessarily count on an encampment running out of wood. Some areas have (or at least had) plenty.
So the question of whether a fire is easy to make isn't really a yes/no thing. It depends on your access to materials and level of experience.
And just like nuclear fusion, if you really fucking need it, and you dedicate a lot of effort to it, it can be done.
People saying its easy isn't taking into consideration that this is knowledge that took a really long time to figure out and effectively pass on. Knowing that rubbing two of the right sticks together for long enough will produce friction that can lead to enough heat for a fire isn't something that a person with no knowledge easily comes up with by themselves.
I'm not trying to nitpick here, it's just something that's worth pointing out. This was news to me when I found out, and relevant information if you were the end up in a "state of nature"
I don't think so. A bow drill has laxer construction requirements. I think the real hurdle is having the idea in the first place.
Having never started a fire by hand, I think I'd not try to manufacture a bow before I had my fire going.
I understand fire/cooking may make meat more bio available to humans (I suppose it is also possible to make meat/food more nutritious, or at least chemically alter certain enzymes making the food arguably more nutritious in certain instances)...but can we really apply human digestion broadly to neanderthals?
Is it not possible Neanderthals were better equipped to digest and/or absorb calories/nutrients from uncooked meat/food generally? Anyone know of differences in modern human and modern monkey/chimp/ape digestive systems?
That's what feels inherently wrong to me about our knowledge system is our common knowledge is so superficial and we're constantly loosing touch with very basics about nature of things.
I'm sure lots of people have some ideas how one could make a fire in theory (creating sparks or rubbing wood against wood or using a lens in bright sunlight or whatever). Whether a lot of people could actually put that knowledge to practical use is a different issue... but then again, it's not something inherently wrong. Just shows that average Joe doesn't need to start fire without tools, because tools are plenty nowadays. In our society it's more useful for the average Joe to be skilled at reading than at starting fires. That's not a bad thing.
* How to build a sturdy shelter
* How to hunt
* How to trap
* How to forage without poisoning yourself
* How to plow a field
* How to build a plow
* How to sharpen a knife
* How to forge a knife
* How to grow crops (planting seasons, pests, enclosures, blight, etc)
How many people know how to do stuff like change their oil or brakepads without watching YouTube?
How many HN readers need to search for specific commands for Makefiles -- I still do sometimes -- or how to use an obscure part part of an API?
I wanted to learn it myself. Without matches I'm lost in the woods.
Perhaps the Neanderthal had a similar organization? There's a reason why they survived longer than modern Sapiens have been around.
We've externalized these memories to make for a more sustainable society, because if you could bootstrap civilization, well, what needs you cooperate with your neighbor?
So they were all humans, just not all at the same technological/cultural level.
First, it would take a lot of fuel, and harvesting enough fuel with stone axes would seem to be a great deal of work. When the climate is really cold, as in tundra, fuel is not readily available. Inuit do use fire in igloos. The fuel is seal blubber. It's not clear that the Neanderthals would have had a source of oil.
Second, to live successfully in the cold also required the ability to stay warm while away from the cave for hunting, fishing, and gathering food. It's also necessary to go out and gather more fuel. It's not likely that the Neanderthals could store enough food and fuel in the cave to be able to hunker down all winter. Thus, it seems more likely that the Neanderthals were more cold adapted, may have had more body hair, and likely wore animal skins.
When you are camping when it is cold, you absolutely want a fire. Even a small one is nice when you are wet and want to dry up.
And no, you don't use a axe to get green firewood, you collect dead wood.
In old forests there is plenty of it. So sure, after a winter the tribe would have to walk a bit longer to gather it but totally worth it. I doubt wood was ever a problem in a forest. Food was.
And yes, the ones hunting could not make fire ... but they were on the move and strong. The children and pregnant women in the cave could not stand it so much. Even though they were surely more tolerant to it than we are today.
I'm aware of the old saying, build a small fire, sit close to stay warm; build a big fire, chop wood to stay warm.
It actually can, when you have someone to guard the fire. But yes, if there are bigger pieces of deadwood, you take them. And there usually are. Like a small dead tree.
Also no need to chop it. Just put it in the fire and push it further and further when it burns down ..
(I made fire outside a lot with no tools around)
But even then they probably would not have heated the cave to house temperatures. But no need to. When it is freezing outside, you are very happy to get it some degrees above freezing. And the rest is indeed lots of animal skin.
If humans vanished today, how long would it take for the next animal to discover it? Which animal would it be? What about if we don't count primates? (Also worth noting, dolphins unfortunately have an extremely unfair disadvantage...)
https://www.sciencealert.com/birds-intentionally-set-prey-ab...
Now I know exactly why. Without the ability to make fire they were pretty helpless during cold periods.
How do you know? Saying "of course" implies a level of certainty that does not seem warranted, given how much we don't know about the Neanderthals.
Also the point of divergence is estimated at less than 800kya whereas use of fire for cooking is estimated at 1.5mya. So Neanderthals would have to have both lost the ability to make fire apparently possessed by their ancestors, and somehow figured out how to survive in Europe without cooking.
I'm not calling you wrong ab initio, but can you post something confirming to this theory? You really strongly state that its not possible to feed a large brain without cooked food. Raw blubber, brains, organ meat (liver) and freshly killed muscle meat are routinely digested.
Nuts do not require cooking. Fruit does not require cooking and has carbohydrates (plant sugers)
Whats the specific barrier to calorific intake which demands cooking?
Keeping fire likely predated making fire.
Perhaps we're not the "best" hominin species, but merely the lucky ones that happened on the technology to out compete and eradicate. And that's what we did.
Worse is Better when Prometheus is VC?
In some parts of the world, homo sapiens and neanderthals lived alongside each other for thousands of years, close enough to have hybrid offspring. If earlier neanderthals were merely ignorant, they could have learned how to make fire from homo sapiens. Fire making isn't an innate human behavior, it's something that we teach each other. Since neanderthals obviously had the dexterity and brainpower to nap tools out of flint, which chimps are incapable of, the talk of chimps being unable to make fire doesn't seem particularly relevant.
I don't doubt for an instant that some homo sapiens and some neanderthals didn't know how to make fire. But that's a weaker claim than the blanket statement about all neanderthals.
The research presented is more about looking at discrepancy between the dating of the evidence that shows gaps in the geological record of fire use at sites, and presents several hypotheses about why that is the case - some of it is paradoxical, where colder time periods showed less or no fire use. They then present the idea that naturally occurring fires that could be collected and maintained are less likely during those cold periods, and this could help explain the gaps.
It's a very interesting article and I don't think human exceptionalism is a takeaway here, but rather that we have a lot of evidence in the similarities of our species and it's more surprising how our technology evolved differently under different circumstances.
Personally I think a lot of the success of our species has been luck. There's a lot of evidence of things being lost and rediscovered prior to agriculture and the development of writing and preservation of information.