There are three things that you can look at endlessly: how fire burns, how water flows, and how others work, which is what crowds of onlookers do on the fire, unable to take their eyes off what is happening. And all because the fire really has a magical effect, attracting attention. No wonder that at all times the power of fire was used in various rituals. So, for example, burning alive is one of the most painful types of execution in antiquity. And today the culmination of Maslenitsa is the burning of an effigy, a symbol of the departure of winter and the onset of spring.

Now it will not be difficult to get a fire, strike a match and it's ready, but in ancient times, fire was worth its weight in gold, it was mined with great difficulty, and it was much easier to maintain a fire than to build it again. And woe to those who did not follow the fire, because according to the laws of that time, only death could atone for their guilt. Therefore, the fire, in the form of a bonfire, was maintained for decades.

Today we can only guess how the fire appeared. According to one version, lightning struck a tree, and it caught fire, so for the first time people got acquainted with fire. Then, most likely, with the help of a burning branch, they learned to carry fire over certain distances. And only then they began to make fire with the help of a wooden chip, into which a stick was inserted, moss was placed nearby and the stick was rotated between the palms until the moss began to smolder.

Later, a flint and flint appeared - this is such an iron plate, flint and wick, in order for the wick to begin to smolder, it was necessary to strike a plate on flint.

Matches were invented relatively recently in the 19th century, but even now in remote places of our planet there are tribes that are still at that stage of development when fire is produced by rubbing or hitting various objects against each other.

Initially, the fire was used to generate smoke, with which they got rid of annoying insects, and then they appreciated the advantage of food cooked on fire.

Fire is hot gases and plasma released during the combustion of a combustible material, as a result of a chemical reaction or during the interaction of current high voltage and combustible material. Fire can become best friend person, so worst enemy. Recently, the so-called fire-show has become very popular. The fire show is not just entertainment, but serious art - dangerous and exciting. Fire is used for lighting, warming, cooking, signaling, protection from animals in the wild, etc. But it also has tremendous destructive power, in the form of an uncontrolled combustion process - a fire.

In the event of a sudden fire in the apartment, it is necessary to have a working fire extinguisher. If this was not at hand, you need to know that there are three ways to put out the fire:

1. Remove what caught fire.

2. Stop oxygen supply, for example, cover the object of ignition with a blanket.

3. Eliminate heat, lower its temperature, with water, sand or foam.

Follow fire safety rules and remember that there is no smoke without fire!

100,000 BC e. (?)

fire, fast chemical reaction compounds of carbon with atmospheric oxygen during the release of carbon dioxide (CO 2), is rare in nature.

It spontaneously arises near volcanoes, where during eruptions hot lava and ash emissions set fire to everything that meets in their path.

Lightning striking trees can also cause a fire.

But such cases are too rare and accidental in time and space to allow a person to become accustomed to fire and master it for his own good.

When did man learn to make fire? In answering this question, we can only make assumptions. Human remains, stone tools of our ancestors defied time; the traces of fire are not stable at all. In the form of remains of bonfires, they were preserved only in relatively recent sites.

In the process of physical humanization, the first stage was upright walking on two legs, which significantly distinguishes man from all other higher animals. It probably originated about 10 million years ago.

The first footprints, indicating upright posture and not much different from footprints modern man, found in Laetoli (East Africa) and are about 3.6 million years old. They speak of the completion of an evolution that began much earlier.

When did a bipedal anthropoid become a real human?

We don't know for sure. Walking on two legs freed the hands from the motor function and led to their specialization in the function of grasping and holding. The activity of the hands in the "command zone" of the cerebral hemispheres is associated with articulate speech and thinking, which implies public life and communication between people. The development of the brain accompanies the production of tools, the use of which is no longer, as in some animals, accidental. They are made according to a predetermined plan. The accumulated experience is transmitted through social communication both to other people - in space, and from generation to generation - in time.

Historians primitive society they call tools "industries", they include certain samples of products and some technical methods.

The most ancient stone processing technique (studded pebble technique) is 2.5 million years old.

The earliest traces of fire were left by a man of the typehomo erectus(Homo erectus) at Ice Age European sites at Mindel (between 480,000 and 425,000 BC). In the Lower Paleolithic, fire pits are very rare, and many sites do not exist at all. It was not until the end of the Lower Paleolithic, just over 100,000 years ago, that the presence of fires in human campsites became an almost constant occurrence.

We can therefore say with a high degree of probability that man finally subdued fire in 100,000 BC. e.

The use of fire marks a decisive step in man's transition from nature to culture, from the position of an animal to a proper human condition.

This transition began, of course, earlier, and we can only roughly outline its constituent parts.

Completely dependent on nature, man becomes himself and joins culture as he masters the means to control nature. Even today, we have only partial control over nature, despite the fact that, thanks to science, we have powerful mechanisms for influencing it. In such conditions, a person often plays the role of a sorcerer's apprentice, unable to foresee all the consequences of his influence on the environment.

The first opportunity to influence nature to a person who mastered speech and thinking was given by social organization based on the use of various techniques.

Social organization, as it appears among the most archaic peoples, is based on division along social groups. These groups are both rivals and allies at the same time; they are separated and distinguished by sexual and food taboos.

A clan based on male (patrilineal) or female (matrilineal) kinship is a group of related individuals, descendants of a common ancestor, in which there is a ban on incest (sexual relations within the clan). There are also one or more food prohibitions (it is unacceptable to eat a certain animal or plant). This is what distinguishes one clan from another.

Because of the prohibition of incest, the clan cannot exist in isolation. Its survival requires one or more other clans where its members can find mates.

Among the elements of culture can be called joint meals. Whereas animals satisfy their hunger quite by accident, for humans, eating together is common and constitutes a certain ritual. After conquering the fire, cooking food is included in this practice. Since the Neolithic period, various grains have become the basis of nutrition. Without heat treatment, they were little or completely inedible; now the range of products is expanding, and food is easier to digest. There is a "kitchen" - a joint occupation within the family.

Fire allows you to harden some wood products, thereby improving tools and weapons.

In the age of metals, the mastery of fire is of fundamental importance.

The practical significance of fire for human needs, as well as its dangerous nature, struck the imagination of people, opened the way for them to myths. Prometheus for the Greeks is a deity from the family of titans, he stole fire from heaven and gave it to people. What he was punished for: chained to the mountains of the Caucasus, where an eagle pecked at his liver until Hercules freed him.

The knowledge of fire also had a magical meaning: in African societies, the blacksmith, the man of fire, is considered a sorcerer, he is both despised and dangerous.

How was the fire lit? The most archaic peoples (for example, the Indians of the Amazon) produce fire by rubbing two branches of a tree between their fingers or with a bow; from their heating shavings or dry moss are ignited. When flint strikes flint, sparks are struck, to which some flammable material is immediately brought; this technique is more complicated than the previous one. With the advent of iron, an armchair arises - a spark is knocked out with a piece of iron on flint, which lights a wick - a loose substance consisting of dried mushrooms.

For a long time, making fire remained a difficult task, so the fire was carefully guarded: maintaining the flame or protecting smoldering firebrands was the sacred duty of women. Since then, the words "fire" and "hearth" symbolize the family ...

In addition to the already mentioned cooking, fire began to be used in other cases.

At night, fire began to be used as a source of light, while before the darkness of the night interrupted all activity (with the exception of moonlit nights). Rock painting in caves would not be possible without lighting. Lamps based on oil (or fat) already existed during the Upper Paleolithic (35,000 years BC). However, the use of lamps or torches could have taken place earlier.

Fire also became a source of heat, so prized in areas with frosty winters. However, the benefits from this were limited for a long time: it was necessary to sit around the fire, which not only warmed, but also scared away predators.

The mastery of fire excited the imagination of many: the writer J. Roni the Elder dedicated the science fiction book Fight for Fire (1911) to this event. Later, in his film of the same name, director J.-J. Anno.

Such a paradoxical conclusion was reached by archaeologists, whose article was published on the website of the journal PNAS on March 14.

One of two black resin-coated flint wafers from Campitello Quarry, Italy, over 200,000 years old. Illustration for the article under discussion

The "taming" of fire is certainly one of the most important innovations in the history of ancient mankind. It was fire (seemingly) that allowed people to master the northern regions of our planet (how else could they survive in latitudes where the temperature dropped below zero in winter?). According to the hypothesis Richard Wrangham(Harvard University, USA), it was the transition to heat treatment of food that contributed to the accelerated growth of the brain in hominids (cooking food on fire made it easier to digest, which contributed to the release of energy needed to feed the large brain).

When did this technology appear, and when did the use of fire become commonplace for people? The first (but not indisputable) evidence of the use of fire is 1.6 million years old (we will talk about this evidence later). It is also believed that much later, especially advanced technologies for using fire allowed African sapiens to conquer the Old World, displacing the Neanderthals ...

The problem is that, unlike weaponry, "controlled fire" technologies are much more difficult to recognize from archaeological evidence.

What do archaeologists usually find at ancient sites? Stone tools or their fragments, and sometimes remnants of meals. If there was a hearth here, little remains of it. If the parking was in an open area, then the wind or water could easily erase all traces of the use of fire. In a cave, the likelihood that something will be preserved is greater. Most often, such traces can be deposits on which the focus was located (they can be identified by color and structural changes); stone tools with traces of heating; charred bones and charcoal.

However, not only a person could leave such traces.

What if there was a volcanic eruption? Lightning strike, forest fire? The charred bones could have entered the cave along with the water stream. You never know what could happen in tens of thousands of years! Now, if there are a lot of such finds in the cave, if they are concentrated in one place, in combination with obvious traces of a long stay of a person, if all this, judging by the geological context, was not mixed, but lies "in its place" - only in this case it is possible consider that the fire here was probably built by a person.

Authors of the publication - Paola Villa from the University of Colorado at Boulder (USA) and Wil Rubrux from the University of Leiden (Netherlands), in search of such reliable evidence, conducted a detailed analysis of 141 Paleolithic sites. The authors of the study focused on Europe, where there are a large number of well-studied archaeological sites of different ages.

It is known that people appeared in the south of Europe more than a million years ago (the oldest location is in Spain). And people moved to the north of Europe more than 800 thousand years ago (this age dates back to the English location happypiesburg/ Happisburgh 3).

It is amazing, but with all this, clear evidence of the use of fire by man is no more than 300-400 thousand years old! Such dates were obtained for two localities - Beaches Pete(Beeches Pit) in England and Schöningen(Schöningen) in Germany.

Older evidence of the friendship of Europeans with fire is extremely scarce and unreliable. If we talk about open locations, the absence of traces of fire can be attributed to the short stay of people on them, or to geological processes. But a similar picture is observed in the caves. The authors consider 6 famous caves: Triangular (Russia), Kozamika (Bulgaria), (Italy), (Spain), (France), (Spain).

Particularly surprising is the absence of traces of the use of fire in sites rich in archaeological materials, such as. A large number of stone tools and bone remains have been found in Arago. Traces of fire were found in Arago only in the upper layers, younger than 350 thousand years. In the lower levels (starting from about 550 thousand years ago) - no coal, no burnt bones ... Despite the fact that people have constantly lived here for several hundred thousand years! In Gran Dolina, the situation is the same, with the exception of a few coals that obviously came here from the outside. "It's amazing," write the authors of the article. It turns out that people lived in Europe, where it was not hot at all in winter, for 700,000 years, without knowing fire!

And only in later eras the use of fire, judging by the archaeological data, becomes commonplace. In particular, a large number of combustion products have been found at Neanderthal sites. Both wood and bones were used as fuel. And apparently, Neanderthals were by no means waiting for a lightning strike or a meteorite fall, they themselves knew how to produce and store fire.

Particularly interesting are the finds that show that already 200 thousand years ago Neanderthals not only “warmed themselves by the primitive fire”, but also extracted resin from tree bark with the help of fire, which was used to attach stone tips to wooden handles (see photo).

Similar technologies are also known among African ancient sapiens (parking Pinnacle Point / Pinnacle Point in South Africa, 164 thousand years old). It turns out that the Neanderthals were able to think of this before the sapiens. Therefore, there is no reason to talk about the technological superiority of the ancient sapiens, at least in the field of "pyrotechnics".

And outside of Europe?

The authors also consider the sites of ancient people in Asia and Africa. In Asia, apparently, the use of fire - just as in Europe - becomes commonplace between 400 and 200 thousand years ago. For example, in the Kesem cave in Israel (), wood ash is the main part of the cave deposits associated with traces of human activity, i.e. fire was constantly used here.

The authors cite, however, one exception - the location in Israel, age 780 thousand years. Here, charred wood and many small fragments of tools (up to 2 cm in size) with obvious traces of heating were found. Such fragments usually remain if the tool-making took place near a fire. Archaeologists believe that such micro-artifacts with traces of burning are the best indicators that there was once a hearth here.

We can conclude: already 780 thousand years ago some populations people used fire, but this technology became universal much later.

This hearth is not a hearth at all? ...

Now - about the oldest traces of the use of fire in Africa. These include numerous burnt bones in , a number of finds in and , aged 1.5 – 1.6 Ma.

According to the authors of the article, although these finds were made in places where hominids lived, "there is no evidence that it was hominids who used this fire." Perhaps it is a fire of natural origin. Thunderstorms with lightning in Africa, by the way, happen much more often than in Europe, the authors write.

Very strange. In Chesovanie, it seems, even a whole one was found ... Did it also appear from a lightning strike?

So, at least in Europe, people began to use fire regularly quite late, not earlier than the second half of the Middle Pleistocene. "This certainly does not rule out the possibility of the occasional and episodic use of fire by humans in earlier eras."

But how to live without fire in Europe?

But like this. "We believe that early hominids did NOT need fire to colonize the northern regions," the authors write. An active lifestyle and protein-rich foods helped people survive the cold. They ate raw meat and fish (like some modern hunter-gatherers), and apparently this did not stop their brains from growing.

After all, what do we know about the endurance of our distant ancestors? Maybe they could sleep in the snow in winter? After all, modern people are “the product of long-term adaptation to changes in their diet and lifestyle,” and very little is known about how our body has changed as a result of such adaptation ...

The development of fire by ancient people became a turning point in human social evolution, allowing people to diversify protein and carbohydrate foods with the opportunity to cook it, develop their activity at night, and also protect themselves from predators.

Evidence

1.42 mya: East Africa

The first evidence of the use of fire by humans comes from such archaeological sites of the ancient man of East Africa as Chesovanya near Lake Baringo, Koobi Fora and Ologesalirie in Kenya. The evidence at Czesovanyi is about 1.42 million years old red clay shards. Traces of firing these fragments indicate that they were heated to a temperature of 400 ° C - to give hardness.

At Koobi Fora, at sites FxJjzoE and FxJj50, evidence has been found of the use of fire by Homo erectus dating back approximately 1.5 million years, with red deposits that can only form at temperatures of 200-400 °C. Kiln-pit-like formations found in Olorgesailie, Kenya. Some fine charcoal was also found, although it may have come from natural fire as well.

Fragments of ignimbrite were found in the Ethiopian Gabeb in location No. 8, which appears as a result of combustion, but overheating rock could also appear as a result of local volcanic activity. They were among the artifacts of the Acheulian culture created by H. erectus.

In the middle of the valley of the Awash River, conical formations with red clay were found, which is possible only at a temperature of 200°C. These finds suggest that the wood may have been burned to keep the fire away from its habitat. In addition, burnt stones were found in the Awash valley, but volcanic rocks were also present in the area of ​​the ancient site.

790-690 thousand years ago: Near East

In 2004, the Bnot Ya "akov Bridge site was discovered in Israel, which proves the use of fire by H. erectus or H. ergaster (working man) about 790-690 thousand years ago. In the Kesem cave, 12 kilometers east of Tel Aviv, evidence was found regular use of fire approximately 382-200 thousand years ago, at the end of the early Pleistocene.A significant amount of burnt bones and moderately heated earthen masses suggests that livestock was slaughtered and butchered near the fire.

700-200 thousand years ago: South Africa

The first indisputable evidence of human use of fire was found in the South African Swartkrans. Several burnt stones have been found among Acheulean tools, stone tools, and man-marked stones. The area also shows early evidence of H. erectus carnivory. The Cave of Hearths in South Africa contains burnt rocks 0.2 - 0.7 million years old, as well as in other areas - Montagu Cave (0.058 - 0.2 million years) and Clesis River Mouse (0.12 - 0.13 million years).

The most convincing evidence was found in the Kalambo Falls area in Zambia - during excavations, several artifacts were found indicating the use of fire by people: scattered firewood, charcoal, red clay, carbonized stems of grass and plants, as well as wooden accessories, possibly fired. The age of the location, determined using radiocarbon analysis, is approximately 61,000 years, and according to amino acid analysis, 110,000 years.

Fire was used to heat the silcrete stones to facilitate their subsequent processing and the manufacture of tools of the Stillbay culture. The conducted studies compare this fact not only with the Stillbay site, which is about 72 thousand years old, but also with sites that can be up to 164 thousand years old.

200 thousand years ago: Europe

Numerous European sites also show evidence of H. erectus using fire. The oldest one was discovered in the village of Verteshsolos, Hungary, where evidence was found in the form of charred bones, but without charcoal. Charcoal and timber are present in Torralba and Ambrona, Spain, and Acheulean stoneware is 0.3 - 0.5 million years old.

In Saint-Esteve-Janson, in France, there is evidence of fires and reddened earth in the Escalais cave. These bonfires are about 200 thousand years old.

Far East

In Xihoudu, Shanxi province, black, gray and grey-green mammal bones are evidence of a burning. Another one was found in Yuanmou, Yunnan, China ancient parking with blackened mammalian bones.

At Trinil, on the island of Java, similar blackened animal bones and deposits of charcoal have also been found among the fossils of H. erectus.

China

In Chinese Zhoukoudian, evidence of the use of fire is between 500,000 and 1.5 million years old. The use of fire at Zhoukoudian is inferred from the discovery of burnt bones, burnt stone artifacts, charcoal, ash, and fire pits around the H. erectus fossils in Layer 10 Location 1. The remains of the bones were characterized as burnt rather than manganese-stained. These remains also showed the presence of the infrared spectrum characteristic of oxides, and the bones with a turquoise hue were later reproduced in the laboratory by burning other bones found in Layer 10. At the site, a similar effect could also be the result of exposure to natural fire, as well as the effect on white, yellow and black bones. Layer 10 is an ash containing biosilicon, aluminium, iron and potassium, but wood ash residues such as silicon compounds are absent. Against this background, it is possible that the fireplaces "were formed as a result of the complete decay of silt and clay interlayers with red-brown and yellow fragments of organic matter, in places mixed with fragments of limestone and dark brown completely decomposed silt, clay and organic matter." This ancient site alone does not prove that Zhoukoudian made fire, but recent comparisons of blackened bones with stone artifacts suggest that people used fire while living in Zhoukoudian's cave.

Behavioral changes and evolution

Fire and the light emanating from it brought major changes in people's behavior. Activity is no longer limited daytime. In addition, many large animals and biting insects avoided fire and smoke. The fire also led to improved nutrition due to the ability to cook protein foods.

Richard Wrongham of Harvard University argues that plant-based cooking may have been responsible for the accelerated development of the brain during evolution, as the polysaccharides in starchy foods became more digestible and, as a result, allowed the body to absorb more calories.

Diet changes

Stahl believed that since substances such as cellulose and starch, which are found in the greatest quantities in stems, roots, leaves and tubers, are difficult to digest, these plant organs could not have been a major part of the human diet before the use of fire.

Since ancient times, man has used fire. In some caves of Europe, Africa and other continents, people existed more than hundreds, thousands of years ago, vivid proof of this is the burnt bones, the so-called "evidence", which indicate that someone made a fire in the caves. Many historians have always been interested in the question of the use of fire by ancient man. However, the most intriguing thing is how the fire appeared; in the caves of people, that is, how exactly they learned to use it. A lot of conjectures have been built on this topic, from mythical and religious, to purely pragmatic, based on geographical methods.

Scientists agree on one thing, at first, the first people learned to use it, and only then breed it on their own. The appearance of fire among people was episodic, very rare, for example, lightning hitting a tree trunk or volcanic eruptions. In Zoroastrianism (the cult of fire in Iran and some other countries), before the advent of Islam, fire was considered alive.

Because a fountain of oil was sometimes knocked out in the desert and ignited under high temperatures, for primitive man it was nothing but a miracle, so the cult of fire took great roots in the peoples who inhabited the current Middle East until the Middle Ages. But how people made fire is a rather complicated question. After all, in the desert it could appear from under the ground, in the forests it could arise during a forest fire. In most cases, until a person learned how to create it himself, the fire from a burning tree was constantly maintained for decades! And the loss of it, in practice, meant for the tribe or group of people death from the cold.

There are a lot of guesses on how exactly a person lit the first fire on his own, but in principle, it is not so important how exactly he lit it. Much more important is how a person uses fire for his needs. Primitive people began to use fire not only for cooking, but also for processing various materials. Starting with the firing of clay pots, continuing with the smelting of copper, and later iron.

The most common theory, as a person noticed that copper and iron can be smelted, is the pieces of copper lying around the fire (looking like ordinary stones), which the person paid attention to. Separate "stones" (which turned out to be copper) began to melt, however, when a person removed the fire from them, they solidified and took the form that was formed by him. Over time, it became unimportant for a person how the fire burns, because he himself learned to kindle it with the help of sparks from stones or flint.

Although, in different parts of our planet, it could be kindled in different ways. Indians living in Alaska rubbed two stones with sulfur, then simply hit them against each other, after which they threw a burning stone into dry dust and branches. In Hindustan and on the territory of present-day China, a piece of clay was beaten against a bamboo stick, and the Eskimos beat a piece of quartz against a piece of pyrite, getting a huge sheaf of sparks. Most of the Indians in; made fire even under the conquistadors, by rubbing two sticks. In any case, every civilization on the planet, sooner or later, but learned to make fire, it became a kind of test of each future nation for the development of intelligence.