Comment by drakythe
Comment by drakythe 5 days ago
Well, today I learned something! Thanks for the information, I guess I know which rabbit hole I'm going down today.
Comment by drakythe 5 days ago
Well, today I learned something! Thanks for the information, I guess I know which rabbit hole I'm going down today.
I don’t read popsci but if you’re interested in a rigorous treatment I’d recommend The Human Career by Klein which has the broad overview and The Human Past edited by Scarre which is more of a textbook.
I mostly just read the papers as they are published but I’ve heard good things about those two books (they’re on my reading list but I haven’t read enough to form an opinion)
Use of fire considerably pre-dates H. sapiens, with anthropological evidence dating to 1.7 -- 2 million years ago. Sapiens diverged from common ancestors about 600,000 years ago.
"We" (Homo sapiens) did not invent fire. Our predecessor species were already using it.
Firestarting is harder to pin down and may be within the scope of homo evolution.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_human...>
I wasn't at all sure what you meant. The emphasis in your comment could very easily have been on "We" (another hominid discovered how to harness fire, which seems to be your intent) or on "invent" (fire happens in nature, hominids didn't invent it at all). The latter is perfectly in line with the kind of "attempting to be clever but actually just annoying" pedantry that nerdy internet spaces often see.
I think he's just saying "We didn't start the fire (It was always burnin' since the world's been turnin'.)".
How can I be certain I know what you mean.
Ever since Earth’s atmosphere had sufficient oxygen to sustain fire given a fuel source and heat, fire has exists.
If we can lay the blame on anyone for having started fire it’s going to be whoever fine tuned the constants such that there is anything here at all.
I think a quite unexpected (but more common sense) picture begins to emerge:
1. Language already emerged with early hominins (paranthropus and such).
2. Habilis et al developed toolmaking to a level that carrying stuff around was of critical importance.
3. H. erectus emerged from walking, and brought technology to a "civilized" level.
4. Anything post erectus evolved for civilized society.
5. The destruction of soils in eurasia about 24000 BC
6. The destruction of soils in the Americas about 9500 BC
7. Old metallurgy age.
8. Tin bronze age.
9. Recorded history.
Just edited to add two paper citations for the phytoliths and microwear studies. Have fun! It’s a deep rabbit hole largely ignored by popsci publications so there’s lots to explore.