Comment by Sharlin
Well, nobody did, because fire was likely used for tens or hundreds of thousands of years before anyone figured out how to make fire on demand.
Well, nobody did, because fire was likely used for tens or hundreds of thousands of years before anyone figured out how to make fire on demand.
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.
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...>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human#Evolution>