Now a sprawling international team of archaeologists, paleontologists, geologists, and others say that they have documented compelling evidence that our ancestors’ first known use of fire dates back 700,000 years earlier than prior estimates. Employing a new luminescence technique to date burnt bone fossils, the researchers estimate that ancient hominids inhabiting the cave were likely fueling their fires with animal droppings as far back as 1.07 to 1.79 million years ago.

Shit has been on fire for awhile it seems.

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, Television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

[off topic?]

Pretty good movie.

Quest For Fire.

https://youtu.be/2pcGGKtPpSE

Which humanoids?

ever since the site started to show evidence of our ancestors’ earliest known use of fire back in 2012

I'm no anthropologist, but I'm fairly sure use of fire goes back earlier than that.

Homo erectus

Theg: "Man, the animals have been dropping turds like nobody's business today! What do we do with it all?"

Gok: "Burn that shit!"

Can confirm, used fire in 2011.

Keeping a fire going is much easier than starting one

Source?

1. Smell delicious burn meat from a brush fire
2. Associate delicious flavor from roasting flesh
3. Observe how fire naturally starts.
4. Use intuition.

Rubbing my hands makes me warm. Thus rubbing dry wood makes wood warm. Really warm wood causes fire. Use fire to eat delicious meat.

I'm pretty sure the defining feature of homo erectus is the ability to grasp cause and effect, fire should be pretty early game.

Source: I made it up!

i'm curious how many inventions we just passively consider advanced or accidental were in fact people going "this copper stuff is great but it's pretty hard to find, there's green rock all around it so.. let's try melting that? wuhey it worked! Now we have access to way more copper! Hm, wonder if other rocks melt into something neat.."

Prometheus

does poo burn particularly well?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_dung_fuel

Bic

I always thought it would be from fire pits reducing ore into metal. Suddenly your firepit rocks have little beads of copper metal in them for some reason. Cause and effect again.