That’s what some archaeologists surmise:
It was a crucial turning point in human evolution when Homo sapiens—or one of our species’ hominin relatives—first controlled fire not only as a safeguard from predators, but also for sculpting tools from stone.
Now scientists believe they have found evidence of this level of mastery. In an analysis published in Nature Human Behaviour, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, both in Israel, make the case that more than 300,000 years ago, hominins living in Qesem Cave, a small cavern in what is today Israel, succeeded in controlling fire to enhance the production of tools.
The study suggests that the cave’s inhabitants—which hominin resided there remains unknown—used and controlled fire in one way to produce simple stone tools called flakes and another to produce blades. The researchers demonstrated that these tools must be heated to different temperatures.
Mohammed El-Said, “Ancient Humans Used Fire to Make Stone Tools” at Sapiens
Those hominins get smarter every time we run into them.
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