Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences· 2012Q1
Microstratigraphic evidence of in situ fire in the Acheulean strata of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa
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- 2012year
Short summary
Burned bone and ashed plant remains in Wonderwerk Cave sediments provide the earliest secure evidence of in situ fire use by Acheulean hominins, dating to approximately 1.0 Ma.
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Key points
- Analysis of sediments from Wonderwerk Cave revealed burned bone and ashed plant remains.
- These findings provide unambiguous evidence of in situ burning.
- The burning occurred during the early Acheulean occupation, approximately 1.0 Ma.
- This is the earliest secure evidence for burning in an archaeological context.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
The ability to control fire was a crucial turning point in human evolution, but the question when hominins first developed this ability still remains. Here we show that micromorphological and Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy (mFTIR) analyses of intact sediments at the site of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa, provide unambiguous evidence--in the form of burned bone and ashed plant remains--that burning took place in the cave during the early Acheulean occupation, approximately 1.0 Ma. To the best of our knowledge, this is the earliest secure evidence for burning in an archaeological context.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012 · DOI ↗
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Field: Anthropology
AnthropologySocial Sciences