How Prehistoric Humans Discovered Fire Making 

BY DEBORAH BARSKY

 MAY 31, 2024

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José Clemente Orozco’s fresco mural Prometeo del Pomona College (1930)

In ancient Greek myth tells the story of Prometheus, who, after molding humans out of clay and teaching them the fine arts of civilization, defied the Olympian Gods by stealing the secret of fire and offering it to humans. Prometheus paid dearly for this act of transgression that doted humankind with unprecedented technological know-how ultimately transforming their condition into one of great power.

The moral behind the Promethean archetype is a cautionary one, intended to warn us about the risks attached to the unbridled pursuit of technology that can inadvertently result in catastrophic scenarios. The Prometheus myth underscores not only the formidable power that individuals may come to possess by defying authority in the quest to develop science and technology but also suggests that anyone who does so will suffer the consequences.

It is significant that the Greeks chose fire as the subject to deliver this warning. Without a doubt, the capacity to produce and control fire stands out among the most transformative technological feats achieved by our prehistoric ancestors; one that ultimately consolidated human planetary domination. But how, when, and where did early humans harness the technologies necessary to master fire making? What does the archeological record tell us about how they finally obtained the Promethean secret of fire making?

Like other milestones marking the human evolutionary pathway (like perfecting stone axes or mastering advanced hunting practices), the know-how required to make, use, and control fire evolved progressively, encouraged by human ingenuity and, probably also, by trial and error. Fire making techniques were perfected over time and transmitted socially, while different human groups explored the multifaceted revolutionary potential offered by controlling it. Before truly mastering fire making, early humans may have experienced a precedent phase during which they used fire passively, gathering, preserving and even transporting brazes ignited by natural causes (lightning, spontaneous combustion, etc.), prior to learning how to actively generate and control it. In the meantime, curiosity led them to explore the mysterious properties of fire, while also inspiring them to seek ways to master its secrets.

While looking back in time, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when our ancestors began to control fire-making technologies. Recognizing intentionally ignited and sustained fires in archeological contexts poses challenges since the simple presence of burned bones and stones or localized areas of charred soils are not sufficient to prove that hominins were actively producing fire. Before 1 million years ago, sparse evidence from some African sites could suggest that hominins were opportunistically harvesting fire from naturally kindled blazes; rather than practicing truly operative fire making. However, a multidisciplinary study from the Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa reports convincing evidence for intentional burning in a controlled archeological context dated to 1 million years old.

While such early signals of fire making are rare and difficult to recognize and interpret, globally, the ability to set fire at will is heralded as a major groundbreaking accomplishment attributed to the Homo erectus lineage who lived during the Lower Paleolithic period. This group of hominins is known to have produced an impressive array of tools belonging to the so-called Acheulian industrial complex that emerged in Africa 1.75 million years ago. Fire making is not the only groundbreaking achievement marking the 1.4 million-year-long reign of the Acheulian peoples. Throughout this time, hominins invented and came to master highly complex technological achievements, documented archeologically in the form of stone and (sometimes) bone tools. These technologies facilitated the expansion of H. erectus populations into Eurasia, where they continued to perfect and diversify the toolkits that afforded them adaptive advantages; improving their ability to multiply and flourish.

Aside from their broadening cultural repertoire, parallel processes of social development (more difficult to recognize in the archeological record) were also taking place. Rising demography is manifest in both Africa and Eurasia from the exponential increases in the number, density, and variety of archeological sites: a phenomenon that must in turn have generated more frequent interpopulational encounters, assuring reproductive viability and offering opportunities for cultural transmission at various levels. Acheulian hominins began to organize themselves into functional collective units that allowed them to more effectively share and exchange their newfound skills: a strategy that would ultimately favor their survival.

It is only after the 1-million-year mark that the global repercussions of the consolidation of fire-making technologies become more clearly visible in some archeological contexts outside of Africa. At the Acheulian site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, in the Jordan Valley, for example, compelling evidence some 780,000 years old confirms that hominins were not only making fire at willbut were also deliberately cooking fish. Meanwhile, as far away as China, but in a similar timeframe (800,000 to 600,000 years ago), there is proof in the famous multi-leveled Acheulian cave site of Zhoukoudian that individuals belonging to an Asian strain of H. erectus were also successfully experimenting with controlled burning in occupational settings.

Despite these rare and ancient occurrences, indications that hominins were actively generating and controlling fire became more ubiquitous only thousands of years later, toward the end of the Acheulian phase (after around 400,000 years ago), and then even more frequent as we move into the Eurasian Middle Paleolithic and African Middle Stone Age. Technological and behavioral diversity multiplies exponentially from this time forward, as toolkits differentiate to form complex formal manifestations of culture. Importantly, dwellings (often in caves) become recognizable provisioned home bases, where hominins returned regularly (or seasonally) over many generations. For the first time, organized living spaces can be identified within base camp settings that were structured around easily recognizable combustion structures, or hearths.

So, while H. erectus is credited with initiating the fire-making revolution sometime during the early phases of the Acheulian, it is only much later that the Pre-Neandertals and other forms of pre-modern and modern Homothriving in Eurasia at the end of this period began to more intensively experiment with the enormous potential offered by the Promethean gift of fire. Around 350,000 years ago, on the eve of the shift from the Lower to the Middle Paleolithic, the prevalence of hearths within prehistoric living spaces signals important changes taking place in hominin lifestyles.

Making fire was interwoven with many social, technological, and behavioral developments that triggered major changes that would shape humanity from that point onward. While (rather surprisingly) fire does not seem to have been a requirement for hominins expanding to territories situated in higher latitudes, it would have helped facilitate their capacity to take root in areas dominated by harsh or unstable climatic conditions. In terms of hunting, fire-wielding hominins would have had huge advantages over other kinds of carnivores with whom they competed for resources; fire also guaranteed the safety and protection of their own communities.

Besides taking advantage of these benefits, our ancestors experimented extensively with fire over thousands of years and grasped the significance of its power to transform the properties of other materials available in the landscape. They eventually learned to use fire to improve their weaponry (like heating flint to improve its knapping quality) and to assemble composite implements by hafting pointed stone tools onto branches using adhesives prepared with heat—such as tar and ocher. In addition, cooking food must radically have transformed the hominin diet, reducing the likelihood of contracting bacterial diseases and parasites from meat and other foodstuffs, while opening up innovative pathways toward enlarging the paleo diet (boiling, smoking, drying, etc.).

But among all of the spectacular changes afforded to prehistoric humans by the mastery of fire perhaps the most important and most difficult to assess archeologically is the social impact it must have had. With fire, humans were finally able to dompt the darkness and linger with confidence into the night, gathered together in proximity to hearths that afforded them warmth, light, and comfort. This leads us to postulate a variety of socially related activities, like storytelling or other communal rituals. While it is impossible to measure the impact of this complex series of events that so indelibly affected human evolution, we can still discern how technology and culture were interwoven to catalyze the advancement of symbolic communication within the developing brains of our ancestors, finally grouped into distinct territorial social units.

Later still, during the Middle and Upper Paleolithic periods, our human predecessors used firelight to venture into deep cave systems to perform ritual activities and create art on the cave walls, bringing it to life with the play of torchlight. Toward the end of the Paleolithic, humans continued to explore the powerful transformative qualities of fire, eventually learning to obtain and maintain the high temperatures necessary to transform clay into pottery and, later, to melt metal ores into usable items that would, once again, revolutionize the human story.

Even today, fire remains a powerful force whose symbolic meaning is deeply rooted within our collective unconsciousness. Though Prometheus was eventually delivered from his torment, his transgression still resonates as a lesson to humankind’s defiant striving to master transformative technologies without heeding the looming dangers posed by the unforeseen consequences of such actions.

This article was produced by Human Bridges.

In Praise of MoMA

BY DAVID CARRIER

MAY 31, 2024
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Image by Georg Eiermann.

“I think the big difference between a place like the Museum of Modern Art and a more historical or universal institution is that those institutions start with the premise that they are about history and we start with the premise that we’re ahistorical, that history is a byproduct of what we do. If we do it well, we help write a history.”

Glenn Lowry

It is hard, if not impossible, for anyone with a well developed political awareness not to feel a certain ambivalence about our Museum of Modern Art. The strengths of the collection are obviously a product of the American empire. And it’s hard to wholeheartedly admire its present, overcrowded and very expensive setting. Those of us who can recall when the museum was much more modest, before 1981 when Pablo Picasso’s Guernica was sent to Madrid, are likely to regret these changes. In the good old days, you could with luck have a leisurely conversation before Henri Matisse’s masterpieces. Nowadays, you might as well attempt to discuss the nuances of art history on the number 6 uptown subway train.

But nostalgia is a terribly unreliable basis for understanding public institutions in a visual culture which has changed so rapidly recently. If admission to MoMA is pricey, that’s because New York has radically gentrified. The art market is dominated by the superrich, so contemporary art is very expensive. And if the galleries are always crowded, that is an obvious reflection of the success of art education. American students want to see the art discussed by the faculty, and international visitors are understandably curious about our amazing collection. Any critical perspective on MoMA must take account of these economic realities.

New York City is fortunate to have many great museums. The two most important institutions, for the purposes of my present discussion, are MoMA, for its contemporary art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, thanks to its historical perspective. And they have responded to the present political crises in somewhat different ways. In a recent essay published in the Brooklyn Rail I surveyed the recent rehanging of the European collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://brooklynrail.org/2024/03/artseen/Look-Again-European-Paintings-13001800. I was interested in how the Met responds to contemporary intellectual and political developments. Here, supplementing that analysis, considering how and why MoMA is revising its modernist canon, I write with the freedom and obvious limitations of an outsider. Never a museum curator, I am sure to get some things wrong.

There are two ways that a history of visual art can be presented. You can write a narrative. This was done by Clement Greenberg, the writers at October, and their many successors. Or you can create a museum display, whose organization of the objects offers an implicit narrative, which then can be spelled out explicitly. The Met and MoMA curators take the second approach. Elsewhere I have contrasted in detail the contrast of these ways of presenting art’s history. Now I am interested in the museums’ responses to the immediately present political situation.

After reading the recent literature on colonialism, you can start to see what’s happening at the Met display of European art. And after study of the political commentaries on contemporary art, you begin to understand what has been going on at MoMA. Ernst Gombrich somewhere expressed his pleasure in museums that are unchanging. I understand (and sometimes share) the desire for such a fixed point in an otherwise restless world of flux, but of course nothing could be more unlikely to succeed in our contemporary world than static art museums. Today there is both real uncertainty about how to define the canons of contemporary art, and legitimate need to attract the public with changing displays. And so dramatic, frequent change is the norm in successful museums.

Two or three generations ago, when I started writing art criticism, the most familiar accounts of modernism looked to a narrowly focused development of Western European and North American visual art. After Impressionism and Cubism in France came American Abstract Expressionism. And then of course there were very extensive debates about what should come next. Clement Greenberg admired color field painting, Other critics championed Pop Art. And more recently, other writers, Paul Rodgers is a very good one, have offered well developed reinterpretations of modernism. As Lowry nicely indicates in the statement which is my epigraph, this interpretation of modernism is an important concern at MoMA.

We often expect changes that are additive, filling in gaps in our museums. There is, as yet!, no Piero at the Met, and as yet neither Sean Scully nor Wu Guangzhong have had a retrospective at MoMA. What has, however, happened is something more radical, a drastic change in the very nature of museum collecting. Now the goal of MoMA is to display modernist and contemporary art from everywhere, in ways which were presciently theorized by Hegel in his account of art as cultural expression. In place of the white male Western European and North American view of modernism, we have permanent exhibitions and temporary shows of art by female and male artists from everywhere. (Needless to say, what was limiting in Hegel was his belief that significant cultural expression is a purely European development. But we can go beyond that limitation of his theorizing.) You need only now walk through MoMA’s permanent collections with the galleries that contain late Impressionism, cubism and Abstract Expressionism supplemented by many varied works to see this massive revolutionary development. And thanks to the on-line archives, which include installation photos, you can trace this dramatic development in full detail.

In one important way, revisionist analysis is necessarily different in MoMA and the Met. The old master European collection at the Met, which is the core of the collection, is still mostly a white male preserve. But because MoMA’s collection runs up to the present, it allows for more radical change. To what extent is this present display at MoMA a response to the aesthetic dissatisfactions with the previous arrangements, or, alternatively, due to present political demands, to which these art museums are highly responsive? I suspect that this is a difference without a distinction. At any rate, right now, when the presentation of art has changed so drastically and swiftly, what is surely predictable is that these changes will continue. In a deeply unsettled culture, an authentic museum should reflect that state.

In an interview conducted by Joachim Pissarro, Gaby Collins-Fernandez, and myself, published in the Brooklyn Rail nine years ago, Lowry talked about his background:

I fell in love with Islamic art in part because I had a charismatic teacher when I was an undergrad student at Williams who turned me onto it. But also I was stunned to see such beautiful things from a part of the world that I knew nothing about, so I asked myself, “How is it possible that I was so unaware of these rich historical traditions?” And then, the more I looked, the more it became fascinating—particularly with what was going on in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries in Iran, Central Asia, and India. That led to a phenomenally interesting career as a curator, and a very satisfying one.

What made me so interested in India in the 16th and 17th centuries under the Mughals is that it was a culture that had willingly and intentionally tried to bring disparate voices, disparate traditions, and put them under one umbrella: from Hindu, Jain, Muslim and, particularly Christian theological, political, and ultimately artistic traditions. So you look at Mughal architecture and painting under the Mughals during the reign of Akbar and Jahangir in particular, and you realize that the “global” was around long before it was embraced by us.

He (and we) are very lucky, for this training prepared him for his present task.

This present brief account draws in part upon my many memories of MoMA, which are incomplete and perhaps even unreliable. I hope that some committee of scholars, will go over the archival materials and publish a reliable overview. And I dream, is this possible?, of a time-lapse photographic record of the development of the permanent collection.

I am in awe of Lowry and his staff. At this difficult time, they are doing what a world class museum should do, responding energetically to the present ongoing political debates. No wonder that the results often inspire productive disagreements. Every time I visit their museum, I am proud to be an American, which isn’t my experience when I read the news. If our culture survives, it will be thanks to people like them. And if I have amounted to anything as a scholar, it will be in large part thanks to them and a very few other gifted curators.

Note:

On museum narratives see my Museum Skepticism: A History of the Display of Art in Public Galleries (2006), in Chinese translation with a new Preface, 2009; A World Art History and its Objects (2008); and with Liu Haiping, “Wu Guangzhong, National Art Museum of China,” Burlington Magazine, CLI (May 2009): 348-9.

David Carrier is a philosopher who writes art criticism. His Aesthetic Theory, Abstract Art and Lawrence Carroll (Bloomsbury) and with Joachim Pissarro, Aesthetics of the Margins/ The Margins of Aesthetics: Wild Art Explained (Penn State University Press) were published in 2018. He is writing a book about the historic center of Naples, and with Pissarro he conducted a sequence of interviews with museum directors for Brooklyn Rail. He is a regular contributor to Hyperallergic.