The ability to make fire on demand has long been seen as a turning point in our evolutionary story. It unlocked benefits like ...

Fragments of iron pyrite, a rock that can be used with flint to make sparks, were found by a 400,000-year-old hearth in eastern Britain. (Jordan Mansfield | Courtesy Pathways to Ancient Britain ...

Set aside your matches or lighter and try to start a fire—chances are you’d be left cold and hungry. But as early as 400,000 years ago, ancient hominins may have had the skills to conjure flame, ...

A research team at the British Museum, led by Nick Ashton and Rob Davis, reports evidence that ancient humans could make and ...

Neanderthals 400,000 years ago were striking flints to make fires, researchers have found. Neanderthals 400,000 years ago were striking flints to make fires, researchers have found. An artist’s ...

Archaeologists working in eastern England say they have found the earliest known traces of humans deliberately kindling fire, ...

Something about a warm, flickering campfire draws in modern humans. Where did that uniquely human impulse come from? How did our ancestors learn to make fire? How long have they been making it?

At a site called East Farm in England, recent excavations revealed reddened silt, flint handaxes distorted by heat, and fragments of a mineral—iron pyrite—that could have been used to make sparks on ...

It's easy to take for granted that with the flick of a lighter or the turn of a furnace knob, modern humans can conjure flames — cooking food, lighting candles or warming homes. For much of our ...