Absolute Beginner

Scientists have found new evidence about fire. Very early humans used fire a very long time ago. This happened about 1.79 million years ago in South Africa.

The place is called Wonderwerk Cave. It is a cave in the Northern Cape of South Africa. Scientists found burned bones deep inside the cave.

The early humans are called Homo erectus. They did not make fire themselves. They found fire in nature and brought it to the cave.

Using fire helped early humans. Fire cooked their food and kept them safe at night. Cooked food gave them more energy for their growing brains.

cave

a large hole or tunnel inside a rock or mountain

evidence

information that helps prove something is true

burned

damaged or changed by fire

bones

the hard parts inside a human or animal body

scientist

a person who studies the natural world using experiments and observation

Homo erectus

an early type of human who lived millions of years ago

brain

the organ inside your head that controls thinking and feeling

energy

the power that living things need to move, grow, and think

Elementary

Scientists have confirmed that early humans used fire at Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa between 1.07 and 1.79 million years ago. This is now the oldest known evidence of fire use anywhere in the world. The study was published in the journal PLOS One in June 2026.

The researchers used a special technique called luminescence to analyse burned animal bones found deep inside the cave. The cave is in South Africa's Northern Cape region. The burned bones were found more than 30 metres inside the cave, far from the entrance where a wildfire could have caused the burning.

The species responsible was Homo erectus, an early human ancestor. Scientists believe Homo erectus captured fire from natural sources, such as lightning strikes, rather than creating it themselves. They then carried the fire into the cave for warmth, light, and cooking.

Fire was extremely important for human evolution. Cooked food is easier to digest and provides more calories, which may have supported the development of larger brains. Fire also provided protection from predators at night, making the cave a safer place to live.

luminescence

the emission of light from a material that was previously exposed to heat, used in scientific dating

ancestor

an early member of a family or species from whom later generations descend

wildfire

a fire that starts and spreads naturally in the environment without human involvement

evolve

to change gradually over many generations into a different form

digest

to break down food in the stomach so the body can absorb nutrients from it

predator

an animal that hunts and eats other animals

calorie

a unit measuring the energy provided by food

species

a group of living things that share the same characteristics and can reproduce together

Intermediate

A study published in PLOS One in June 2026 has established Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa's Northern Cape as the site of the world's oldest confirmed fire use, dating to between 1.07 and 1.79 million years ago. The research team applied a luminescence technique using 455-nanometre blue light combined with a red long-pass filter to measure heat exposure in burned animal bones recovered from deep within the cave system.

The location of the burned material, more than 30 metres inside the cave, is crucial to the findings. Natural wildfires cannot penetrate that far into a cave system, ruling out the possibility that the burning was accidental. The evidence is therefore consistent only with deliberate fire use by the cave's hominid inhabitants, who are identified as Homo erectus based on associated stone tool assemblages.

Scientists believe Homo erectus did not yet possess the cognitive or technical capacity to create fire from scratch. Instead, the prevailing interpretation is that they captured fire from naturally occurring sources, such as those ignited by lightning, and transported it to the cave. This behaviour represents the critical first step in humanity's long relationship with fire, preceding deliberate fire-making by hundreds of thousands of years.

The evolutionary implications of regular fire use at this early date are significant. Cooking increases the caloric value of meat and plant foods by breaking down fibres and denaturing proteins, making digestion more efficient. Researchers have linked this caloric surplus to the encephalisation observed in Homo erectus: larger brains require more energy, and controlled fire provided a reliable mechanism to generate that energy from available food sources.

luminescence technique

a method using light to measure the heat history of materials, used to date ancient burned objects

hominid

a member of the biological family that includes humans and our close evolutionary relatives

assemblage

a collection of objects, such as stone tools, found together at an archaeological site

encephalisation

the evolutionary process of brain size increasing relative to body size

deliberate

done consciously and intentionally, not by accident

denature

to alter the structure of a protein by heat or chemicals, making it easier to digest

prevailing interpretation

the explanation that most scientists currently accept as the most likely

caloric surplus

more energy from food than the body immediately needs, which can support growth and development

Advanced

A June 2026 paper in PLOS One has extended the verified archaeological record of hominin fire use to at least 1.79 million years ago, based on evidence from Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa's Northern Cape. The team employed single-grain optically stimulated luminescence at 455 nm, combined with a red long-pass filter to isolate the thermally affected population of quartz grains from burned faunal bone fragments recovered at sediment depths corresponding to the site's earliest occupational layers. The spatial distribution of burned material, concentrated more than 30 metres from the cave's entrance, statistically excludes incidental introduction by natural surface fires.

The hominid occupants of Wonderwerk during the relevant stratigraphic horizon are identified as Homo erectus sensu lato on the basis of Acheulean and Oldowan tool assemblages co-located with the thermal evidence. The prevailing consensus attributes the fire's origin to opportunistic capture from natural ignition events, specifically lightning-initiated veld fires, rather than de novo generation. The distinction matters archaeologically: captured fire represents an early cognitive threshold, the ability to maintain and transport a resource, while fire-making requires a qualitatively higher level of intentional causation.

The evolutionary implications of this date revision are substantial. Phylogenetic models of encephalisation in the genus Homo consistently identify caloric input as a rate-limiting variable. The brain constitutes approximately two percent of body mass but consumes roughly twenty percent of basal metabolic energy. Cooking via Maillard reactions and protein denaturation increases the net energy yield of both animal and plant foods by between 20 and 45 percent depending on substrate, effectively subsidising encephalisation at a rate that raw-food foraging strategies could not support. A fire-use date of 1.79 million years pushes the onset of this subsidy into alignment with the observed brain-mass acceleration in the Homo erectus fossil record.

The findings also carry implications for nocturnal behaviour and predator pressure. Extended fire use at depths that preclude wildfire intrusion implies a sustained occupation pattern rather than transient sheltering. Reduction in nocturnal predation by large felids and hyaenids, documented ethnographically as a primary function of campfire maintenance in modern forager societies, likely extended the productive hours available to the Wonderwerk population and reduced the metabolic cost of sustained vigilance. The study situates Wonderwerk not merely as a site of technological novelty but as a key node in the ecological and cognitive transformation of the Homo lineage.

optically stimulated luminescence

a dating technique that measures energy stored in mineral grains since they were last exposed to heat or light

stratigraphic horizon

a layer of sediment at a specific depth, used in archaeology to determine the age of buried objects