Suffolk find pushes back date of first human-made fire by 350,000 years

Humans mastered the art of creating fire 400,000 years ago, almost 350,000 years earlier than previously known, according to a groundbreaking discovery in a field in Suffolk.

- Hannah Devlin Science correspondent

It is known that humans used natural fire more than 1m years ago, but until now the earliest unambiguous example of humans lighting fires came from a site in northern France dating to 50,000 years ago.

The latest evidence, which includes a patch of scorched earth and fire-cracked hand axes, makes a compelling case that humans were creating fire far earlier, at a time when brain size was approaching the modern human range and some species were expanding into harsher northern climates, including Britain.

“The implications are enormous,” said Dr Rob Davis, a Palaeolithic archaeologist at the British Museum, who co-led the investigation. “The ability to create and control fire is one of the most important turning points in human history with benefits that changed human evolution.”