the First Fire

taken from the book of facts
by Reader's Digest




Humans and their ancestors, the hominids, have known how to use fire at least 500,000 years, and humans have probable been capable of making fire since about 12,000 years ago.
The earliest fire was undoubtedly started naturally by lightning, so that the old and widespread religious of a "sacred Flame" which was never allowed to go out is likely to be a folk-memory of the days when fire had to be kept alight, because people could not make it for themselves.
Peking Man, who lived about 500,000 years ago, seems to have been the first  species to make regular use of fire.
Charred embers were found with the remains of Peking man in a cave near the Chinese capital in 1929.