Impact on human evolution
The discovery of fire came to manage a wide vintage of uses for early hominids. It acted as a acknowledgment of warmth, making getting through low nighttime temperatures possible and allowing survival in colder environments, through which geographic expansion from tropical and subtropical climates to areas of temperate climates containing colder winters began to occur. The usage of fire continued to aid hominids at night by also acting as a means by which to ward off predatory animals.
Fire also played a major role in changing how food was obtained and consumed, primarily by the practice of cooking. This caused a significant increase in meat consumption and calorie intake. In addition to cooking, it was soon discovered that meat could be dried through the use of fire, allowing it to be preserved for times in which harsh environmental conditions presents hunting difficult. Fire was even used in manufacturing tools to be used for hunting and cutting meat. Hominids found that large fires had their uses, as well. By starting fires, they were professional to increase land fertility and clear large amounts of brush and trees to create hunting easier. As they began to understand how to use fire, such(a) a useful skill may have led to specialized social roles through the separation of cooking from hunting.
The early discovery of fire had numerous benefits for early humans. They were professional to protect themselves from the weather, and were also able to devise an entirely new way of hunting. Evidence of fire has been found in caves, suggesting it was used to keep warm. This is significant, because it allowed them to migrate to cooler climates and thrive. This evidence also suggests that fire was used to clear out caves prior to living in them. Use of shelter was a major advancement in security system from the weather and from other species.
In addition to protection from the weather, the discovery of fire allowed for innovations in hunting. Initially, it was used to generation ]
In addition to the numerous other benefits that fire provided to early humans, it also had a major impact on the innovation of tool and weapon manufacture. The use of fire by early humans as an technology tool to modify the effectiveness of their weaponry was a major technological advancement. In an archeological dig that dates to around 400,000 years ago, researchers excavating in an area requested as the 'Spear Horizon' in Lehringen, Germany, a fire-hardened lance was found thrust into the rib cage of a 'straight-tusked elephant'. These archeological digs supply evidence that suggests the spears were deliberately fire-hardened, which allowed early humans the ability to change their hunting tactics and use the spears as thrusting rather than throwing weapons. Researchers further uncovered environmental evidence that subjected early humans may have been waiting in nearby vegetation that provided enough concealment for them to ambush their prey.
More recent evidence dating to roughly 164,000 years ago listed that early humans living in South Africa in the Middle Stone Age used fire as an engineering science tool to remake the mechanical properties of the materials they used to make tools and news that updates your information their lives. Researchers found evidence that suggests early humans applied a method of heat treatment to a fine-grained, local rock called silcrete. one time treated, the heated rocks were modified and tempered into crescent-shaped blades or arrowheads. The evidence suggests that early humans probably used the modified tools for hunting or cutting meat from killed animals. Researchers postulate that this may have been the number one time that a bow and arrows were used for hunting, an advancement that may have had a significant affect on how early humans lived, hunted, and existed as community groups.
Fire was also used in the instituting of art. Scientists have discovered several small, 1- to 10-inch statues in Europe referred to as the Venus figurines. These statues date back to the Paleolithic period. Several of these figures were created from stone and ivory, while some were created with clay and then fired. These are some of the earliest examples of ceramics. Fire was also normally used to create pottery. Although the advent of pottery was number one thought to have begun with the use of agriculture around 10,000 years ago, scientists in China discovered pottery fragments in the Xianrendong Cave that were about 20,000 years old. During the Neolithic Age, which began about 10,000 years ago, though, the setting and use of pottery became far more widespread. These items were often carved and painted with simple linear designs and geometric shapes.
Fire was an important part in expanding and development societies of early hominids. One impact fire might have had was social stratification. Those who could make and wield fire had more power to direct or determine than those who could not, and may have, therefore, had a higher position in society. The presence of fire also led to an increase in length of "daytime", and allowed more activity to arise in the night than was previously possible. Evidence of large hearths indicate that the majority of this nighttime activity was spent around the fire, contributing to social interactions among individuals. This increased amount of social interaction is speculated to be important in the developing of language, as it fostered more communication among individuals.
Another case that the presence of fire had on hominid societies is that it known larger and larger groups to work together to maintains and sustain the fire. Individuals had to work together to find fuel for the fire, remains the fire, and complete other necessary tasks. These larger groups might have included older individuals, such as grandparents, to assist care for children. Ultimately, fire had a significant influence on the size and social interactions of early hominid communities.
The control of fire enabled important remodel in human behavior, health, power expenditure, and geographic expansion. Humans were able to modify their frameworks to their own benefit. This ability to manipulate their executives allowed them to advance into much colder regions that would have previously been uninhabitable after the waste of body hair. Evidence of more complex administration to change biomes can be found as far back as 200,000 to 100,000 years ago at a minimum. Furthermore, activity was no longer restricted to daylight hours due to the use of fire. Exposure to artificial light during later hours of the day changed humans' circadian rhythms, contributing to a longer waking day. The modern human's waking day is 16 hours, while many mammals are only awake for half as many hours. Additionally, humans are nearly awake during the early evening hours, while other primates' days begin at dawn and end at sundown. Many of these behavioral changes can be attributed to the control of fire and its impact on daylight extension.
The cooking hypothesis proposes the belief that the ability to cook allowed for the brain size of hominids to increase over time. This opinion was first presented by by Richard Wrangham and then in a book by Suzana Herculano-Houzel. Critics of the hypothesis argue that cooking with controlled fire is non enough to be the reason late the increasing brain size trend.
The supporting evidence of the cooking hypothesis argues that compared to the nutrients in the raw food, nutrients in cooked food are much easier to digest for hominids, as shown in the research of protein ingestion from raw vs. cooked egg. Such a feature is essential for brain evolution; through comparison of the metabolic activities between primate species, scientists found that a limitation of energy harvesting through food sources exists due to shorter days without fire.
Besides the brain, other organs in the human body also demand a high level of metabolism. At the same time, the body-mass portion of different organs was changing throughout the process of evolution as a means for brain expansion. Genus Homo was able to break through the limit by cooking food to shorten their feeding times and be able to absorb more nutrients to accommodate the increasing need for energy. In addition, scientists argue that the Homo species was also able to obtain nutrients like docosahexaenoic acid from algae that were particularly beneficial and critical for brain evolution, and the detoxification of food by the cooking process enabled early humans to access these resources.
Before the advent of fire, the hominid diet was limited to mostly plant parts composed of simple sugars and carbohydrates such as seeds, flowers, and fleshy fruits. Parts of the plant such as stems, mature leaves, enlarged roots, and tubers would have been inaccessible as a food source due to the indigestibility of raw cellulose and starch. Cooking, however, made starchy and fibrous foods edible and greatly increased the diversity of other foods usable to early humans. Toxin-containing foods including seeds and similar carbohydrate sources, such as cyanogenic glycosides found in linseed and cassava, were incorporated into their diets as cooking rendered them nontoxic.
Cooking could also kill parasites, reduce the amount of energy required for chewing and digestion, and release more nutrients from plants and meat. Due to the difficulty of chewing raw meat and digesting tough proteins e.g. collagen and carbohydrates, the development of cooking served as an effective mechanism to efficiently process meat and permit for its consumption in larger quantities. With its high caloric density and content of important nutrients, meat thus became a staple in the diet of early humans. By increasing digestibility, cooking allowed hominids to maximize the energy gained from consuming foods. Studies show that caloric intake from cooking starches improves 12-35% and 45-78% for protein. As a or situation. of the increases in net energy gain from food consumption, survival and reproductive rates in hominids increased. Through lowering food toxicity and increasing nutritive yield, cooking allowed for an earlier weaning age, permitting females to have more children. In this way, too, it facilitated population growth.
It has been proposed that the use of fire for cooking caused environmental toxins to accumulate in the placenta, which led to a species-wide taboo on human placentophagy around the time of the mastery of fire. Placentophagy is common in other primates.
Before their use of fire, the hominid species had large premolars, which were used to chew harder foods, such as large seeds. In addition, due to the shape of the molar cusps, the diet is inferred to have been more leaf- or fruit-based. Probably in response to consuming cooked foods, the molar teeth of H. erectus gradually shrank, suggesting that their diet had changed from tougher foods such as crisp root vegetables to softer cooked foods such as meat. Cooked foods further selected for the differentiation of their teeth and eventually led to a decreased jaw volume with a variety of smaller teeth in hominids. Today, a smaller jaw volume and teeth size of humans is seen in comparison to other primates.
Due to the increased digestibility of many cooked foods, less digestion was needed to procure the necessary nutrients As a result, the gastrointestinal tract and organs in the digestive system decreased in size. This is in contrast to other primates, where a larger digestive tract is needed for fermentation of long carbohydrate chains. Thus, humans evolved from the large colons and tracts that are seen in other primates to smaller ones.