Well I am not as old as all that, but fire was probably first introduced by a lightning strike. There was a great movie, Quest for Fire, that had barely speaking hominids that carried the remnants of the last fire in a skull or some other conveyance to start the next fire. The 'keeper of the flame' had great responsibility. I would guess at some point someone noticed that friction produced warmth and maybe smoke from some activity.
It IS pretty. There is a whole cottage industry online of bone carving and skrim (?). My daughter was commissioned to do all sorts. She progressed from cleaning the bones to their natural whiteness (required removing all teeth and replacing them so absolutely no soft tissue remained.) to intricate carving and staining with jewel inlays. Look forward to your hanging out a shingle.
Of course the cave guys learned to use the friction method from those natives. My favorite part was the guy picking up all that fruit and continuously dropping more than he picked up.. It must have been a heck of a way to live like the earliest humanoids. Everything out there had you on the top of the menu. They recently found another older missing link for man much older than Lucy the first upright walker.
Yes, exactly. I have given this a great deal of thought and I am convinced that is exactly how it happened. There are so many advantages of being able to make fire. Warmth throughout the winter. Protection from wild animals. And, cooking meat. As you know, cooked meat is not only more tasty, it is much easier to digest. Oh, and fire can harden wood which would be used as weapons.
Study: Prehistoric Humans Were Not Very Nutritious "Prehistoric people may have hunted and killed other members of their own species and eaten them, but probably not for food." "That is what a new study written by James Cole of the University of Brighton in England says. Cole says compared to large animals, humans do not provide much food. His study was published in the journal Scientific Reports." "Cole studied nine places where fossils have been found and where researchers have found evidence of cannibalism. Such signs include cutting marks on the bones." "Cole estimated how many calories each of the bodies at each site had. He used earlier studies that found eating an average-sized modern-day human could provide up to 144,000 calories. He then made his estimates, based on the ages of the bodies at the sites." "The researcher found that the hunters would not get as much energy from the humans as they would from one large animal -- like a mammoth, a woolly rhino or a bear. So, Cole asked, why would the early humans hunt and kill their own species?" “You’re dealing with an animal that is as smart as you are, as resourceful as you are, and can fight back in the way you fight them,” Cole noted. "He says our ancestors may have eaten members of their species who had died because they did not have to be hunted. But he says cannibalism probably took place for reasons other than the need for food. He said it could have happened after times of violence or to defend territory." READ MORE
Well, in time of scarcity, if someone died, like those jocks on the Andes mountains, waste not want not.
It was always about "having a friend over, for dinner." The Horse-Human Relationship: From Prehistory to Today "In the beginning—nearly 4 million years ago—equids and humans coexisted and traveled along the same paths in ancient territories located in modern-day Tanzania. This coexistence was, said one expert, the starting point of a long and deep bispecies relationship that’s had a critical role in shaping today’s world."
Stone Age GPS and the Discovery of Hawaii "Polynesians settled Hawaii during the 400’s C.E. They came by double-hulled sailing canoe from the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific. The trip probably took months, and survival required substantial supplies of food and fresh water. Even then death loomed for any canoe the gods didn’t favor with rain, fish, and good winds. It’s hard enough to imagine making the trip when you know the destination. But how did the Polynesians ever discover Hawaii in the first place?" The Polynesian World: 1. Hawaii; 2. New Zealand; 3. Rapa Nui / Easter Island; 4. Samoa; and 5. French Polynesia, including Tahiti & the Maraquesas "Hawaii isn’t on the way to or from anywhere else the ancient Polynesians traveled. In fact, it’s arguably the most isolated spot on Earth and lies more than 2,000 miles north of the Marquesas and the rest of the ancient Polynesian homeland in the South Pacific. Nor is it likely currents carried lost fishermen to Hawaii. Pacific currents wouldn’t have done the job. And the canoe would’ve carried a crew of skeletons by the time it washed up on Hawaii’s beaches, since fishermen don’t tend to carry months of food and fresh water." "That means Hawaii’s discovers probably sailed into the unknown north on purpose, on a planned expedition. That sounds like madness if you’re simply relying on luck and your eyes to find new islands. It would have been madness for any of the more technologically advanced peoples of the 400’s, or of the next ten centuries. But the ancient Polynesians—despite living in a Stone Age society without writing, maps, or instruments—had a suite of island-finding techniques that let them see beyond the horizon." (READ MORE)
Hard to imagine that the ancient Polynesians just sailed off into the unknown without any idea of a specific destination. BUT they obviously did it.