How Control of Fire Made Us Humans

Come on, baby, light my fire, said Homo Erectus about 1,8 million years ago.

Photo by Ryan Cryar on Unsplash

“Man is the only creature that dares to light a fire and live with it. The reason? Because he alone has learned to put it out.” — Henry Jackson Van Dyke, Jr.

Food for the thought.

Can you imagine your life today if Homo Erectus hadn’t learned how to control fire sometime between 1,8 million years and 300,000 years ago?

The early humans learning to control fire is what made us… humans. The humans we call ourselves today.

Before that, we were just like any other animal.

We used to live in fear and darkness, subsiding with scarce, raw food. We relied on the sunlight to stay alive, and we would hide at the fall of dusk.

Once we got in control of the fire, we started to:

• Cook our food, get more nutrients out of it, and avoid food poisoning from consuming certain raw plants;
• Keep ourselves warm;
• Better protect ourselves from predators, particularly at night;
• Work on more efficient hunting tools;
• Keep a source of light and stay awake for longer, doing things we needed to do to thrive as a…