Ancient people mastered the production of fire 400 thousand years ago

The authors of the new work analyzed the results of scientific studies that mention the findings

fires left by hominins in Europe,Israel, Asia and North Africa and found out that ancient people mastered the skill of making fire 400 thousand years ago, that is, long before the ancestors of modern man left Africa and began settling on other continents.

This means that already in the second half of the Middle Pleistocene, primitive communication was developed among human ancestors, thanks to which ancient cultural skills spread. 

According to experts, by that time alreadya system of knowledge transfer and primitive communication between people was formed, since it is impossible to explain in another way the rapid spread of the acquired skill over a large area.

Until now it was believed that culturaldistribution began only 70 thousand  years ago, when modern people, Homo sapiens, began to settle. But data on the use of fire now shows that it happened much earlier.

Catherine McDonald, archaeologists and first author of the article

Similarly, after 100 thousand years, a special technology for processing stone tools, known as the Levallois industry, spread.

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