Timeline of human’s discovery of fire shattered with 400,000-year-old revelationBy Andrea Margolis, Fox News
Published Dec. 22, 2025
Scientists recently discovered what may be the earliest evidence of deliberate fire-making by humans — and it’s far older than scholars previously believed.
The study, which was published in the journal Nature on Dec. 10, centered around a site in Barnham, England, that dates to the Paleolithic era, the longest era of human prehistory.
Although the Paleolithic spans from about 2.5 million to 10,000 years ago, the newly uncovered evidence is dated to roughly 400,000 years ago.
Until now, the earliest known evidence of deliberate fire-making dated to about 50,000 years ago in northern France, which makes the new discovery a major chronological shift.
During the excavation, a team led by the British Museum found flint hand axes, a patch of baked clay, and fragments of iron pyrite.
The iron pyrite was likely struck against flint to produce fire.
Archaeologists found the burned deposits within the sediment of ancient ponds, which helped preserve the evidence hundreds of thousands of years later.
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Source:
https://nypost.com/2025/12/22/science/timeline-of-humans-discovery-of-fire-shattered-with-400000-year-old-revelation/
