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To get the last ice age alive, our ancestors needed a special series of skills. One was the use of the power of fire. Not many well -preserved fireplaces that go back to the coldest part of the ice age (between 26,500 and 19,000 years ago) remain in Europe.
Proof of a prehistoric site on the coast of the Dnister River in contemporary Ukraine shows that people who live built different types of fireplace during the most recent ice age. Wood served as their primary source of fuel, but they may also have used fat and bones. The findings were Published on April 1 in the magazine Geoarchaeology.
Archaeologists believe that Homo Sapiens In Europe during the Top paleolithic period (between 45,000 and 10,000 years ago) used fire in different ways.
“Fire was not only about staying warm; it was also essential for cooking, making tools and for social meetings,” Philip R. Nigst, co-author and archaeologist of the study at the University of Vienna in Austria, said in a statement.
[ Related: Ancient rocks tie Roman Empire’s collapse to a mini ice age. ]
Fire was probably an important part of the survival for hunter-gatherers in the ice age in what is now Europe. Yet a lack of evidence of the coldest part of the ice age has prevented scientists from saying how.
“We know that fire was widespread before and after this period, but there is little evidence from the Ice Age,” William Murphree, co-author and geoarcheologian at the University of Algarve in Portugal, said in a statement.
In the New studyThe team analyzed three fireplace that were dug up on a prehistoric site in Ukraine. Through microstratigraphic analysis, micromorphology and colorimetric analysis, the scientists identified three simple, flat, wood -fired fireplace. Interesting that the analysis shows that one of these Benters reached more than 1,112 degrees Fahrenheit (600 degrees Celsius). According to the team, this proves that the person who made these fires had a more advanced control of pyrotechnics, despite the hard environments in which they lived.
People used wood as their most important fuel source during the peak of the ice age. The charcoal analysis indicates that it was specifically sparring. However, animal or fat may also be used to make fires burn.
“Some of the animal bones found on the site were burned in a fire with a temperature of more than 650 degrees Celsius [1,202 degrees Fahrenheit]. We are currently investigating whether they were used as a fuel or simply burned by accident, ”study co-author and University of Vienna Dierenguinologist Marjolein D. Bosch said in a statement.
[ Related: Ice Age hunter-gatherers may have had cheek piercings, even as children. ]
All three fireplaces are open and flat. The analysis of the team suggests that their use of fire was refined because the open fireplaces were probably built and otherwise used, depending on the season. A fireplace is bigger and thickerWhich suggests that it could reach higher temperatures.
“People perfectly controlled the fire and knew how to use it in different ways, depending on the purpose of the fire. But our results also show that these hunter-gatherers used the same place at different times of the year during their annual migrations,” said Nigst.
Even with these new findings, there are many questions, in particular about the reason why there is such scarce evidence of fireplaces that go back to the last ice age.
“Was the majority of the evidence destroyed by the ice-age-typical, alternating freezing and defrosting the ground?” Murphree asks.
“Or did people not find enough fuel during the last glacial maximum? Didn’t they use a fire, but did they rely on other technological solutions instead?” Adds Nigst.
The team hopes that understanding more about the role of fire brigade in human evolution will reveal how it helped to become our species dominant.
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