What homo genus species was first to use fire?

Question

What homo genus species was first to use fire?

Answer 1

Homo Erectus, Homo Habilis was the 1st to make tools.

Answer 2

Remains of their campfires have been found and dated. HABILIS - Scientists have found stone tools at these sites! Animal bones have been found, as well. Technically, although animal bones would be called "trash", they indicate that Homo habilis man hunted game and/or scavenged fat-rich marrow from bones. These remains also tell us that Homo habilis probably did not stay in one place very long, but were always on the move, in search of food.

http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/scie...

ERECTUS - Earliest Signs of Human-Controlled Fire Uncovered in Israel, Michael Balter

If you want to ignite a debate among archaeologists, just ask a simple question: When did humans first control fire? In recent decades, scientific journals have been ablaze with claims and counterclaims about this crucial step in human development. Now an Israeli team adds more fuel, reporting on page 725 new findings that push the earliest credible evidence back to 790,000 years ago--more than three times earlier than the previously accepted date. Surprisingly, however, this claim may be strong enough to damp down the debate rather than stoke it up.

Archaeologists caution that the possibility of natural fires can never be entirely excluded at such an ancient site, and a few would like to see a bit more evidence before they start celebrating. But this time the skepticism is noticeably subdued. "I think they have made by far the best case yet for humanly controlled fire before 250,000 years ago," says Richard Klein of Stanford University in California. Paola Villa of the University of Colorado, Boulder, agrees: The paper "provides very strong evidence of the use of fire by early humans," she says. If the claim is substantiated, it may help explain how early humans were able to push into the chillier climate of Europe after 800,000 years ago.....

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/fu...

So, it looks like Erectus may have been the first to use fire but may not have been able to control it.  Habilis seemd to have used controled fire.  As I remember, some paleontoligists consider H. habilis to be a sub-species or type of H. erectus.

Answer 3

I have participated in fire research in Koobi Fora which currently has the oldest knwon sites of fire use. Originally Randy Bellamo did some interesting actualistic studies by conducting controlled burns to determine the temperatures in bush fires versus camp fires so that relative chemical changes in the soil upon which the fire was placed could be determined. Since bush fires quickly traverse the terrain where as a controlled fire sits in one place for a long time it was found that there were definite distinctions in how that effected the soil chemistry. The reason why this study was being done was because some apparent fire sites had been found that were dated to 1.6 mya and low and behold the chemical analysis determined that their chemical composition was that of a deliberate slow extended fire meaning that it was controlled and was having consumables added to it to keep it going for long enough to create the temperatures neccessary for the changes to occur in the chemical composition of the soil underneath. So, the species of Homo from this period, Homo erectus, was controlling fire at 1.6 mya. Some similar sites have since been found during a dig that I was involved in that would further push this date back closer to 1.8mya, but the chemical data has not been published by the lead investigator so I am not sure of our results. We were also looking more precisely at what these fires could have been used for from this period.  We still do not know if cooking was taking place here because there was no evidence of charred fossil remains. If they were cooking then they were utilizing all bone remains for some other purpose or else placing them so precisely in the fires that they were completely consumed (possibly to avoid attracting scavengers to their campsites). One thing that we do know is that within these "fire pits" we were finding small stone fragments of stone that was not always present in the surrounding areas and that these stone fragments sometimes had evidence of percussive strikes commonly seen in the construction of stone tools. What this means is it appears that their stone tools were being placed into the fire and that the fire was being used to temper these stone tools so that they would be more durable in everyday use. With regard to cooking we would love to have found some petrified bones that showed evidence of charring, but nothing of this sort has yet to be found to represent the 1.6-1.8mya time frame. The earliest site where such chared bones has been found is Swartkrans Cave in S. Africa where antelope, zebra, warthog and even charred baboon bones have been found, but this site is dated with the range 1.0-1.5mya, which is a relatively large time range given that from present day this represents a 33% difference! The researchers at the S. African site also conducted actualistic studies and determined that these charred bones were indeed caused by prolonged exposure to fire and concluded that in all probability they were the result of hominids and not from natural fires. This was also assisted by the presence of cut marks to strengthen their case.  So now you have a relatively good indication not only of which Homo was the first but also what activities they were conducting at the respective fire sites.

Answer 4

I started to answer this, but realized bone diggers have devoted their lives to analyzing this data & I am more into the genetics field of anthropology.  mindoversplatter, berikf, & sentry all have arguable points & I will not get into this one.

Chuckle... except to say I lean a bit toward Hablis.

Answer 5

I think it was the Neanderthals.

Answer 6

They are many theories about this, some say about 1.8 to 1.5 million years ago! Which will place Habilis and Erectus on the same starting line! But I guess that since fire happened to be an important tools that would have increase survival rate of any species having discovered it, it would make common senses to credit Erectus, the discovery of fire, as it outlive Habilis a lot... So my educated guess, will point me to Erectus.

Answer 7

Hablis, erectus?