When we invented fire, man's conquest of flame

Originally posted by ForbiddenHologram
reply to post by Hanslune

 

I am talking about fires... I had remembered reading that in areas that they had found species of the late Pliocene, diggers had also found evidence of contained fires.

Well I hate to ask but you would need to provide a link for that please

Originally posted by Asktheanimals
reply to post by halfoldman

 

Learn something new everyday.

I've never seen anyone do with anything other than flint and steel,

Perhaps iron ore would suffice?

Actually, Flint and Steel is used to provide what we would call "Reliable" spark producers. Strike and Spark every time.

However you can produce sparks quite easily with many different kinds of rocks, and they do not have to strike any type of metal to produce a spark.

Go grab a couple of pieces of granite that are about baseball sized. Put on some work gloves, and some safety glasses (we don't want rock chips hitting your unprotected eyes). Strike the 2 pieces together and different angles. With enough force, you'll see sparks.

People have used all sorts of rocks to produce sparks: Flint, Chert, Granite, and even Quartz will work.

However, striking flint against steel will produce sparks every time, and require much less energy to do so.

So it would not be TOO far fetched to believe that primitive man started a fire on accident while pounding a piece of granite on a larger rock, and have sparks fly, only to catch something on fire (would take a lot of sparks however, very dry and flamable material too).

It does not have to have been an accident.
It doesn't take a bright spark to realise that sparks create fire.
Simple observation...

Of course creating fire using wood isn't quite so simple.
Perhaps that came later.

The creation of fire, in the controlled environment of the home hearth, is the single greatest achievement in mans history.

It laid the groundwork for social development, helped ensure the safety of the group via cooked food, warmth for the aged, and very young... In short, spurred the development of society much as we know it today...

All because of one little spark... Cool, huh?

......along with development of our langauge technology, fire, was our largest first steps to our present society

reply to post by Hanslune


Absolutely.

It happens today, as well... When families campout, stories get told, bonds get strengthened. Assuming, of course, they leave the blackberries at home...

reply to post by Hanslune


Correct! Without fire, we would never have invented 'Smores! The 2nd most important discovery.........




mmmmm.......okay I may have exaggerated that......

Originally posted by Asktheanimals
reply to post by halfoldman

 

Learn something new everyday.

I've never seen anyone do with anything other than flint and steel,

Perhaps iron ore would suffice?

Surely you've seen people start fires with the bow and drill method? That's the most ancient technology based one I know of, though they could have gotten it from other sources such as wildfires. You can also start it with a lens of water (like using a magnifying glass) -- among many other ways.

reply to post by eriktheawful


That's some forward lookin' ancestors we got there... Knowing that without fire, we wouldn't have s'mores.

Imagine... All that development over the aeons, just for s'mores...

ETA:

Originally posted by seagull
reply to post by eriktheawful

 

That's some forward lookin' ancestors we got there... Knowing that without fire, we wouldn't have s'mores.

Imagine... All that development over the aeons, just for s'mores...

ETA:

edit on 2/16/2012 by seagull because: (no reason given)

There's 'Smore to the story than you know!!!

.......

Okay, okay, getting off topic and derailing the thread....but I couldn't resist! Back on topic!

Fire definately without it, we would not have learned more advanced tool making, such as smelting ores for metals, providing hardier tools than rocks. Also cooking food to remove bacteria (all though I highly doubt they knew that was what they were doing), and of course the obvious things of providing heat and light.

reply to post by eriktheawful


Certainly the didn't call them Bacteria... But they could have very well noticed that food that was cooked was safer, and less likely to spoil, and thereby make them ill? I don't see how it couldn't have escaped their notice... MHO, of course.

reply to post by seagull


Several traditions noted that burnt offerings to 'gods' would last a lot longer than that which was raw and easily corrupted.

Originally posted by Hanslune
......along with development of our langauge technology, fire, was our largest first steps to our present society

Hey Hans,
I would have to respectfully dissagree, our development of verbal versus vocal communication is a direct outgrowth our ability to harness fire. There is a direct correlation between our harnessing of fire and increase in brain size. Which in turn led to more complex social behaviors, which needed more complex communication skills.
I would have to say our second greatest innovation is AC electricity, without which we would have never gotten beyond the cast iron phase of the industrial revolution.

Originally posted by Ophiuchus 13
reply to post by Hanslune

 

When 1 considers flame 1 has to keep inmind volcanic embers dropping causing fire-meteor causing fire, lightnng causing fire even natural explosive gasses igniting for some reason starting fries. For this I feel fire managment was a global effort in controlling, I dont htinkit started with 1 group tribe ect..

What? Starting "fries"? I never would have thought.

Glad to know you took time to review or think about your post before hitting reply.

"face palm"

reply to post by punkinworks10


Howdy Pumkinworks

That might be true! May I suggest a thread on that in future - what were the greatest technoligical advances of mankind, or somesuch?

Hey Amongus; the misspelling of fries for fire did cause me to look up when we did start making that food, that way, not until the 18th century it would seem!

Here is a little ditty that relates to the subject, and also to my thread www.abovetopsecret.com... that I will get back to as soon as I've got time.
One of the " Theft of fire" stories that is told by the miwok and yokuts among others of the linguisticaly related tribes in central cal. There are some very interesting facets of this story.
Like how there were people in the valley when the miwok arrived in the foothills, but that is for the other thread.

Text HOW TOL'-LE-LOO GOT THE FIRE FOR THE MOUNTAIN PEOPLE

WEK'-WEK the Falcon and We'-pi-ah'-gah the Golden Eagle were Chiefs of the Valley People. Among the members of their tribe were Mol'-luk the Condor; Hoo'-a-zoo the Turkey Buzzard; Hoo-loo'-e the Dove; Te-wi'-yu the Red-shafted Flicker, who must have been very close to the fire--as any one can see from the red under his wings and tail, and Wit'-tab-bah the red-breasted Robin, who was keeper of the fire. There were also Hah-ki'-ah the Elk, Hal'-loo-zoo the Antelope, Sahk'-mum-chah the Cinnamon Bear, and others.

The Mountain People were in darkness and wanted fire but did not know where it was or how to get it. O-lā-choo the Coyote-man tried hard to find it but did not succeed. After a while Tol'-le-loo the White-footed Mouse discovered the fire and the Mountain People sent him to steal it.

Tol'-le-loo took his flute (loo'-lah) of elderberry wood and went down into the Valley and found the big roundhouse of Wek'-wek and We-pi-ah'-gah and began to play. The people liked the music and asked him to come inside. So he went in and played for them. Soon all the people felt


sleepy. Wit'-tab-bah the Robin was sure that Tol'-le-loo had come to steal the fire, so he spread himself over it and covered it all up in order to hide it, and it turned his breast red. But Tol'-le-loo kept on playing his flute--and in a little while all the people were sound asleep; even Wit'-tab-bah could not keep awake.

Then Tol'-le-loo ran up to Wit'-tab-bah and cut a little hole in his wing and crawled through and stole the fire and put it inside his flute. When he had done this he ran out with it and climbed up to the top of the high mountain called Oo'-yum-bel'-le (Mount Diablo) and made a great fire which lighted up all the country till even the blue mountains far away in the east [the Sierra Nevada range] could be seen. Before this all the world was dark.

When Wek'-wek awoke he saw the fire on Oo'-yum-bel'-le and knew that Tol'-le-loo had stolen it. So he ran out and followed him and after a while caught him.

Tol'-le-loo said, "Look and see if I have the fire."

Wek'-wek looked but could not find it, for it was inside the flute. Then Wek'-wek pitched Tot'-le-loo into the water and let him go.

Tol'-le-loo got out and went east into the mountains and carried the fire in his flute to the Mountain People; then he took it out of the flute and put it on the ground and covered it with leaves and pine needles and tied it up in a small bundle.


O-lā'-choo the Coyote smelled it and wanted to steal it. He came up and pushed it with his nose and was going to swallow it when it suddenly shot up into the sky and became the Sun.

O-lā'-choo sent Le'-che-che the Humming-bird, and another bird, named Le-che-koo'-tah-mah,who also had a long bill, after it, but they could not catch it and came back without it.

The people took the fire that was left and put it into two trees, oo'-noo the buckeye and mon'-o-go the incense cedar, where it still is and where it can be had by anyone who wants it.

NOTE--This story has been told me by several Mewuk Indians independently. The only variation of consequence is that, in one version, Wek'-wek and We-pi-ah'-gah gave a feast and invited the Mountain People to come; and it was while they were there that Tol'-le-loo put the Valley People to sleep with his flute and ran off with the fire. The story is called Oo'-ten-nas'-se-sa,though of course this is only a part.

From


THE DAWN OF THE WORLD MYTHS AND WEIRD TALESTOLD BY THE MEWAN [MIWOK] INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA, by C. H Merriam
www.sacred-texts.com...
Another interesting thing is how fire lives in the incense cedar, its dry fiberous bark makes excellent tinder, and the buckeye, which goes dormant in the summer and its wood is always dry and is used to make fire sticks.
I learned how make fire in this way as a child, its pretty easy.
And to whomever said you can make fire from any rock , like granite, has never tried to make fire from granite, you'll be there a life time trying with granite.

Fire is great no doubt but it also had a negative effect on us too. For millions of years humans were complete vegetarians which can be seen by analysing our jaw, teeth and saliva. Raw meat was too tough for us to eat and it was only when we discovered fire that we started eating meat in larger quantities. Over time this new diet changed us, we were no longer able to extract protein from vegetable matter and brake down the material efficiently. Over time those parts of our digestive system which were for processing vegetable matter shrank and became redundant. The result is that today we cant process raw vegetable matter as effectively as our primate relatives.

Originally posted by LUXUS
Fire is great no doubt but it also had a negative effect on us too. For millions of years humans were complete vegetarians which can be seen by analysing our jaw, teeth and saliva. Raw meat was too tough for us to eat and it was only when we discovered fire that we started eating meat in larger quantities. Over time this new diet changed us, we were no longer able to extract protein from vegetable matter and brake down the material efficiently. Over time those parts of our digestive system which were for processing vegetable matter shrank and became redundant. The result is that today we cant process raw vegetable matter as effectively as our primate relatives.

People can eat raw meat, it is harder to chew than cooked but you can work your way thru it. Becoming omnivores allowed us to more easily obtain high value foods. This probably allowed us to evolve faster and gave us the ability to feed that evolving brain

reply to post by LUXUS


You're right, sort of...

That vegetarian diet of other primates, versus our omnivorous diet is also what allowed us to evolve to what we are, warts and all... Whilst they are still tree bound, and show no sign of being otherwise any time soon.

So far as man's harnessing the power of fire? There is no down side to it, really. Societal development is directly influenced by this development. More free time equals time spent developing new tools, new ways of using old tools, art that help perpetuate knowledge, so things aren't lost.

Originally posted by seagull
reply to post by LUXUS

 

You're right, sort of...

That vegetarian diet of other primates, versus our omnivorous diet is also what allowed us to evolve to what we are, warts and all... Whilst they are still tree bound, and show no sign of being otherwise any time soon.

So far as man's harnessing the power of fire? There is no down side to it, really. Societal development is directly influenced by this development. More free time equals time spent developing new tools, new ways of using old tools, art that help perpetuate knowledge, so things aren't lost.

Of course this is complicated by the fact that Chimps and Bonobos; when they can get it, eat meat too