Archaeologists reveal the earliest evidence of humans kindling and managing fire
A field in eastern England has yielded what researchers believe is the oldest known instance of humans creating and sustaining fire, marking a pivotal moment in our species’ development.
In Barnham, Suffolk, excavations uncovered baked earth that formed a hearth, heat-shattered flint axes, and two fragments of pyrite—a stone that can produce sparks when struck against other materials. Together, these findings point to early humans, most likely Neanderthals, being capable of making and maintaining fire.
“This site, around 400,000 years old, provides the earliest proof of deliberate fire-making anywhere in the world, not just in Britain or Europe,” stated Nick Ashton, curator of Palaeolithic collections at the British Museum, during a news briefing. He is the senior author of the Nature study detailing the Barnham site, published the same day in Nature.
“I’d call this the most exciting discovery of my 40-year career,” he added.
The timing and location of when humans first learned to make fire and cook remain among the most enduring questions in human origins research.
Fire would have offered warmth, protection from predators, and the ability to cook food more thoroughly, potentially boosting nutrition. Mastery of fire could also have supported practical advances, such as adhesive technologies, and provided a social focus for activities like storytelling.
The Barnham artifacts date fire-making activity at least 350,000 years earlier than the previous record, which came from a site in northern France. Yet Ashton cautions that Barnham likely represents only part of a broader, earlier capability that existed elsewhere in Europe.
“I think many researchers suspected regular fire use in Europe roughly 400,000 years ago, but solid evidence was missing,” Ashton explained.
Determining the origins of fire mastery is challenging. Fire evidence does not always endure: ash and charcoal can disperse, and baked sediments can erode. Distinguishing human-made fires from natural ones is likewise difficult.
There are sites in Israel, Kenya, and South Africa with signs of early fires dating from around 800,000 to over 1 million years ago, but researchers caution that some of these could reflect natural wildfires rather than human ignition.
Early humans likely encountered fire from natural causes like lightning and could have preserved embers, but such fires would have been irregular resources, the study notes.
The Barnham discovery, by contrast, suggests deliberate, repeated use of fire at the site.
The team analyzed reddened sediment from Barnham and found chemical signatures indicating high-temperature, focused burning of wood, rather than widespread landscape fires. Alterations in minerals also point to repeated burning at the same locale.
The decisive evidence comes from two iron pyrite pieces, commonly known as fool’s gold, which can strike flint to produce sparks that could ignite tinder such as dry fungus. The pyrites were not native to the immediate surroundings, implying that Barnham inhabitants actively sought out this mineral for its flame-lighting properties, the researchers report.
Experts unaffiliated with the study praise the breadth of methods used. John McNabb, a professor of palaeolithic archaeology at the Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins, University of Southampton, notes that fire offers numerous benefits—it can serve as a defense, improve the nutritional quality of food, extend productive daylight hours, and help bond communities. He also emphasizes a stark reality: unmanaged fire leaves you at the mercy of the landscape, but controlled fire grants powerful influence over the world around you.
The presence of flint axes corroborates human activity at Barnham, though no hominin bones were recovered. Coauthor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, London, points out that early Neanderthals were known to inhabit nearby Swanscombe, Kent, around the same period, making them the most plausible makers of Barnham’s fire. He suggests that these populations likely migrated from continental Europe when Britain and Europe were joined by a land bridge.
“An exciting next step is to apply the same investigative techniques used at Barnham to other sites in Britain and Europe—and perhaps beyond—to uncover parallel evidence,” Stringer added.
