Ice Age Humans Were Experts at Wielding Fire, Study Finds
This skill dates back at least a million years, and while fire has proven pivotal throughout human history, it can be especially valuable at certain times.
The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), for example, was the iciest part of the most recent glacial period in Earth's current ice age – and presumably a great time to cozy up by a fire.
Yet despite the era's extreme cold, there is scant evidence of humans using fire during the LGM, which lasted from about 26,500 to 19,000 years ago.
In a new study, researchers sought answers to this mystery by analyzing the remains of three ancient fireplaces found at an archaeological site in modern-day Ukraine, all of which are associated with human occupations at the site during the LGM.
These hearths reveal new details about pyrotechnology in the late Upper Paleolithic – a span of several frigid millennia when fireplaces seem inexplicably rare in the archaeological record.
"We know that fire was widespread before and after this period, but there is little evidence from the height of the Ice Age," says co-author William Murphree, a geoarchaeologist at the University of Algarve in Portugal.
Previous research suggests fire loomed large in the lives of Upper Paleolithic people, enabling vital activities that would be difficult or impossible without it.
"Fire was not just about keeping warm; it was also essential for cooking, making tools, and for social gatherings," says co-author Philip Nigst, an archaeologist at the University of Vienna in Austria.
The LGM brought "rapid climatic deterioration" to Europe, the researchers note, with extremely cold, arid conditions that led to habitat loss and geographic isolation. In that context, it seems unlikely people would choose to build fewer fires.
Maybe the cold hindered tree growth in steppes and grasslands, limiting the supply of firewood. Or maybe people built as many fires as ever, but harsh conditions during and after the LGM destroyed most of the evidence.
This prehistoric trend may also be an illusion, reflecting a modern publication bias more than an actual decline.
Given this uncertainty, the discovery of multiple hearths from the LGM could be revelatory. In addition to insights about ancient fire traditions, it might offer clues about the apparent dearth of hearths from this era.
Researchers investigated three hearths previously uncovered at Korman' 9, a site on the Dniester River in Ukraine. They analyzed each with a series of geoarchaeological techniques, seeking long-lost details about fires built tens of thousands of years ago.
Using microstratigraphic, micromorphological, and colorimetric analyses, they found the remains came from flat, open fireplaces, and that people mostly burned wood in them.
Despite their simplicity, these fires could have heated the ground to 600 degrees Celsius, which could indicate a fire burning well over that temperature, suggesting impressive pyrotechnic sophistication, especially amid such climatic upheaval.
The lack of big charcoal fragments made it hard to identify the main fuel source, but analysis of available charcoal revealed a predominance of spruce wood.
The hearths also contained traces of bone, but it's unclear why, explains co-author Marjolein Bosch, a zooarchaeologist at the University of Vienna, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the Natural History Museum Vienna.
"Some of the animal bones found at the site were burnt in a fire with a temperature of over 650 degrees Celsius. We are currently investigating whether they were used as fuel or just accidentally burned," Bosch says.
Differences among the three hearths could point to separate occupations of the site, possibly weeks or centuries apart, or these could be specialized hearths used by people within one occupation for various purposes or seasons.
"People perfectly controlled the fire and knew how to use it in different ways, depending on the purpose of the fire," Nigst says. "But our results also show that these hunter-gatherers used the same place at different times of the year during their annual migrations."
While at least some people apparently retained their pyrotechnic skills during the LGM, more research is still needed to explain why we find so few hearths like these at contemporary sites.
"Was most of the evidence destroyed by the ice-age-typical, alternating freezing and thawing of the soil?" Murphree says.
"Or did people not find enough fuel during the Last Glacial Maximum?" Nigst adds. "Did they not use fire, but instead relied on other technological solutions?"
The study was published in Geoarchaeology.
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BISCAYNE BAY, Fla. (AP) — A team of scientists from the University of Miami, the Florida Aquarium and Tela Coral in Honduras is working together to transplant crossbred coral fragments onto a reef off Miami's coastline that was devastated by coral bleaching two years ago. They're looking for ways to help reefs survive increased ocean temperatures caused by global warming and climate change. 'It's the end of a very long process," Andrew Baker, professor of marine biology and ecology at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School and director of the Coral Reef Futures Lab, said Tuesday as divers planted the corals off Miami. The plan of introducing corals from the Caribbean evolved over the past few years. "We had this idea that we really needed to try to help Florida's coral reef by introducing more diversity from around the Caribbean, recognizing that some of the biggest threats to corals, like climate change, are really global phenomena and if you try to have Florida's reefs save themselves on their own, we could give them some outside help,' Baker said. Coral breeding has also been done in Hawaii, where in 2021, scientists were working to speed up the coral's evolutionary clock to breed 'super corals' that can better withstand the impacts of global warming. Why crossbreed with corals from Honduras? Baker's group teamed with the Florida Aquarium and Tela Coral, bringing in fragments of corals from a warm reef off of Tela, Honduras, which spawned in tanks at the aquarium. 'We were able to cross the spawn from those corals, the sperm and the eggs, to produce babies. One parent from Florida, one parent from Honduras,' Baker said. They chose the reef off of Tela because the water is about 2 degrees Celsius (35.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the water off the coast of Florida. 'And yet the corals in those environments, and especially the Elkhorn corals, are really thriving,' Baker said. He noted that there are extensive beds that are hundreds of meters long, full of flourishing Elkhorn. 'And yet they survive there despite really warm conditions and also quite nutrient-polluted waters,' Baker said. The conditions are similar to those Florida will face over the next century, Baker said. It's also the first time international crossbreeding of corals has been permitted for planting onto wild reefs. 'So we're really excited to see how these do,' he said. The hope is the corals will be more 'thermally tolerant,' which Baker and the team will be testing throughout the summer. What are Elkhorn corals? Elkhorn corals are some of Florida's most iconic species and are valuable because they form the crest of the reef, Baker said. 'And the reef is what protects shorelines from storms and flooding. So if you have healthy Elkhorn coral populations, you have a great reef that is acting almost like a speed bump over which waves and storms pass and dissipate their energy before they hit the coast,' he said. Elkhorn corals are in serious decline, thanks in part to the coral bleaching in 2023 and warming sea temperatures, Baker said. While coral get their bright colors from the colorful algae that live inside them, prolonged warmth causes the algae to release toxic compounds. The coral ejects them, and a stark white skeleton — referred to as coral bleaching — is left behind, and the weakened coral is at risk of dying. 'We've lost maybe more than 95% of the Elkhorn corals that were on Florida's reefs at that point,' Baker said. Some of the corals spawned in the Florida Aquarium's laboratory arrived there in 2020, said Keri O'Neil, director and senior scientist with the aquarium's Coral Conservation Program. She said more fragments from Honduras and Florida will continue to live at the center. 'We hope that every year in the future we can make more and more crosses and continue to figure out which parents produce the best offspring,' O'Neil said. How do they plant the corals on the reef? The tiny Elkhorn coral fragments were placed onto small concrete bases along the reef on Tuesday. 'We've arranged them in a certain way that we can compare the performance of each of corals,' Baker said. The team will study how the corals that have a Honduran parent compare to the ones that are entirely from Florida. "But it's really the future that we're looking to and in particular, a warming future and a warming summer, how these corals do and do they have more thermal tolerance than the native Florida population, because that's really what the goal of the whole project is,'' he said. Baker said it's the most exciting project he's worked on during his 20-year stint at the University of Miami. Hope for the future If the corals thrive, it could provide a blueprint for working across the Caribbean to share corals. 'This is a project about international collaboration, about the fact that our environment really doesn't have closed borders, that we can work together to make things better in the world,' said Juli Berwald, co-founder of Tela Cora. 'And it shows that when we talk to each other, when we work together, we can really do something that might be life-changing, not just for us but for the corals and the reefs and all the animals that rely on the reefs.' Frisaro reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
