Overview
- Researchers report hearth-related combustion traces and calcined small-mammal bones preserved about 30 meters inside Wonderwerk Cave, which the team interprets as deliberate placement of fire rather than accidental wildfires.
- The study attributes the remains to early members of Homo, with repeated combustion signatures dated between roughly 1.07 and 1.79 million years ago, extending the record for habitual fire use earlier into the Pleistocene.
- Authors stress the behavior appears opportunistic: hominins transported and maintained natural fires inside the shelter but the paper finds no direct evidence that they could ignite flames or used fire to cook.
- The team developed a non-invasive luminescence analysis for burned bones to confirm in-situ burning and to separate genuine fire exposure from post-depositional chemical or light-driven changes.
- If validated at other sites, these results could reshape when and how scientists think early Homo used fire and they offer a new tool to re-evaluate ancient claims about controlled fire use.