Overview
- An international team published a PLOS One paper reporting charred micromammal bones from Wonderwerk Cave that they dated to between about 1.07 and 1.8 million years ago using magnetostratigraphy and cosmogenic burial dating.
- Researchers identified heat exposure with bone luminescence, a method that makes chemically altered, heated bone glow under high‑energy blue light and a specific filter.
- The burned bones were concentrated in a cluster about 30 metres from the cave entrance, which the authors say makes a stray wildfire less likely and supports the idea that hominins brought or maintained fires inside the cave.
- The team stops short of claiming hominins invented fire, instead arguing the record points to repeated use or maintenance of fire by early Acheulean hominins, likely Homo erectus, and notes the bones could have come from owl pellets used as fuel.
- Commentators and the authors stress important caveats — no clear hearth features, possible translocation or natural burning, and dating and taphonomic limits — so the claim revises the earliest possible timeline but requires further corroborating evidence.