{"id":58047,"date":"2021-05-28T06:45:29","date_gmt":"2021-05-28T11:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58047"},"modified":"2021-05-28T06:45:29","modified_gmt":"2021-05-28T11:45:29","slug":"early-humans-used-fire-to-permanently-change-the-landscape-tens-of-thousands-of-years-ago-in-stone-age-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58047","title":{"rendered":"Early humans used fire to permanently change the landscape tens of thousands of years ago in Stone Age Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"magazine\">\n<div class=\"wrapper\"><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<div class=\"grid-twelve large-grid-eleven\">\n<div class=\"top\">\n<aside class=\"grid-two content-social-distribution\">\n<h3><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/early-humans-used-fire-to-permanently-change-the-landscape-tens-of-thousands-of-years-ago-in-stone-age-africa-158574\">Early humans used fire to permanently change the landscape tens of thousands of years ago in Stone Age Africa<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"grid-ten large-grid-nine grid-last content-body content entry-content instapaper_body inline-promos\">\n<p>Fields of rust-colored soil, spindly cassava, small farms and villages dot the landscape. Dust and smoke blur the mountains visible beyond massive Lake Malawi. Here in tropical Africa, you can\u2019t escape the signs of human presence.<\/p>\n<p>How far back in time would you need to go in this place to discover an entirely natural environment?<\/p>\n<p>Our work has shown that it would be a very long time indeed \u2013\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/advances.sciencemag.org\/content\/7\/19\/eabf9776\">at least 85,000 years<\/a>, eight times earlier than the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1126\/science.aax1192\">world\u2019s first land transformations via agriculture<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/citations?user=MQkcYDYAAAAJ&amp;hl=en&amp;oi=ao\">We<\/a>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/citations?user=kNBySP0AAAAJ&amp;hl=en&amp;oi=ao\">are<\/a>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/citations?user=ZGB_9bQAAAAJ&amp;hl=en&amp;oi=ao\">part<\/a>\u00a0of an interdisciplinary collaboration between archaeologists who study past human behavior, geochronologists who study the timing of landscape change and paleoenvironmental scientists who study ancient environments. By combining evidence from these research specialities, we have identified an instance in the very distant past of early humans bending environments to suit their needs. In doing so, they transformed the landscape around them in ways still visible today.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"align-center zoomable\"><a href=\"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/395547\/original\/file-20210417-17-gv4vry.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/395547\/original\/file-20210417-17-gv4vry.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip\" sizes=\"(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/395547\/original\/file-20210417-17-gv4vry.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=399&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/395547\/original\/file-20210417-17-gv4vry.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=399&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/395547\/original\/file-20210417-17-gv4vry.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=399&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/395547\/original\/file-20210417-17-gv4vry.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=501&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/395547\/original\/file-20210417-17-gv4vry.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=501&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/395547\/original\/file-20210417-17-gv4vry.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=501&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w\" alt=\"people excavate stone tools below the ground's surface\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"enlarge_hint\"><\/div><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Crew members excavate artifacts at a site in Karonga, Malawi, where stone tools are buried more than 3 feet (1 meter) below the modern ground surface.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"attribution\"><span class=\"source\">Jessica Thompson<\/span>,\u00a0<a class=\"license\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\">CC BY-ND<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>Digging for behavioral and environmental clues<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The dry season is the best time to do archaeological fieldwork here, and finding sites is easy. Most places we dig in these red soils, we find stone artifacts. They are evidence that someone sat and skillfully broke stones to create edges so sharp they can still draw blood. Many of these stone tools can be fit back together, reconstructing a single action by a single person, from tens of thousands of years ago.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"align-center zoomable\"><a href=\"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/395548\/original\/file-20210417-13-4zrut7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/395548\/original\/file-20210417-13-4zrut7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip\" sizes=\"(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/395548\/original\/file-20210417-13-4zrut7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=414&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/395548\/original\/file-20210417-13-4zrut7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=414&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/395548\/original\/file-20210417-13-4zrut7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=414&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/395548\/original\/file-20210417-13-4zrut7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=520&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/395548\/original\/file-20210417-13-4zrut7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=520&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/395548\/original\/file-20210417-13-4zrut7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=520&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w\" alt=\"stone tools paired together\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"enlarge_hint\"><\/div><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Middle Stone Age artifacts, some of which can be fit back together.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"attribution\"><a class=\"source\" href=\"https:\/\/advances.sciencemag.org\/lookup\/doi\/10.1126\/sciadv.abf4098\">Sheila Nightingale<\/a>,\u00a0<a class=\"license\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\">CC BY-ND<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Early humans used fire to permanently change the landscape tens of thousands of years ago in Stone Age Africa Fields of rust-colored soil, spindly cassava, small farms and villages dot the landscape. Dust and smoke blur the mountains visible beyond massive Lake Malawi. Here in tropical Africa, you can\u2019t escape the signs of human presence. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[18,31274,31275,2582,31273,31276,8487],"class_list":["post-58047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-africa","tag-david-k-wright","tag-early-humans","tag-fire","tag-jessica-thompson","tag-sarah-ivory","tag-the-conversation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58047"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58048,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58047\/revisions\/58048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}