Oldest known human ancestor may be about 2 million years old: study
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/110909_sediba
This is just about right.
In his book Fire: A Brief History (part of his Cycle of Fire series), Stephen J. Pyne describes a cave in Africa filled with fossilized bones. A horizontal layer of charcoal, radiodated at 1.8 million years, divides the fossils above from the fossils below, sort of like God parting the waters at the beginning of the creation of the universe.
The fossilized bones below that dark line amidst the bones include those of numerous animals living in that area at the time, including hominen bones, the bones of immediate ancestors of humans and their cousins. All of them look as if they had been gnawed by creatures with huge, powerful jaws of the sort identical to the giant hyenas that stalked that area.
The bones above that layer of charcoal, however, include no bones of hominens -- but they include the bones of hyenas. And, unlike those below it, all of them have been cooked.
By 1.8 million years ago, we had tamed fire, and with that we became human. For fire allowed us to cook our food, releasing us from the necessity of working hard to masticate everything we ate, including tough, stringy vegetation as well as meat, into a pulpy mass which we could then swallow and digest properly. As a result, our jaws began to evolve less and less brutally strong muscles, which allowed our braincases to balloon outward and our brains to grow and grow in size. That probably began a few tens of thousands of years before the advent of the hominids described in the above-linked article, giving our ancestors enough time to evolve into recognizably human organisms.
We began with a love affair with fire. Let us hope we don't end because of it.
Nota bene: As far as I know, we've never found any sort of fossil testimony like the one in that ancient African cave to the use of fire by any clade of creatures other than the hominens, that is, humans and their immediate ancestors. Never, anywhere. If we ever do, we will know, incontrovertibly, that a different sort of creature than ourselves once tried to walk the path to the stars, a path that always begins in the taming of fire. And we would wonder, perhaps forever, whether they gained that ultimate goal, colonizing worlds of other stars, or perished before they could attain it -- and why.
This is just about right.
In his book Fire: A Brief History (part of his Cycle of Fire series), Stephen J. Pyne describes a cave in Africa filled with fossilized bones. A horizontal layer of charcoal, radiodated at 1.8 million years, divides the fossils above from the fossils below, sort of like God parting the waters at the beginning of the creation of the universe.
The fossilized bones below that dark line amidst the bones include those of numerous animals living in that area at the time, including hominen bones, the bones of immediate ancestors of humans and their cousins. All of them look as if they had been gnawed by creatures with huge, powerful jaws of the sort identical to the giant hyenas that stalked that area.
The bones above that layer of charcoal, however, include no bones of hominens -- but they include the bones of hyenas. And, unlike those below it, all of them have been cooked.
By 1.8 million years ago, we had tamed fire, and with that we became human. For fire allowed us to cook our food, releasing us from the necessity of working hard to masticate everything we ate, including tough, stringy vegetation as well as meat, into a pulpy mass which we could then swallow and digest properly. As a result, our jaws began to evolve less and less brutally strong muscles, which allowed our braincases to balloon outward and our brains to grow and grow in size. That probably began a few tens of thousands of years before the advent of the hominids described in the above-linked article, giving our ancestors enough time to evolve into recognizably human organisms.
We began with a love affair with fire. Let us hope we don't end because of it.
Nota bene: As far as I know, we've never found any sort of fossil testimony like the one in that ancient African cave to the use of fire by any clade of creatures other than the hominens, that is, humans and their immediate ancestors. Never, anywhere. If we ever do, we will know, incontrovertibly, that a different sort of creature than ourselves once tried to walk the path to the stars, a path that always begins in the taming of fire. And we would wonder, perhaps forever, whether they gained that ultimate goal, colonizing worlds of other stars, or perished before they could attain it -- and why.