Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Based on a pile of archaeological evidence, researchers think that Neanderthals were deliberately lighting fires as a site in ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. An artist's impression shows sparks from flint and pyrite, in this image released on December 10, 2025. Craig Williams, The ...

A field in eastern England has revealed evidence of the earliest known instance of humans creating and controlling fire, a significant find that archaeologists say illuminates a dramatic turning point ...

Never mind AI, the internet, or the rocket – it's been argued that the control of fire was the most pivotal technological breakthrough in history. It gave our ancestors protection, the ability to cook ...

The ability to make fire on demand has long been seen as a turning point in our evolutionary story. It unlocked benefits like cooking food, staying warm, and protection from predators. For thousands ...

It's easy to take for granted that with the flick of a lighter or the turn of a furnace knob, modern humans can conjure flames — cooking food, lighting candles or warming homes. For much of our ...

Four hundred thousand years ago, near a water hole on grasslands bordering a forest in what is now southern England, a group of Neandertals struck chunks of iron pyrite against flint to create sparks, ...

At a site called East Farm in England, recent excavations revealed reddened silt, flint handaxes distorted by heat, and fragments of a mineral—iron pyrite—that could have been used to make sparks on ...