Fire

fire, rapid burning of combustible material with the evolution of heat and usually accompanied by flame. It is one of the human race’s essential tools, control of which helped start it on the path toward civilization.

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The original source of fire undoubtedly was lightning, and such fortuitously ignited blazes remained the only source of fire for aeons. For some years Peking man, about 500,000 bce, was believed to be the earliest unquestionable user of fire; evidence uncovered in Kenya in 1981 and in South Africa in 1988, however, suggests that the earliest controlled use of fire by hominids dates from about 1,420,000 years ago. Not until about 7000 bce did Neolithic man acquire reliable fire-making techniques, in the form either of drills, saws, and other friction-producing implements or of flint struck against pyrites. Even then it was more convenient to keep a fire alive permanently than to reignite it.