Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too. We're on fire with yet
Speaker 2: another fire episode of Stuff you Should Know About Fire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Jerry asked me when you left the.
Speaker 4: Room too, surprised we hadn't done one on fire, and
Speaker 4: I said, well, we did years ago on just sort
Speaker 4: of more than nuts and bolts in the science of
Speaker 4: the actual thing that is fire, right, But I commissioned
Speaker 4: this one from Dave. I believe that's a little more
Speaker 4: along the lines of like what did it mean for people?
Speaker 4: And like kind of when you know? I wondered, like,
Speaker 4: did we learn how to make fire? Was there like
Speaker 4: a day that that happened? And do we know that
Speaker 4: day and that person? And the answer is no, Unfortunately,
Speaker 4: we don't know.
Speaker 2: We not only don't know that, also our technology will
Speaker 2: all will certainly never be so advanced that we will
Speaker 2: ever find out now. And one of the reasons why
Speaker 2: is because there probably was multiple people at different times
Speaker 2: around the world who learned how to manipulate fire. And
Speaker 2: also there's there wasn't just like a one day where
Speaker 2: fire didn't exist, and then all of a sudden, somebody
Speaker 2: like strikes a flint and some hirt or something like that,
Speaker 2: and now there's fire. It happened in stages humans interactions
Speaker 2: with fire, and luckily for us, even though there isn't
Speaker 2: one day that this happened and we can't say like
Speaker 2: it was Todd, Todd was the one who invented fire.
Speaker 2: It is a very fascinating subject. It's definitely up my alley.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And it may have also not been linear. We may
Speaker 4: have had control of fire for a while and then
Speaker 4: not for a while.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So basically what everyone agrees on scientifically is that the
Speaker 4: discovery fire was not an inn, but it was a process.
Speaker 2: Right, And the traditional story goes that Prometheus went on
Speaker 2: a quest for fire, ended up hooking up essentially with
Speaker 2: a human woman, and found that humans were way better
Speaker 2: than his own species. That's right, and we got fire
Speaker 2: from that, that's right. So we talked a little bit
Speaker 2: about fire and how much we needed I remember saying
Speaker 2: that I saw somewhere that we're obligate fire users, that
Speaker 2: we essentially needed it to survive, and that raised the
Speaker 2: question like do we still need it? And the answers yes,
Speaker 2: we use it still today, but the role that it
Speaker 2: played in human development is just staggering. Like just the
Speaker 2: idea of cooking alone is like just that revolutionary change
Speaker 2: and all of the stuff that that unlocked for ust
Speaker 2: nutrient wise, taste wise, let's not forget about taste. But
Speaker 2: then also like we made metals with it, we made
Speaker 2: pottery with it, we kept animals at bay with it,
Speaker 2: even Mosquito they don't like fires. We learned to do
Speaker 2: all these different things to interact and manipulate our world
Speaker 2: using fire. So the idea of not having fire, it's
Speaker 2: just terrifying.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure. And you know, I know, we talked
Speaker 4: about this a little bit there. Theories that human language
Speaker 4: was born around the campfire because now people were awake
Speaker 4: and needed something to do when they sat around the fire,
Speaker 4: like talk about what they did that day. Obviously, fires
Speaker 4: would eventually power the fires that made steam possible and
Speaker 4: steam engines possible and birth the industrial revolution.
Speaker 3: So fire very important.
Speaker 4: It's a technology which basically blew early humans minds. Obviously
Speaker 4: they didn't learn how to make fire at first, and
Speaker 4: we're going to go through these stages like the first
Speaker 4: fire came from you know, a lightning strike, but even that,
Speaker 4: you know, probably blew the minds of whatever was walking
Speaker 4: around back then and saw the ground on fire all
Speaker 4: of a sudden.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, what I've found fascinating though, is the idea
Speaker 2: that fire is actually fairly new to Earth. You know,
Speaker 2: like Earth was a watery planet for billions of years,
Speaker 2: and it wasn't until the atmosphere kind of congealed into
Speaker 2: its oxygenous state like it is now and that vegetation grew,
Speaker 2: and then you started to have lightning strikes too. You
Speaker 2: put all those three things together, now you've got fire
Speaker 2: and it didn't exist before on Earth. That was not
Speaker 2: something I've ever really thought of before. I thought that
Speaker 2: was pretty cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think they said the Earth has been kind of
Speaker 4: fire ideal for about four hundred and seventy million years,
Speaker 4: which is certainly a long time, but not on the
Speaker 4: order of you know, billions and billions of years. If
Speaker 4: you go forward in time a bit to about six
Speaker 4: million years ago, that's when the first homonyms appeared in Africa.
Speaker 4: So now, all of a sudden, you have the conditions
Speaker 4: for fire, and you have you know, say, people has
Speaker 4: that even.
Speaker 2: Correct Hominin's are people yeah.
Speaker 3: Okay, I just don't even know what people means.
Speaker 2: Hominins are people, too, Chuck.
Speaker 3: That's what I think.
Speaker 4: All of a sudden, you had people that could eventually
Speaker 4: harness fire and then learn to make fire, or at
Speaker 4: the very least realize the benefits and take great interest
Speaker 4: in fire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they think, actually it's probable. So the best way
Speaker 2: to kind of look back in this kind of prehistory
Speaker 2: where there's not only no written record or even an
Speaker 2: oral tradition, like there's no archaeological evidence at this point
Speaker 2: yet still even right, so it's all just complete conjecture,
Speaker 2: but a pretty good way to kind of approach the
Speaker 2: whole thing is to say, Okay, how do animals interact
Speaker 2: with fire? Right? Because those first hominins were pretty close
Speaker 2: to the great ape ancestors we evolved from. Still, so
Speaker 2: you can make a pretty good case that they would
Speaker 2: have interacted with fire like other animals do it. Animals
Speaker 2: basically run away from it, they ignore it, depending on
Speaker 2: whether it's a third or not, and then some of
Speaker 2: them actually use it to their advanceage, like raptors have
Speaker 2: been seen picking up burning sticks and dropping them elsewhere
Speaker 2: to flush out prey and corey essentially, which is a
Speaker 2: jerk move, but it works.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4: And if there was ever any kind of you know,
Speaker 4: wildfire that started because of a lightning strike right behind that,
Speaker 4: you would see predators like wolves or even some birds,
Speaker 4: either preying on the animals as a flea or just
Speaker 4: having a better hunting ground because things were now kind
Speaker 4: of burned down.
Speaker 2: You could see everything, right, So you can make a
Speaker 2: pretty good case that early early humans would have essentially
Speaker 2: been doing the same thing that we would have eventually
Speaker 2: figured out that fire offers things that non fiery things
Speaker 2: don't like. For example, we probably started foraging was the
Speaker 2: first step where after a wildfire we might have been
Speaker 2: looking for things to eat and been like, this tastes
Speaker 2: way better than when I catch it and pull its
Speaker 2: head off and then start eating whatever happening here. This
Speaker 2: fire is doing something great to this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, the idea of accidental cooked meat must
Speaker 4: have just been mind blowing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I mean, a rare steak is a
Speaker 2: thing of beauty in and of itself. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't want to say well done, but yes, cooked meat
Speaker 2: is good too. A cooked turkey leg is way better
Speaker 2: than a raw turkey leg.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Hey, I've never tested that theory, but I bet
Speaker 3: you're right.
Speaker 2: It's one of those things that you don't even have
Speaker 2: to try yourself. You just innately know it. And it's
Speaker 2: from this era.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: Gathering after foraging was the next step of sort of
Speaker 4: the discovery of fire, and that's when humans were like, hey,
Speaker 4: I have this fire. It may have happened by lightning strike,
Speaker 4: but I now have it in a little bindle in
Speaker 4: my hand, and I can or maybe in a log hollow,
Speaker 4: and I can carry this thing from one place to
Speaker 4: another now, or maybe it's just a tree branch if
Speaker 4: you're a little bit more of a simpleton like TikTok was,
Speaker 4: and now you could transport your fire from one area
Speaker 4: to the other, and you can use that fire to
Speaker 4: flush prey out or to protect yourself from the sabertooth
Speaker 4: tiger or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a big one that I hadn't really thought
Speaker 2: of before. But you keep animals at bait because animals
Speaker 2: are used to wildfires and not going near them. So
Speaker 2: if you're a human or a hominin and you're huddling
Speaker 2: around the fire, the sabertooth tiger probably isn't going to
Speaker 2: come attack you right then.
Speaker 3: You never saw Jungle Book, oh very.
Speaker 2: Very long ago, and all I remember is Blue doing
Speaker 2: his thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the bare necessities. Yeah so great.
Speaker 4: Still probably my favorite, even among the moderns. My favorite
Speaker 4: Disney carton.
Speaker 2: My favorite's long been Robin Hood. That was always my
Speaker 2: favorite as a kid.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I like that Robinhood a lot. But you just
Speaker 4: can't beat There's so many bangers in the Jungle Book.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, all right with that one. Then I'll
Speaker 2: just stop. I'll throw out my own personal favorite in
Speaker 2: favor of yours.
Speaker 3: Why would you do that?
Speaker 2: I just I just want to get along.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right.
Speaker 4: So they're carrying fire around at this point, they may
Speaker 4: have discovered like a way to actually keep it going better,
Speaker 4: like I know on the survival shows, like a lone
Speaker 4: animal dung is a great, very sort of slow burning
Speaker 4: way to transport transport fuel, like a burning cowpie.
Speaker 3: Maybe, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: So that's the gathering thing. So we go from foraging
Speaker 2: like we have no control over it. We just identified
Speaker 2: that it's something special to being able to move it
Speaker 2: around and keep it going. That's the key. Thanks to
Speaker 2: the animal dung discovery, the cowpie and then we finally
Speaker 2: reached the point. And this is where all of the
Speaker 2: archaeologists and anthropologists and all the ologists want to kind
Speaker 2: of pinpoint when did humans start making fire ourselves? And
Speaker 2: we do have evidence of humans using fire very far back,
Speaker 2: more than a million years ago, but for hundreds of
Speaker 2: thousands and hundreds of thousands of years between that point
Speaker 2: and where we are unambiguously making fire ourselves, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of room for interpretation. Yes, we were cooking or something,
Speaker 2: or we were using a fire. It's clear that there
Speaker 2: were humans around this fire, but it's not clear that
Speaker 2: humans actually made the fire. We may have gathered it.
Speaker 2: When did we start making fire? That's the big question
Speaker 2: in archaeology and anthropology.
Speaker 4: That's right, boy, it sounds like a notes early, but
Speaker 4: it sounds like a perfect place for a little Cliffhanger's break.
Speaker 2: It's what I do.
Speaker 3: All right, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Everybody want to learn about a terrosort in college, horedactyl, how.
Speaker 4: To take a perfect boo, all about rectal that's at.
Speaker 3: Hunt, the Lizzie run on the plane.
Speaker 1: Everything, word up, Jerry.
Speaker 3: All right, we're back.
Speaker 4: We don't have a definitive answer unfortunately, But again, we
Speaker 4: have a lot of good ideas as far as those
Speaker 4: three stages go, they do get a little bit easier
Speaker 4: to pinpoint a rough timeline. But that foraging stage that
Speaker 4: we mentioned at first is that's definitely the hardest to
Speaker 4: kind of lock down in time. There is no archaeological
Speaker 4: record basically during that phase. But they do think, and
Speaker 4: again this is people just giving their best guess. They
Speaker 4: do think that astrolopithescenes the early humans may have been
Speaker 4: forging around fires and this is like four million ish
Speaker 4: years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure, I didn't see why they thought that,
Speaker 2: but like what the austrilopithekiss was doing that made them
Speaker 2: think that, But I don't know, maybe it had to
Speaker 2: do with their other behavior that made it seem like
Speaker 2: they would have done that. So the gathering phase, like
Speaker 2: I said, that dates back to about a million years ago,
Speaker 2: where it's very clear that humans have had a fire
Speaker 2: somewhere that it's not possible that like a lightning strike
Speaker 2: set off a fire in the areas where we found
Speaker 2: evidence of human habitation and fire together, say one hundred
Speaker 2: feet from the mouth of a cave, very difficult for
Speaker 2: a wildfire to start there, So that's unambiguous, is what
Speaker 2: they call it, like evidence that humans were interacting or
Speaker 2: using fire, putting fire to some controlled use at that point,
Speaker 2: but it's far from clear whether they actually started that
Speaker 2: and almost certainly did not a million years ago.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's that can also be a little tricky
Speaker 4: because sometimes they confuse stuff. Stuff that might look like
Speaker 4: charcoal or ash is some naturally occurring sediment cave. So
Speaker 4: you know, they tried to kind of parse through that
Speaker 4: stuff over the years, but they have found, you know,
Speaker 4: sites like there's one and we're going to go through
Speaker 4: a few of these in a minute, but one called
Speaker 4: the Wonderwork Cave in South Africa that they basically have
Speaker 4: agreed is probably the oldest site of controlled on purpose
Speaker 4: fire use because they have found burnt bones there and
Speaker 4: this is one hundred feet into a cave.
Speaker 2: Right, that's again unambiguous use of human fire. There's also
Speaker 2: some contenders for when we started control like making fire
Speaker 2: ourselves starting fires, and one's about seven hundred and eighty
Speaker 2: thousand years ago. Four hundred thousand years seems to be
Speaker 2: the generally accepted latest date that humans became capable in
Speaker 2: a widespread fashion of making fire ourselves. So somewhere between
Speaker 2: a million and four hundred thousand years ago humans became
Speaker 2: capable of making fire star fires. And I say we
Speaker 2: talk about some of these different locations that are contenders
Speaker 2: for all this stuff.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, there's the one in South Africa that I
Speaker 4: just mentioned. They have found and been able to date
Speaker 4: ash from that cave to about a million years ago.
Speaker 4: But again we're not positive that that was you know,
Speaker 4: ignited by humans or not, and they don't know exactly
Speaker 4: how the fires were used in that case. But it
Speaker 4: gets a little better as we move along. The Kassim
Speaker 4: Cave in Israel was discovered about twenty six years ago
Speaker 4: and that is near Tel Aviv, and this is where
Speaker 4: they have found the first fireplace, basically the first hearth.
Speaker 4: The dates to about three hundred thousand years so that's
Speaker 4: pretty unambiguous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and one of the reasons why they're like, yes,
Speaker 2: this is a pit, because up to that point when
Speaker 2: they find like use of fire, it's just like kind
Speaker 2: of spread out. Maybe one fire was held there. This
Speaker 2: is like layer after layer after layer of fires in
Speaker 2: the same place. So that's clearly a hearth. There's another
Speaker 2: one in Israel called gesher banat Yakov. It's in northern Israel,
Speaker 2: and they this is the one where they think that
Speaker 2: people were potentially starting fires as far back as seven
Speaker 2: hundred and eighty thousand years ago, and this would have
Speaker 2: been Homo Erectus, who was the longest lived hominin. They
Speaker 2: lived for almost two million years. And they were clever
Speaker 2: ones too. They were the first ones to basically take
Speaker 2: a leap forward in stone tool technology. They also invented
Speaker 2: Jordash jeans. And they know that the Homo Erectus were
Speaker 2: the ones who were making or at least using this
Speaker 2: fire seven hundred and eighty thousand years ago, because they
Speaker 2: found their characteristic stone tools like hand axes, and they
Speaker 2: were cooking fish essentially here on the banks of the
Speaker 2: Jordan River karp that were up to like six and
Speaker 2: a half feet from what I read and Chuck I
Speaker 2: was reading about how they figured out that they were
Speaker 2: definitely cooking fish and that they weren't just like fish
Speaker 2: remains that they'd eaten raw and tossed into a fire.
Speaker 2: And they tested the fish teeth that had been cooked
Speaker 2: to see what temperature they've been exposed to it if
Speaker 2: there were a high temperature, they probably would have been
Speaker 2: remains just chucked in in the middle of a fire.
Speaker 2: If it were exposed to a lower temperature, then this
Speaker 2: probably would have been a controlled roast, and they found
Speaker 2: the evidence for roasting, so they were cooking fish about
Speaker 2: eight hundred thousand years ago there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The next one is the Rising Star Cave in South Africa.
Speaker 4: Very promising cave, and this one is a little controversial
Speaker 4: in that they do think that some sort of tiny
Speaker 4: brain species of early human they were called the Homo naletti.
Speaker 4: They think that they built fires in this cave, and
Speaker 4: this was about three hundred and thirty five thousand years ago,
Speaker 4: but other people came along, said no, I'm not sure
Speaker 4: if that's when it happened. It might have been other
Speaker 4: people that came to that cave later. And that similar
Speaker 4: kind of goes for another cave, k the Zuchodean Cave.
Speaker 4: That one was excavated in the nineteen twenties and people
Speaker 4: thought for a long long time that like, hey, here's
Speaker 4: the oldest hearth, the oldest sort of purposeful fireplace, and
Speaker 4: it goes back a half a million years. But it's
Speaker 4: kind of gone back and forth since in the nineties
Speaker 4: nineteen nineties, that is, they saw evidence of this ash
Speaker 4: there and they said, you know, I don't think this
Speaker 4: is ash.
Speaker 3: Actually it was.
Speaker 4: What Chuck will talk about later as other organic materials
Speaker 4: that looked like ash. But then later on in the
Speaker 4: twenty tens, other people came back and had other evidence.
Speaker 4: They said, no, I think they were purpose built fires here,
Speaker 4: which you know, just goes to show kind of how
Speaker 4: hard it is to really pinpoint the.
Speaker 2: Stuff, right, Yeah, going back and forth between the nineteen
Speaker 2: twenties and the twenty tens like that, that's like archaeological whiplash. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so we really need to just kind of also point
Speaker 2: out here we're talking about Hamanin's using fire, not Homo sapiens.
Speaker 2: Homo sapiens obviously knew how to use fire and how
Speaker 2: to make fire, but almost certainly were not the ones
Speaker 2: that came up with fire ourselves. We might have learned
Speaker 2: it actually from some of the other species of humans
Speaker 2: that were running around at the same time as we were,
Speaker 2: like Neanderthals, And like I said, there's evidence of like
Speaker 2: other species like Homo erectus using fire to one degree
Speaker 2: or another as far as like maybe a million years ago,
Speaker 2: but there's a lot of questions about did every single
Speaker 2: species of human know how to make fire? And Neanderthals
Speaker 2: in particular have been kind of picked on as not
Speaker 2: necessarily knowing what they were doing with starting fires.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this one has some pretty good arguments going. I
Speaker 4: think in both directions. They found evidences of activity in
Speaker 4: France and like sites in France that.
Speaker 3: They excavated, Yeah, and they.
Speaker 4: You know, what they found was there were more traces
Speaker 4: of fire from periods without glaciers than periods that did
Speaker 4: have glaciers. And it doesn't really track in some ways
Speaker 4: because you would think that they would if they could
Speaker 4: make fire on their own, then they would have done
Speaker 4: that when it was colder. And also it makes sense
Speaker 4: in a way because in the period where there aren't glaciers,
Speaker 4: there are going to be more lightning strikes and thunderstorms,
Speaker 4: and the vegetation's going to be dried out. So then
Speaker 4: may be you know, using the fire even in the
Speaker 4: warmer periods because it's just there.
Speaker 2: Right exactly. They also find lots, or they have found
Speaker 2: in some Neanderthal sites, lots of ash build up and
Speaker 2: not necessarily because this is a very ancient hearth, but
Speaker 2: because they had to keep the fire going, so it
Speaker 2: was constantly going because they didn't know how to get
Speaker 2: it started again if it went out. So yeah, those
Speaker 2: are pretty good arguments for Neanderthals not being able to
Speaker 2: make fire. But there are other people who point to
Speaker 2: other evidence that says like, no, actually, Neanderthals knew what
Speaker 2: they were doing. One of them is that Neanderthals made
Speaker 2: birch bark pitch, which they used to as basically an adhesive,
Speaker 2: like thousands of years before Homo sapiens were doing that,
Speaker 2: and that they're also frequently found with manganese dioxide chunks
Speaker 2: as black mineral, and it was usually interpreted as they
Speaker 2: were using this to like decorate their bodies or maybe
Speaker 2: even for cave art. Somebody has pointed out that no, actually,
Speaker 2: manganese dioxide is a major component in fireworks and you
Speaker 2: could use it as a pretty good fire starter. So
Speaker 2: the jury's out. But for my money, they probably did
Speaker 2: know how to start fires, because Homo sapiens have a
Speaker 2: very very long tradition of underestimating Neanderthals and being pick
Speaker 2: and wrong in the end as the science advances.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure, and while we don't know, you know
Speaker 4: when all this started. We definitely know the how, and
Speaker 4: it's kind of how modern humans start primitive fires, like
Speaker 4: without any sort of sort of man made tools. Percussion
Speaker 4: methods is you know, when you're striking that flint off
Speaker 4: of you know, each other, like off of a rock,
Speaker 4: it's going to spark. And you know, maybe they saw
Speaker 4: that and thought, hey, that looks a little bit like
Speaker 4: lightning and gave it a shot. You've got the old
Speaker 4: fire drill method or any kind of friction method of
Speaker 4: rubbing something together really really fast, and that'll that'll get
Speaker 4: a fire going if you're.
Speaker 2: Good, Yeah, the one I've heard of. Both of those obviously,
Speaker 2: but fire pistons I had not heard of. Essentially, you
Speaker 2: take a tube and a piston and put together they
Speaker 2: essentially form an air tight well coupling. I guess. You
Speaker 2: put a little bit of tender, really really dry, almost
Speaker 2: powdery or fibrous, like easily combustible material, right, and you
Speaker 2: put the piston in the tube and you press it
Speaker 2: really quickly, and that compression of air heats the air
Speaker 2: just enough that it can actually ignite that tender. Then
Speaker 2: you use the tender to catch more tender on fire,
Speaker 2: and now you've got a fire started. Like when you
Speaker 2: look back at some of this stuff, I was watching
Speaker 2: a video of using bow drills to create fire. I
Speaker 2: looked I was watching a really neat video. There's a
Speaker 2: YouTube channel called make It Primitive, and they were making
Speaker 2: birch pitch with no pots. And when you look at
Speaker 2: this stuff they're recreating that very very ancient people figured
Speaker 2: out how to do. It's like, how did anyone ever
Speaker 2: accidentally stumble upon this? Like I understand we're looking at
Speaker 2: like the developed endpoint version of this, you know, primitive technology.
Speaker 2: But I can't even imagine how somebody figured out how
Speaker 2: to make birch pitch in the first place. What happened, Yeah,
Speaker 2: in some random fire somewhere that gave somebody the idea
Speaker 2: to turn that into making pitch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think it's kind of cool.
Speaker 4: Like I don't know, maybe someone rubbed their hands together
Speaker 4: and it got hot and they were like, huh, friction
Speaker 4: causes heat, And you know, maybe a thousand years later
Speaker 4: that idea became maybe a lot of friction could cost
Speaker 4: so much heat that something might actually catch on fire.
Speaker 4: And then they start looking around on like a good
Speaker 4: way to do that, Like that's how it had to
Speaker 4: have happened. I just think it's amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was probably a transition period though, where some
Speaker 2: Porschemo's hands were bleeding they rubbed them raw so much
Speaker 2: trying to start a fire with them before they moved
Speaker 2: on to wood.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean what I think is amazing is that there's
Speaker 4: really nothing new on the scene.
Speaker 2: You know, well, they say there's nothing new under the sun, Chuck,
Speaker 2: I guess, so do you want to take our second
Speaker 2: break and come back and talk. I don't know about
Speaker 2: the history of fire, Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1: I want to learn about a terrorsort in college, horedactyl,
Speaker 1: how to take a perfect Rectalis Khan. That's another hunt
Speaker 1: the Lizzie Everything.
Speaker 2: Word up, Jerry, so kind of at the outset we
Speaker 2: were talking a little bit about how fire just changed
Speaker 2: humanity and there's some specific things that we used it
Speaker 2: for that helped advance, like different species, not just Homo sapiens.
Speaker 2: Along one is heat, Like there's a pretty widely believed
Speaker 2: consensus is that we could not and we did not
Speaker 2: move into colder climates, not just Homo sapiens, but all
Speaker 2: hominins until we had at least figured out how to
Speaker 2: move fire from one place to another. Without it going out,
Speaker 2: that we just would not have been able to survive
Speaker 2: in northern latitudes. Yeah, without fire, So that was a
Speaker 2: huge thing. It allowed us to spread further and further
Speaker 2: away from the.
Speaker 3: Tropics, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4: And once you got out of the tropics, that allowed
Speaker 4: you to spread further and further wherever you were. Because
Speaker 4: it provided light, you could explore those caves, you could
Speaker 4: explore the darkness of the world around you. I know
Speaker 4: I've said this before about camping, and you know when
Speaker 4: I go to the Family camp sometimes will take people
Speaker 4: that have aversions to camping, and we have some solar
Speaker 4: power there and string lights that light up the camp
Speaker 4: at night. And I have learned firsthand that what I
Speaker 4: think is going on when people say they don't like
Speaker 4: camping is that they don't like the darkness once you
Speaker 4: leave that campfire. Because people that say they don't like
Speaker 4: camping have had a great time at the family camp
Speaker 4: because it's lit up all around you, and they've said, man,
Speaker 4: I feel it easier and I'm never at ease in
Speaker 4: the woods.
Speaker 3: I'm like this because you can see around you. It's
Speaker 3: the dark. You're afraid of whatever you think is in
Speaker 3: the dark.
Speaker 2: I feel like you're talking about Hodgmen right now, aren't you.
Speaker 3: You know Hodgman had a great time at the camp.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure he did. Hodgman is a good time
Speaker 2: wherever he goes. But I can also he's a he's
Speaker 2: a city boy.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I let him sleep in my little uh my little camper,
Speaker 4: the little one bad camper.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we snuggled up.
Speaker 2: That is very sweet and completely unsurprising.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was sweet. It was a good snug.
Speaker 4: Uh And we also made tools John and I did
Speaker 4: with our fire, which is something that the early humans did.
Speaker 2: So I'm a real birch bark pitch fan.
Speaker 3: Nowunds like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is what it's for. So it's a it's
Speaker 2: a tarry adhesive that you make by basically burning and
Speaker 2: condensing birch bark. Okay, which I love birch trees in
Speaker 2: the first place. Panda is almost a birch. It's a
Speaker 2: quaking asspen, but they're close, they're similar. Just love that bark. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you so if you just again go watch make it
Speaker 2: primitive and the way that they make birch bark pitch.
Speaker 2: But you take this stuff, this tari stuff. And you say,
Speaker 2: take an arrow, and there's an arrowhead in your right hand,
Speaker 2: there's a shaft in your left hand. There's a string
Speaker 2: of twine in your teeth because both your other hands
Speaker 2: are occupied, and you wind the twine around the arrowshead
Speaker 2: to get it to stay on the shaft of the arrow.
Speaker 2: And then after it's on nice and tight, then you
Speaker 2: put a bunch of pitch around it, and man, it
Speaker 2: really holds it fast. Now you've got an arrow that's
Speaker 2: gonna really do the job, all thanks to your birch
Speaker 2: bark pitch. Although let's also give a hand for twine too.
Speaker 4: You know, buddy, you are a hair's breadth away from
Speaker 4: being a big fan of Alone, the show that I've
Speaker 4: touted for a decade. They not watching it because all
Speaker 4: this stuff thrills you.
Speaker 2: Do they do? They talk in it? Those their dialogue
Speaker 2: and narration because on make it primitive. They just do
Speaker 2: their thing.
Speaker 4: They don't talk, uh, I mean they put people alone
Speaker 4: in the woods with a camera so they're you know,
Speaker 4: they're talking somebody. There's not like Mike Road doesn't come
Speaker 4: on and say, what Jane.
Speaker 3: Is doing is making an arrow?
Speaker 2: Gotcha? Yeah, okay, I maybe I'll give it a shot.
Speaker 2: I don't know why I'm resistant to it either, Chuck.
Speaker 2: I think it's just reality television. I have an aversion
Speaker 2: to it in general.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I guess it's reality to me reality TV.
Speaker 4: There's stuff like this and Top Chef that are like
Speaker 4: real things, and then there's you know people, there's shows
Speaker 4: where they just pit people against each other to argue
Speaker 4: and fight like.
Speaker 3: Those are two different.
Speaker 2: Things, for sure, for sure. Yeah, agreed. But yeah, so
Speaker 2: I think that's the only reason I'm just like not
Speaker 2: diving in feet first.
Speaker 4: Well, the real question is do you prefer to cook
Speaker 4: your meat or smoke your meat?
Speaker 2: Do I have to choose?
Speaker 3: Now you don't.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a question, Chuck, about whether people started heating
Speaker 2: their meat to cook it or to smoke it. I'm
Speaker 2: a smoker. I'm on team smoker, to put it in
Speaker 2: a tailor swift kind of way.
Speaker 3: As for what you prefer or what you think they
Speaker 3: were doing.
Speaker 2: What I think they were doing. I'd like smoked meat,
Speaker 2: but it is so bad for you that I just
Speaker 2: I eat it sparingly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, same here.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I mean the idea is that when they
Speaker 4: hunted a big, large megafauna that they would have needed
Speaker 4: to do something with that meat. You know, there's too
Speaker 4: much meat to even cook and eat all at once,
Speaker 4: even if everyone's super hungry. Right, So it seems like
Speaker 4: smoking meat may have been the first thing.
Speaker 3: How they figure that out? I have no idea.
Speaker 2: It's all just conjecture. It just makes sense, essentially. It's
Speaker 2: just from the size of the animal. No band of
Speaker 2: hunter gatherers, as far as the size that we thought
Speaker 2: or think they are, they couldn't possibly have eaten like
Speaker 2: a wooly mammoth in one sitting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but how do they know they didn't just like
Speaker 4: eat what they could and the rest went bad.
Speaker 2: Because humans have a long history of not being wasteful,
Speaker 2: and we still aren't today. I don't know. That's a
Speaker 2: great question, man. That's basically the argument against that is that, well.
Speaker 4: Maybe some of these sites, would they be able to
Speaker 4: tell if it was just bones or if it was
Speaker 4: like former meat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's the tool marks for like getting meat off
Speaker 2: of the bone. There's teeth marks, all right, So there
Speaker 2: you go. Yeah, but that doesn't Yeah, I guess, Yeah,
Speaker 2: if you looked at the whole skeleton and there was
Speaker 2: just like one leg that was eaten and the rest
Speaker 2: of it was there. Yeah, I think, Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 2: sure what team I'm on now, I'm in my confused era.
Speaker 4: Well, we're both on team hearth because I know we
Speaker 4: both enjoy good fire and the idea that people have
Speaker 4: been sort of really interacting with fire. I know we
Speaker 4: said that some people say a million years. It really
Speaker 4: became widespread around four hundred thousand ish years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and that's when we really can have have some pretty
Speaker 4: good archaeological evidence that there are hearts all over the place. Yeah,
Speaker 4: people are building permanent setups or at least se many
Speaker 4: semi permanent setups where they would live, and the hearth
Speaker 4: was a big, big part of that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, for sure. You wouldn't just use a hearse
Speaker 2: to like cook necessarily. There were different kinds of hearths
Speaker 2: that were designed to do different kinds of things. Like
Speaker 2: you would use the different hearths to fire, play pottery,
Speaker 2: then you would maybe cook that one leg of masted on,
Speaker 2: you know, and then yeah, you might have a different
Speaker 2: hearth for sitting around the campfire and socializing and taking trooms.
Speaker 3: I wonder if you could cook in a kiln.
Speaker 2: I don't know, that'd be interesting. It'd be like dry
Speaker 2: sou vd.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So like you cook, you're killing your or whatever curing
Speaker 4: your pot. You might as well throw it that turkey
Speaker 4: leg in there.
Speaker 2: Do see what happens. Yeah, I'll bet it would not
Speaker 2: look right. It might be fine taste wise, but it
Speaker 2: would not look right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Emily's getting into pottery. Maybe we'll see. I'll try
Speaker 4: it out.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, dude, let me know how to ruin her kiln. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and see, I's gonna be like, my kiln smells like turkey.
Speaker 3: Sorry.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I thought was pretty cool
Speaker 2: is that fire actually helped progress humans from age to age.
Speaker 2: It was the reason we transitioned from the Stone Age
Speaker 2: to the Metal ages. Starting with the Copper Age, we
Speaker 2: learned how to use fire to smelt copper, and then
Speaker 2: we started creating better and better tools from there. It
Speaker 2: was all thanks to fire. The whole thing, all of
Speaker 2: human prehistory swung on our use of fire, right there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4: And they've also got evidence that perhaps well not evidence,
Speaker 4: I guess the conjecture again that it has played a
Speaker 4: role in human biology because humans have a gene mutation
Speaker 4: that we developed after fire. Seemingly that made us less
Speaker 4: sensitive to smoke inhalation. Like, once fire started to be
Speaker 4: a thing, people would stand around it and start coughing
Speaker 4: and be like, well, this is no good, so they
Speaker 4: would stand back a little bit. But eventually the AhR gene,
Speaker 4: which helps us regulate our response to carcinogens and would smoke,
Speaker 4: came along. That mutation came along in that gene. So
Speaker 4: it is a pretty clear sign I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And apparently it's just found in Homo sapiens. You
Speaker 2: can't find it in like Neanderthal DNA or Homo erectus DNA.
Speaker 2: So it's like it just kind of goes to show
Speaker 2: you just how important fire is. Our bodies actually evolved
Speaker 2: to sit around fires better. Yeah, so we also learned
Speaker 2: to shout I hate rabbits to get the smoke from
Speaker 2: coming your way.
Speaker 3: I wonder where that came from.
Speaker 2: I don't know. It makes zero sense.
Speaker 3: I bet someone knows.
Speaker 2: Another one, Chuck, that's this makes sense, although I hadn't
Speaker 2: really thought about it before. Our circadian rhythms changed humans.
Speaker 2: As far as animals go, we're the most alert in
Speaker 2: the evening. Most animals are not the most alert and
Speaker 2: the evening they're most earlier in the day. And the
Speaker 2: idea is that is because our interactions with fire allowed
Speaker 2: us to stay up much later, and hence our circadian
Speaker 2: rhythms changed and adjusted likewise.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 4: And then finally that all sounds good when you're sitting
Speaker 4: around the fire talking about hunting the mastodon, But that
Speaker 4: also means if Tuktook is sick, Tuktook is getting other
Speaker 4: people sick. So ancient humans might have, you know, spread
Speaker 4: disease a little more readily because people are just hanging
Speaker 4: out more.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was reading a study that they said that
Speaker 2: tuberculosis emerged in humanity about the same time we started
Speaker 2: using fire, like being able to control it, not necessarily
Speaker 2: make it ourselves, but at least to move it around.
Speaker 2: And yeah, huddling together helps of a contagible or contagious disease, Yeah,
Speaker 2: spread much more easily because not only are you closer
Speaker 2: around the fire, you're also probably in like a rock
Speaker 2: shelter too, So tuberculosis loves fires and rock shelters. Everybody
Speaker 2: knows that.
Speaker 3: That's right. And by the way, I like contagible. I
Speaker 3: think I'm going to go with that from no one.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thanks for that. I appreciate that. Man. This
Speaker 2: is why you and I are so close. You're just supportive.
Speaker 2: What else you got, Chuck?
Speaker 3: I got nothing else?
Speaker 2: All right? I don't have anything else either. That's the
Speaker 2: history of fire. That's everything there is to know about fire.
Speaker 2: So don't even try to look for more. And since
Speaker 2: I said that, obviously it's time for listener, ma'am.
Speaker 4: I'm going to call this follow up to gold Standard. Hey, guys,
Speaker 4: very much enjoyed the recent episode on the gold Standard.
Speaker 4: But I have a small correction. Weren't weren't in the
Speaker 4: book those ruby slippers? And I guess they're talking about
Speaker 4: the Wizard of Oz.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, Remember in the gold Standard episode we were
Speaker 2: talking about how it was an allegory for the debate
Speaker 2: over the gold standard and the silver standard and all that,
Speaker 2: and we're like, I guess the ruby there was the
Speaker 2: Ruby standard and blah blah blah, And this is what
Speaker 2: they're writing.
Speaker 3: In about the book.
Speaker 4: Those ruby slippers were actually silver, and we're meant to
Speaker 4: represent the silver standard, not a ruby standard. There was
Speaker 4: a charged debate going on in the States at the
Speaker 4: time on whether we should use the gold or silver Standard,
Speaker 4: which was the allegory you discussed in the episode. The
Speaker 4: movie changes silver slippers to ruby I believe to show
Speaker 4: off the new technicolor technology parenthetical. I'm no film buff,
Speaker 4: so please correct me if I'm mistaken. Hey, that sounds
Speaker 4: good to meet Liz. Yeah, thank you guys for what
Speaker 4: you do. I'm going to see you live and Akron
Speaker 4: all right, Liz from Cleveland, can't wait to see you there.
Speaker 3: And that is a great email.
Speaker 2: It is a great email. Thanks a lot, Liz, and
Speaker 2: Liz is among a handful of other people who wrote
Speaker 2: in to tell us that, which made the whole thing
Speaker 2: make way more sense. So nuts to Hollywood and cheers
Speaker 2: to the original version of something.
Speaker 3: That's right, Ruby Standard.
Speaker 2: If you want to be like Liz and get in
Speaker 2: touch with us and tell us something we don't know.
Speaker 2: We love that kind of thing, you can send it
Speaker 2: in an email to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 4: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
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