by Mary Betb Cox
Oddysey: Adventures in Science
October 2009
Pages 29-30
Playing with fire it was and it will always be risky. But one person thousands of yeas ago wanted to 'play' with fire and he/she changed the way we live. This 'scientist' he/she invented it approximately 250,500 years ago. But how do we know that they used fire? According to the article "A quarter of a million years ago, hearths began to appear as regular features of prehistoric campsites in Europe". Why did they used them? For almost the same reason that we use fire. It was used to heat objects or even to warm themselves. At last, the evidence that scientists had for the use of fire in olden days are the human and burned animal bones at Swartkrans caves. So that means that the humans cooked the animal. And to cook them they needed fire.
Cox, Mary Betb. "Taming fire: the first scientist?" Odyssey: Adventures in Science Oct. 2009: n.
pag. Print.
