Campfires, explained - Fire has been around for a million years. It’s okay if you still don’t know how to build one.

Before the invention of clothing, agriculture, and even the wheel, our ancestors were playing with fire. How do we know this? In 2012, archaeologists announced they had uncovered traces of ash, burnt twigs, and animal bone — evidence of a controlled fire — while excavating a cave in South Africa. Those tiny fragments were more than a million years old and likely the handiwork of Homo erectus, a species that predates Homo sapiens (i.e., you and me).

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