Insights into firewood use by early Middle Pleistocene hominins

kid64•about 2 hours ago

The whole idea of dependence on recurring natural fires always seemed suspect to me.

AlotOfReading•about 2 hours ago

It shouldn't. It's been extensively documented among modern human groups.

The major question is how much our understanding from recent forager groups applies to pleistocene foragers ("ethnographic analogy"). I'm in the generally skeptical camp. Many other anthropologists aren't, particularly those in older generations.

sriacha•25 minutes ago

>It's been extensively documented among modern human groups.

Do you have some sources? A quick search doesn't pull up much evidence for current hunter-gatherer dependence on natural fire regime. Or you mean anatomically modern humans?

trollbridge•18 minutes ago

Yes, Tasmanians are the best example that comes to mind. They had a mythology developed around lightning and subsequent fires and would then try to keep a fire going as long as possible.

LeCompteSftware•36 minutes ago

I'm confused, does this comment have anything to do with the paper? This paper is about fueling a fire, not starting one.

sriacha•24 minutes ago

from the paper: "The consideration of fire ecology data and various factors involved in the complex process of fire ignition, combustion, and behavior, in relation to the GBY paleoenvironment and archaeology, enabled the rejection of recurrent natural fires as the responsible agent for burning (Alperson-Afil, 2012)."

tclancy•about 6 hours ago

Either I missed it or the author assumed we were both on the same page: GBY seems to be a spot on a river just north of the Sea of Galilee.

GBV continues to be the band, who are due to release albums with each of these names within the next five years.

showerst•about 5 hours ago

GBY is Gesher Bnot Ya'akov, an archeological site in Israel, it’s in the first paragraph of the abstract.

_alternator_•about 4 hours ago

The site also has been dated to ~790,000 years old. Also was hard to find in a quick skim. So, direct evidence of the types of firewood humans have been using for the better part of a million years. Neat.

SummSolutions•about 4 hours ago

Fascinating paper, providing great evidence that our ancestors were maximizing resources hundreds of thousands of years ago.

frutiger•about 4 hours ago

Our ancestors have been “maximizing resources” for hundreds of millions of years, and all our living relatives alive today continue to do so.

thunkle•about 4 hours ago

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WolfCop•about 2 hours ago

Bad bot

ftkftk•about 1 hour ago

I have the same issue with a Boox eink tablet. I`m pretty sure I`m not a bot.

Insights into firewood use by early Middle Pleistocene hominins

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