LONDON, (Pakistan Point News - 11th Dec, 2025) The earliest known evidence of fire-making by humans has been discovered in the United Kingdom and dates back more than 400,000 years, research found.
The find, at a disused clay pit near Barnham, Suffolk, between Thetford and Bury St Edmunds, indicates humans were making fire 350,000 years earlier than previously known.
Previously, the oldest known evidence of fire-making was from 50,000 years ago in northern France.
Fire-cracked flint hand axes and heated sediments were found at the Barnham site alongside two fragments of iron pyrite - a mineral used to strike sparks with flint.
Geological studies indicated that pyrite is rare in the area, suggesting it was brought deliberately to the site for fire-making.
It took four years for a team, led by researchers at the British Museum, to demonstrate that the heated clay was not caused by wildfire. Geochemical tests indicated repeated fire use at the same site, more typical of human use than wildfires.
The controlled use of fire had "profound effects on human evolution," said the study's authors, increasing survival in harsh environments through warmth and protection from predators.
Other benefits included cooking - widening the range of foods that could be safely eaten - and the creation of lit spaces that became focal points for social interaction.
Rob Davis, Project Curator: Pathways to Ancient Britain at the British Museum, said the hearth area was about "half a metre in diameter, sort of (a) small campfire."
Professor Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum, said it is thought that the fires at Barnham were being made by early neanderthal people, but their identity is not directly known.
"And of course we're not saying fire was ... invented at Barnham." "We assume that the people who made the fire at Barnham brought the knowledge with them from continental Europe." "There was a land bridge there,” he said.
"I think having this information that it was there 400,000 years ago really means we've got a key aspect, a crucial aspect in human evolution," Stringer noted.
The paper, Earliest Evidence of Making Fire, is published in the journal Nature.
