https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/neanderthal-fire/
In the article, “Who Started the First Fire”, by Dennis Sandgathe and Harold Dibble, it examines the origins of human’s ability to control fire. Since it is one of the most important technological advances in human history, it is interesting to understand who were the first to control and create fire.
Conventional theories thought that Neanderthals were not capable of making fire. As referenced in the 1981 film, “Quest for Fire”, it also illustrates how Neanderthals struggled to keep an ember burning and that they have no idea how to make a fire of their own. In contradiction to this, recent projects in Africa have found fire evidence from over 1 million years ago (Neanderthals came about 250,000 years ago).
An interesting question raised in the article asks how could have our ancestors survived and colonized in more northern areas in Asia and Europe, where the climate gets extremely cold, without being able to control fire? This idea leads me to believe that Neanderthals must have had some knowledge of fire as I do not know how they would be able to stay warm or cook any game that they had hunted, as vegetation in colder times were extremely limited. During this time, there would have been herds of reindeer, horses, and woolly mammoths as food sources, so how would Neanderthals be able to chew such meats without a way to make it more palatable and nutritious?
Research that had been done by Jill Pruetz, a primatologist at Iowa State University, showed the interactions between chimps and fire. Her foundings showed that the chimps were very aware of the behaviors of the fire and did not seem scared of it as other animals would. She also found that chimps would monitor the fires and scavenge the burnt out areas, thus using the wildfires to their advantage.
This article then switches to another set of findings where they had excavated two Middle Paleolithic sites, Pech de l’Azé IV and Roc de Marsal, in the Périgord region of southwestern France. At this site had found evidence of fire from warmer eras but no traces of these Neanderthals using fire during the colder periods where glaciers were widespread among Europe (70,000 – 40,000 years ago). This then leads to the questions of why did they only use fire in warmer times and not colder?
I believe that this study was approached in a behavioral theoretical perspective. I think this because the studies focused on the relationships between our early ancestors and their artifacts, which included hearths and tools, and the role that these artifacts had on the life of Neanderthals. These objects were viewed as active agents to behavior and these actions were analyzed in terms of making, using and control over fire. I think that these researchers may have been influenced to use this theoretical framework because, there is little evidence on who made the first fire in regards to specific artifacts, painting, scripts, etc. By having little data to work with, I think that approaching this study in a behavioral perspective was necessary because the relationships of Neanderthals to artifacts of fire is currently the best way to try and understand the behavior of our ancestors. therefore, since there is little data to support who made the first fire, trying to understand the behaviors of Neanderthals is the best way we can try to understand this technological advancement.
Lastly, I would also use this same theoretical approach because of the same influences that I had believed the researchers had faced when doing their own studies. unless there were more artifacts on past uses of fire, I think that focusing on behavior more than on materials is the best/only way to analyze uses of fire for the time being.