Audio Transcript:
Tool Time -- About 100 Thousand Years Ago.
I'm Bob Karson with the discovery files -- new advances in science and engineering from the National Science Foundation.
The typical early modern human -- hangin' out between 72,000 and maybe 164,000 years ago around the southern tip of Africa. He's figured out how to fashion tools from stone, but the native stone here called silcrete doesn't flake very well, so it's not easy to make precise tools like blades or spearheads. Then one day, maybe by accident through curiosity or blind luck somehow the stone gets heated in a fire. Someone notices that the stone's properties change -- it flakes easier, and reacts better to tooling with the heat treatment. The definite 'eureka!' moment.
(SOUND EFFECT: fast forward tape) Fast forward to today, and another 'eureka!' moment for an international team of researchers, that uncovers hard evidence that these early modern humans discovered -- and began to control the use of fire for tool making at least 45,000 years earlier than scientists previously believed.
The research team studied artifacts from the site in South Africa. They noted that some of the tools were reddish in color, and embedded with ash -- evidence of the likely beginnings of pyrotechnology -- using fire to create, to engineer. This discovery shows the complex cognitive, creative, and communicative powers of a people who could be the origin of all modern humans.
Like me, I have trouble lighting a gas grill.
"The Discovery Files" covers projects funded by the government's National Science Foundation. Federally sponsored research -- brought to you, by you! Learn more at nsf.gov or on our podcast.
