In his New York Times column, Carl Zimmer discusses evidence for the oldest usage of fire-making. A paper published in the journal Nature, reports that a group of Neanderthals used flint and pyrite to make fires about 400,000 years ago in what is now eastern England. This was something they did repeatedly over the course of generations. Previously, the oldest accepted date for fire-making was around 50,000.

“A lot of people had a hunch that they were making fire at this date,” said Nick Ashton, an archaeologist at the British Museum and an author of the study. “But now we can convincingly say, ‘Yeah, this was the case.’”

From Charles Darwin on, biologists have looked upon the mastery of fire as a hallmark in the evolution of our species. Early humans may have first used fire to cook their food. That advance let them improve their diet, by removing toxins from food and making it easier to absorb nutrients from their meals. Fires may have also kept them warm at night and kept predators at bay.

Later, they found new uses for fire. They cooked tree bark to create glue, which they used to anchor stone spear tips to wooden shafts. And starting about 10,000 years ago, humans began making fires to smelt copper and other metals, ushering in civilization.