Utilizing fire that was started by nature is one thing. But figuring out how to make a fire is a huge leap. Most of us would be challenged to make a fire without matches or lighter
@@BirdmanandPrincess You don't even know what a millennial is, sir. The Latest generation is Gen z, millennial are the people like me who were born in the early 80's, late 70's.
MrStensnask yeah I got excited when I started a friction fire with a stick and a piece of wood. To think that’s been around for over 1 million years... imagine how lost we would be back in the day
"Damn it Ugor, you burned the meat again, now we have to hunt again tomorow." 2 Million jears later: "Look Billy, this burned bones are the only evidence that humans lived here long ago."
There's a book entitled "Catching Fire, How Cooking Made us Human" by Richard Wrangham. It expands on this video by describing how our bodies changed as our diets changed through the use of fire, and how the changes that preparing food with fire changed our interpersonal and societal relationships.
"But of course the other advantage of fire is that it keeps you warm" And provides light in the darkness, which frightens away nocturnal predators. It also fires clay pots, hardens wooden spear points, clears land, smelts metals, and so on, and so on.
Yes, early fire use would have been scattered and tentative leaving little evidence. It was probably occurring much earlier than we have a fossil record of.
Seriously.... what did these weirdos do??... burn the evidence??... I don’t care if I’m politically correct or not, there’s a lot of evidence supports my theory that cavemen were actually a bunch of idiots...
Could you do a video on when human beings first arrived in Australia and the species they encountered/affected, We had some amazing wildlife here people just don’t know about! Edit: Thanks everyone who's hopped over to have a look at some of the animals in our videos!
I dont know the full story but I think they came from south east Asia. Such as Indonesia Malaysia etc. At one point in time sea levels dropped and they island hop their way to the new continent. Although I'm not fully sure is this is correct so don't take my word for it. 🤔😶
Dreadnought yes they must have come through Indonesia but the fact they where here so long and isolated for so long suggests they where an earlier wave of human expansion then ones that went elsewhere
No wonder campfires smell so nice to us. We've been making them since before we were humans. Edit 12/19/20: Guys, no. I'm not talking about standing in the smoke or shoving your face in the embers. I'm talking about being out walking on a cold night and smelling someone's wood-burning fireplace off in the distance. It just makes me feel comforted.
There is at the very least the generally calming feeling of staring into a campfire after eating. Think about how far that feeling goes. The relief that we ate again, we are warm, we survived again today
Everyday DormRoomCliché So true, taming fore started the next chapter in human history. I feel every time we look into the fire, something in our chimp brain perks up in comfort and awe has those emotions are built into our dna, those feeling are in the blood of every homo sapien who lived and will ever live
It's sort of amazing that one of the most important innovations in our development as a species is something that I'm sure 99.9 percent of us couldn't achieve today without modern tools.
@Sparky Puddins id say the best method to make a fire is with the bow method. All you need is a piece of string wrapped around two edges of a bendy stick. Then wrap the string around another stick. Then use the bow to move the stick back and forth.
NO! Please, there's too much anthropocentric (Cenozoicenter?) videos. So many marvelous things from the Proterozoic, the Paleozoic and Mesozoic times have yet to be discussed.
Vinícius R S Why should we not be anthropocentric when discussing our own origins? What’s wrong with Cenozoic videos? It’s a very underrated time period like the Paleozoic. Also humans are probably the most unique species to have evolved, the only animal to conquered nature to such an extent and become intelligent designers. Our rise to this position stands out among the more standard stories of other animal species, which by all means should be told, but still pale in comparison to human origins which have entire fields dedicated to it.
@@KeegoonBarnacle Of course we as a specie are insteresting... but the name of the channel is EONS, it could arguably talk about other Eons besides the Phanerozoic one. And about this last Eon, the Cenozoic is just a small part of it, so many primitive lifeforms and peculiarities from other Eras are rarely mentioned or discussed elsewhere.
I've accidentally caught my mat on fire while flint napping. Can't help but to think that's how it all started. With making fire. It's one of those answers that will be forever lost in time.
Yep...most great discoveries are accidental. Someone probably had been working wood earlier and had a pile of dry wood shavings, and then were making stone or flint tools, made a spark and the shavings caught on fire. And the rest is history!
Yo I had to google that ish! XD I thought it was like sleeping and I was so intrigued... Then I realised that you mis spelled knapping and I felt like a lazy twat 😁😁
My only skepticism is that the ‘harnessing of fire’ is not the same as ‘starting fire’. As is the case with many modern nomadic tribes, they generally don’t favor starting a fire every time they move, they keep smoldering embers that travel with them. It seems much more likely that fire-wielding hominids were keeping fires going for millennia before they were actually creating fire. The process of fire creation is quite involved. Keeping smoldering embers hot for a day and then stoking a fire every night is a far more passive action than spending 30+ minutes starting a fire from scratch. Another thing fire brought that I don’t if I missed in the video or not was the safety fire brought. Most predators will steer clear of fire, meaning fire-wielding hominids could focus more on sleeping well and less on being alert at night. Allowing for greater brain development in that sense too.
I find it hard to believe that hominids evolved around keeping a naturally occurring fire, that they stumbled upon, going for thousands of years. Imagine those embers get wet.. I suppose that they are just screwed until they find another fire? Those who consistently used, depended upon and evolved around fire, most likely knew how to make it.
It’s not so much that a single fire was kept going for millennia, it’s that these earlier hominids probably knew how to keep fire going before they learned how to make fire. The process of just keeping a fire going is advantageous, yet not as complicated as starting fire. Meaning these ancestors were probably wielding naturally occurring fires, keeping them going for weeks or months and then finding new fire to replenish in the case an old fire is extinguished. Of course this is a simplification of the process. You have to imagine that there are multiple generations between each step, until ultimately starting a fire becomes a norm. Fire is much like all tool use. It starts with simple, archaic designs and slowly is sophisticated through trial and error and learning how to use those tools.
Another aspect missing from the video is that much more plausible items to cook like potatoes are also extremely unlikely to be fossilized. Therefor we should take "evidence" like burnt bone with a huge grain of salt. We use to think Neanderthals must have been big angry and dumb based on completely silly assumptions. One of the possible evolutionary advantages of humans was being able to chew lots of different types of foods like seeds or bark, etc which would easily explain Neanderthals "devoted real estate" to their jaws and which would have no longer been of any advantage after fire. Further their extinction can be easily explained by cross breeding which also explains the so far otherwise unexplained rapid genealogical changes of homo sapiens. But no the most obvious explanation is clearly that were big aggressive dumb dumbs that smashed their heads with rocks and homo sapiens became protohunters and wiped them out through sophisticated deathtraps. Meanwhile homo sapiens were cutting up meat with extremely sharp rock tools and not getting sick thanks to their exceptional microbial tolerance that of course we lost again after agriculture. That sounds WAYYY more plausible right? And hey if we're gonna believe in fanciful stories over being honest about what the evidence actually proves then I choose to believe homo sapiens were providers for Neanderthals. Neanderthals would have had the advantage of being able to chew just about anything for food while homo sapiens would have been able to prepare food including the ability to have better discretion over which foods were poisonous for example. It makes sense than that homo sapiens would have had a better time with migration which helps their species stay alive through climate changes. In the meantime though the cohabitation of Neanderthals leads to cross breeding. Note that in this way cross breeds with mostly Neanderthal traits would have had a much higher morality. Having a lot of muscle puts you at a huge disadvantage for surviving winters for example when calories are extremely limited. But its a lot easier for a species to "go extinct" when its not actually dying out but rather is susceptible to selection pressures in what is technically a new species. In that sense we can say about 20% or so of Neanderthals did survive except that its in each of us rather than separate less adaptable individuals.
Man stuff like this makes me wish I were omnipotent so I could travel back in time, make myself invisible and just fly around observing early humans. It'd be the ultimate people watching, and it'd be so amazing to see them with the knowledge of what's to come. I could find the very first person to learn how to create fire, it'd be like visiting a great (times however many) grandparent or something. Like "wow so it was you huh? you got things going for us without even the slightest clue of what this moment will lead to" it'd be incredible.
I think this was probably the most well-written Eons episode yet. It was almost cinematic while staying completely truthful to the tale and knowledge it was attempting to convey
You should make a video about how modern cats and dogs came to be from their wild ancestors or maybe just a general video on how domestication can effect evolution.
I love the movie, "Quest For Fire" & one of my favorite parts is when our "hero" sees a member of the other tribe start a fire from scratch. The awe on that Actor's face deserved an Oscar, IMO! To learn this skill would mean no more "questing" to find fire (not to mention trying to keep it burning), would make all the difference in their world.
@@m_i_g_5108 Well, yes, all you had to do was listen to Macbreak Weekly's latest episode just before the keynote to hear a summary of the most credible rumors, which all pretty much turned out to be true. "Quest for Fire" also had people in the know about how to start a fire.
This video is made of the same stuff that made me love pbs nature documentaries and other pbs shows while growing up as a kid in the 90's. Thank you so much!
It's not quite old enough for eons, but something about our relationship with cats and how that started would be cool. I'm willing to bet it's older than most people think.
The First Flame quickly fades. Darkness will shortly settle. But one day, tiny flames will dance across the darkness. Like embers, linked by lords past."
Many years ago I attended a lecture on early humans and Fire by Louis Leakey. He told of an experiment in which a group of archeologists spent one night outside stark naked with no fire, and another night with fire, and the amazing difference it made to the group.
the more I watch Eons' videos, the more I'm convinced that Homo Erectus were the original heroes of our evolutionary story, the veterans who had completed their main heroic story arc before the arrival of Homo Sapiens. they were the Luke to our Rey we're the second primates to conquer the world you guys
Finally, the type of video I was looking for, the type that all others avoided talking about...the history, creation and control of fire by mankind. I'm currently learning firestarting, using only sticks!!!
Incredible. Also very interesting is how fire could be carried from site to site perhaps even before it could be made allowing us to move north that much earlier. Here in New Mexico Native Americans used plants with massive roots such as bush morning glory, Ipomea sp and desert 4 o'clock Mirabilis sp in containers to keep a living fire with them wherever they go. That would have been a hell of a responsibility. Anyhow that's how I like to imagine we mozied on north so early. Thanks Hank!
It's not that simple to start a fire without matches or a lighter. I wouldn't be surprised if it were a more exclusive skill for a long while before it became something every member of the general population could do. Which means there could very well have been vast differences between tribes of the same species based on wheter they had a "firestarter" or not.
Yes fire is tough to start the old-fashioned way but have you ever tried making the simplest stone tools from stones? It is very humbling when a modern Homo sapiens cant do what the typical 2 to 3 million year old Homo or Australopithecine could do.
@@dilaudid1 That's what I remark everytime they say ''ancients were dumb monkeys''. Just try flintknapping to being able to cut some animal, and oh man...you'd better buy it on the market or get starving. And YES, they had the same problem to solve! Being hungry developes creativity, we have everything solved by now and don't realize how easy we live.
@@VeronicaGorositoMusic That is a great point, Gitana. Even throwing any of us back 200 years would be nearly impossible for us to function. Now surviving in the stone age is at least an order of magnitude more difficult!
Awesome. Thank you so very much Hank and friends. It is quite funny how early humans and other extinct hominids are always depicted with terrible hair and skin. As if people who don't have mirrors or tooth paste would not care about their appearance. As far as I can tell, small primates, cats, birds even seem to like a good groom and appear to care a lot about their appearance. Certainly, isolated tribes in the modern day spend a great deal of effort making themselves look the way they like. Why would early hominids have been any different?
Because they had different notions of beauty and attractiveness which were based on the abilities they had. If you don't have any makeup, you don't expect people to wear any makeup. If you don't have any scissors, you don't expect people to have nicely cut hair. I think that a lot of the illustrations of these people take those things into consideration. I also think that your observation is very important and should color our perceptions of the observations made in videos like this.
@@chriswarburtonbrown1566 True. I was thinking more about glam shiny makeup and dreads, though. And while we're at it, tattoos seem to be makeup that was intermittent in its social acceptance. All I meant was applying our (Western) modern ideas of "beauty" aren't the way every human culture for the past 50k years or so, regardless of location, saw it.
This was totally fascinating. Movement of humans around the globes is still my #1 Eons vid, but this one is definitely top 5. So much info in so little time!
There are so many excellent myths and stories about this pivotal moment. Ancient (like Prometheus), modern (like Starkid's Firebringer). I love how culture can combine the hopeful and the terrifying: hopeful, in that fire allows us the use of the night; terrifying, in that we put ourselves in the way of danger by bringing fire into our homes, and the long road from hunting and gathering to climate change is traveled in the name of progress by the many things we burn. What a symbol. Contemplating it is so cool.
The history of Fire! For a very long time our ancestors loved fire but couldn't create it. They likely tossed foods in a wildfire noting that it was a tasty treat and made some things more edible. Then someone came up with the idea of taking fire from the wildfires and cooking with it back at the homestead. A few burning branches near home made a fun, safe, and tasty food prep item. As time went on there were probably a lot of our ancestors that kept fires burning as long as they could, maybe even for years, but at some point they always went out. As the stone-age intensified and stone tools were being made regularly, there were likely places around the world where stone workers noticed that their sparks could start fires if around dried plants or fur. It was a happy circumstance, a gift from the spirits of nature, but it was fleeting. After many more centuries, they figured out how to create the circumstances of starting a fire themselves and began doing so regularly. The knowledge of fire starting was probably discovered, lost, and found again many times over the centuries. Still, some of those groups started keeping a tradition of knowing how to start fires, and over time nearly every group had this fire-starting knowledge. It was at this point in time, when cooked food could be a regular occurrence, that fire began to change the course of human evolution and human history forever! And over the millennia, no matter how many disasters were caused by fire, or how many people were killed by their precious fire, humans always rekindled the flame.
Hey Eons team!!! Would love to see a video on the evolution of language. Books on this subject I would recommend are Robin Dunbar's Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language and also Susan Blackmore's radically different The Meme Machine. Love the videos as always, will be sure to pick up a tee!!
There are videos comparing multiple languages to find the first language on Earth. They believe languages with similar grammar and sounds have common cultural origins. So they divide things in language families. Their is Sino-Tibetan language family, Indo-European language family, Pueblo language family, Semitic language family (Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic).
Us corporations take tribal cultavated plants and patent them, without permission or payment. Next step is to sue the originators for using their patented plants.
@@TheBelrick What? If you mean nothing was domesticated in Africa, well there are cats, asses, and Guinea fowl. If you mean nothing was domesticated outside of Africa, there are horses, camels, and llamas.
Hey, there's no doubt that mind altering substances had a profound affect on the evolution of our consciousness, and anyone who's taken a psychedelic wouldn't doubt that
@@post-leftluddite I honestly wouldn't be surprised our prehistoric ancestors experienced mind altering substances. The chances of coming across some psychedelic mushrooms in the forest seem just as likely (if not more so) than intentionally walking up to a dangerous forest fire to harness it.
...thank you for a person of reason. I don't think the WILDFIRES that burned parts of California TO ASHES for the past few years was aware "WE TAMED IT "....
One thing I missed here -- fire frees the skull from its duty as an anchor for heavy jaw muscles, allowing the brain case to balloon up to its cartoonish modern size.
That's not a bad thing, for instance, did you know that domesticated animals on average have approximately 25% smaller brains than their wild predecessors?
When you sit around a campfire and talk, and maybe make something with your hands, even just whittling, you can feel the deep human history in your bones. It works for everyone and is a special magical feeling that ties all humans together regardless of race.
Yeah I did exactly that last weekend and it was amazing how deep ( and hilarious) the conversation got very quickly. We ended up in a circle round the fire dancing the Time Warp. There's just something magical about fire for the human spirit.
@thanks Sure, I know that. But having more than one revenue stream is very common for most successful channels, and in the current climate, basically a requirement. I would have just expected more people to want to support Eons as patrons. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, I'm subbed to NASA's official channel and they get like 50 upvotes per video despite being literally NASA lol 🙄
The first 2 things that got us to win was : Collective hunting methods copied on wild dogs and the tools used to hunt, kill and cut with less chewing on skin and tendons, leading his directly to the energy of the flesh. Fire then boosted it all. My vison today ;)
What would happen if a different animal evolve to be intelligent as us. It’s possible to happen even now, its just that humans are keeping them beck from becoming more intelligent.
Cooking food gives new molecules of nutrition that animals do not have access to. Its also gave us warmth, and especially dry surrounding, more healthy. The food is most significant to our intellectual explosion past the animals IMO.
just a printed pocket is kinda... meh. maybe do something with a full shirt print of a scene with dinosaurs, or fossils, or a picture or space/galaxies/nebulas, those would look awesome and probably sell very well:)
Utilizing fire that was started by nature is one thing. But figuring out how to make a fire is a huge leap. Most of us would be challenged to make a fire without matches or lighter
U wanna come for dinner
@@cendesenrendesen7910 I'll bring the lighter
@@cendesenrendesen7910 What are we having? What type of wine do you like?
@@BirdmanandPrincess I think I have an app for that on my phone
:) They would wonder how to duplicate their selfie .......shake that phone!
@@BirdmanandPrincess You don't even know what a millennial is, sir. The Latest generation is Gen z, millennial are the people like me who were born in the early 80's, late 70's.
Imagine being able to observe that very moment the first hominin created fire on its own. The most pivotal moment in hominin history. Awe-inspiring!
The real prometheus
Time travel anyone?
MrStensnask yeah I got excited when I started a friction fire with a stick and a piece of wood. To think that’s been around for over 1 million years... imagine how lost we would be back in the day
Thinking about it really makes me wanna time travel and see how we got to this point.
I'm guessing it goes like this: Guy says: "Hold my Beer", starts to rub 2 sticks together.
Imagine the courage of that first genius who, instead of running away from lightning and fire, ran toward it.
the stone age was named after the density of his balls
They are probably stupid and played with it because fire is dangerous
@@cryingwater you wouldn't be alive if they hadent
@@SometimesStarWars I know, but it's still stupid. It's foolish to ignore that fact
@@cryingwater there must be something off with you to look at the dawn of humanity and feel the need to call your ancestors dumb.
I love that they said, "maybe", instead of making "this is the truth" statements like so many other documentaries.
Fire gets started:
Molecules: I’m sorry were breaking up
Carbon be like: damn,look at that oxygen booty😍😍😍
@@Jinx-iw6zb oxygen be kinda thicc tho 😳
It’s not you. It’s me.
damnit xD
Atoms: Am getting stronger!!
Hank I swear I’m not stalking you but somehow you host everything I want to watch on the internet
please go with this and give your honest review alivechemicals.blogspot.com/2020/04/so-you-know-everything-about-fire.html
@@_AmanSingh-xu9bf this is really good
@@_AmanSingh-xu9bf it must have took some time to gather that info
"Damn it Ugor, you burned the meat again, now we have to hunt again tomorow."
2 Million jears later: "Look Billy, this burned bones are the only evidence that humans lived here long ago."
What isnyour point
"Damn it Ugor, now you started a forest fire again, now we everyone has to migrate. Again."
Ugor: me sorry, grug
“Ugor, you had one job!”
Lmao imagine if this is true
Welcome to another episode of "When I got struck in a PBS rabbithole"
I should be sleeping
@Just some fat beluga whale with internet acess
I should be creating Universes.
I go into multi day eons binges.
@@jackthefrog80085 إله تحت
@@hasnaalshammri4490 I don't know
There's a book entitled "Catching Fire, How Cooking Made us Human" by Richard Wrangham. It expands on this video by describing how our bodies changed as our diets changed through the use of fire, and how the changes that preparing food with fire changed our interpersonal and societal relationships.
"But of course the other advantage of fire is that it keeps you warm"
And provides light in the darkness, which frightens away nocturnal predators. It also fires clay pots, hardens wooden spear points, clears land, smelts metals, and so on, and so on.
👇👇👇👇👇👇
@@kylieschultz6971 You kids these days. What does that MEAN?
@@craigcorson3036 He’s telling you to like, dislike, and reply to his comment. Press the second one I said.
@@lyly_lei_lei I see. Thanks for explaining that to an old man who can no longer keep up.
@@craigcorson3036 I was more of joking but your welcome.
There is a lot more uncertainty around this topic than I realized.
It's sad but a lot of clues have been destroyed or are buried to deep.
Yes, early fire use would have been scattered and tentative leaving little evidence. It was probably occurring much earlier than we have a fossil record of.
Get used to it...
Funny enough there's even more uncertainty than is even depicted in the video.
Seriously.... what did these weirdos do??... burn the evidence??... I don’t care if I’m politically correct or not, there’s a lot of evidence supports my theory that cavemen were actually a bunch of idiots...
This video made me nostalgic for some reason for my human ancestors.
Ah yes those times when we were all monkeys ooh ooh ah ah ing at fire
@@postery5029 if you watched this channel you’d know we weren’t monkeys
@@crystaltheo8494 we were monke.
@@crystaltheo8494 ooh ooh ah ah ah oo
Ramro kura garyau timile.
Could you do a video on when human beings first arrived in Australia and the species they encountered/affected, We had some amazing wildlife here people just don’t know about!
Edit: Thanks everyone who's hopped over to have a look at some of the animals in our videos!
Wicked Wildlife I second this.
I third this!
I dont know the full story but I think they came from south east Asia. Such as Indonesia Malaysia etc. At one point in time sea levels dropped and they island hop their way to the new continent. Although I'm not fully sure is this is correct so don't take my word for it. 🤔😶
Dreadnought yes they must have come through Indonesia but the fact they where here so long and isolated for so long suggests they where an earlier wave of human expansion then ones that went elsewhere
also about the monotremes
No wonder campfires smell so nice to us. We've been making them since before we were humans.
Edit 12/19/20: Guys, no. I'm not talking about standing in the smoke or shoving your face in the embers.
I'm talking about being out walking on a cold night and smelling someone's wood-burning fireplace off in the distance. It just makes me feel comforted.
"smell nice"
bruh no
i too love foul smelling headache inducing smoke
There is at the very least the generally calming feeling of staring into a campfire after eating. Think about how far that feeling goes. The relief that we ate again, we are warm, we survived again today
I kinda like the smell of pine. Nothing too strong though
Everyday DormRoomCliché So true, taming fore started the next chapter in human history. I feel every time we look into the fire, something in our chimp brain perks up in comfort and awe has those emotions are built into our dna, those feeling are in the blood of every homo sapien who lived and will ever live
It's sort of amazing that one of the most important innovations in our development as a species is something that I'm sure 99.9 percent of us couldn't achieve today without modern tools.
Underrated comment
@Sparky Puddins Imagine a living at a time where you really have to make fire to survive
@Sparky Puddins id say the best method to make a fire is with the bow method. All you need is a piece of string wrapped around two edges of a bendy stick. Then wrap the string around another stick. Then use the bow to move the stick back and forth.
True, but all we have to do now is spend a buck on a bic lighter.
That's like we're dwarfs on the shoulders of giants.
Please keep making videos about the origin of man, they are very interesting and my favorite videos of yours! 👍🏾
When a momma and a dadda love eachother really much...
NO! Please, there's too much anthropocentric (Cenozoicenter?) videos. So many marvelous things from the Proterozoic, the Paleozoic and Mesozoic times have yet to be discussed.
Vinícius R S Why should we not be anthropocentric when discussing our own origins? What’s wrong with Cenozoic videos? It’s a very underrated time period like the Paleozoic. Also humans are probably the most unique species to have evolved, the only animal to conquered nature to such an extent and become intelligent designers. Our rise to this position stands out among the more standard stories of other animal species, which by all means should be told, but still pale in comparison to human origins which have entire fields dedicated to it.
@@KeegoonBarnacle Of course we as a specie are insteresting... but the name of the channel is EONS, it could arguably talk about other Eons besides the Phanerozoic one. And about this last Eon, the Cenozoic is just a small part of it, so many primitive lifeforms and peculiarities from other Eras are rarely mentioned or discussed elsewhere.
@@vinicius2uiciniv Why not both?
I've accidentally caught my mat on fire while flint napping. Can't help but to think that's how it all started. With making fire. It's one of those answers that will be forever lost in time.
Yep...most great discoveries are accidental. Someone probably had been working wood earlier and had a pile of dry wood shavings, and then were making stone or flint tools, made a spark and the shavings caught on fire. And the rest is history!
Yo I had to google that ish! XD I thought it was like sleeping and I was so intrigued... Then I realised that you mis spelled knapping and I felt like a lazy twat 😁😁
Yes. Just what I was thinking! Making tools led to making fire. Accidentally sparked a fire and said eureka!
Mind blowing! Thank you.
You must have a very flamable hat :)
My only skepticism is that the ‘harnessing of fire’ is not the same as ‘starting fire’. As is the case with many modern nomadic tribes, they generally don’t favor starting a fire every time they move, they keep smoldering embers that travel with them. It seems much more likely that fire-wielding hominids were keeping fires going for millennia before they were actually creating fire. The process of fire creation is quite involved. Keeping smoldering embers hot for a day and then stoking a fire every night is a far more passive action than spending 30+ minutes starting a fire from scratch. Another thing fire brought that I don’t if I missed in the video or not was the safety fire brought. Most predators will steer clear of fire, meaning fire-wielding hominids could focus more on sleeping well and less on being alert at night. Allowing for greater brain development in that sense too.
Zootycoonman223 Great intuitive explanation!
th-cam.com/video/BFhXfmjwrUk/w-d-xo.html is a relevant video on the transport of fires, and how common that is compared to starting new ones.
I find it hard to believe that hominids evolved around keeping a naturally occurring fire, that they stumbled upon, going for thousands of years. Imagine those embers get wet.. I suppose that they are just screwed until they find another fire? Those who consistently used, depended upon and evolved around fire, most likely knew how to make it.
It’s not so much that a single fire was kept going for millennia, it’s that these earlier hominids probably knew how to keep fire going before they learned how to make fire. The process of just keeping a fire going is advantageous, yet not as complicated as starting fire. Meaning these ancestors were probably wielding naturally occurring fires, keeping them going for weeks or months and then finding new fire to replenish in the case an old fire is extinguished. Of course this is a simplification of the process. You have to imagine that there are multiple generations between each step, until ultimately starting a fire becomes a norm. Fire is much like all tool use. It starts with simple, archaic designs and slowly is sophisticated through trial and error and learning how to use those tools.
Another aspect missing from the video is that much more plausible items to cook like potatoes are also extremely unlikely to be fossilized. Therefor we should take "evidence" like burnt bone with a huge grain of salt. We use to think Neanderthals must have been big angry and dumb based on completely silly assumptions. One of the possible evolutionary advantages of humans was being able to chew lots of different types of foods like seeds or bark, etc which would easily explain Neanderthals "devoted real estate" to their jaws and which would have no longer been of any advantage after fire. Further their extinction can be easily explained by cross breeding which also explains the so far otherwise unexplained rapid genealogical changes of homo sapiens.
But no the most obvious explanation is clearly that were big aggressive dumb dumbs that smashed their heads with rocks and homo sapiens became protohunters and wiped them out through sophisticated deathtraps. Meanwhile homo sapiens were cutting up meat with extremely sharp rock tools and not getting sick thanks to their exceptional microbial tolerance that of course we lost again after agriculture. That sounds WAYYY more plausible right?
And hey if we're gonna believe in fanciful stories over being honest about what the evidence actually proves then I choose to believe homo sapiens were providers for Neanderthals. Neanderthals would have had the advantage of being able to chew just about anything for food while homo sapiens would have been able to prepare food including the ability to have better discretion over which foods were poisonous for example. It makes sense than that homo sapiens would have had a better time with migration which helps their species stay alive through climate changes. In the meantime though the cohabitation of Neanderthals leads to cross breeding. Note that in this way cross breeds with mostly Neanderthal traits would have had a much higher morality. Having a lot of muscle puts you at a huge disadvantage for surviving winters for example when calories are extremely limited. But its a lot easier for a species to "go extinct" when its not actually dying out but rather is susceptible to selection pressures in what is technically a new species. In that sense we can say about 20% or so of Neanderthals did survive except that its in each of us rather than separate less adaptable individuals.
ive honestly learnt more from this channel than 16 years in school
@Sparky Puddins if that helps you sleep at night
@Sparky Puddins no one study’s 😂
I've learned more from TH-cam than I did in college and highschool
@Sparky Puddins this is better than most school courses
@Sparky Puddins the school system is messed up not his fault
Man stuff like this makes me wish I were omnipotent so I could travel back in time, make myself invisible and just fly around observing early humans. It'd be the ultimate people watching, and it'd be so amazing to see them with the knowledge of what's to come. I could find the very first person to learn how to create fire, it'd be like visiting a great (times however many) grandparent or something. Like "wow so it was you huh? you got things going for us without even the slightest clue of what this moment will lead to" it'd be incredible.
I think this was probably the most well-written Eons episode yet. It was almost cinematic while staying completely truthful to the tale and knowledge it was attempting to convey
As an archaeologist, I love these archaeology episodes. Keep em coming!
I absolutely enjoy every video produced by PBS eons... thank you very much!!! You help feed my mind with the finest of cuisines!!!
Man, I love the PBS and SciShow channels. So much knowledge tightly packed in a few minutes of video.
You should make a video about how modern cats and dogs came to be from their wild ancestors or maybe just a general video on how domestication can effect evolution.
Last time I was so early Gondwana was still a thing
RIP GONDWANA 😭 YOU WILL BE MISSED BRO
@@jackaboy6077 lmao
The 70s? Great piece by Miles Davis :)
7th,
Isn't it a bit too soon for these jokes?
Dam, Eons just uploaded and it’s nearly midnight... oh who am I kidding, probably won’t sleep for another 3hrs anyway.
I love the movie, "Quest For Fire" & one of my favorite parts is when our "hero" sees a member of the other tribe start a fire from scratch.
The awe on that Actor's face deserved an Oscar, IMO! To learn this skill would mean no more "questing" to find fire (not to mention trying to keep it burning), would make all the difference in their world.
It's like when Steve Jobs first showed us the iPhone.
That movie contained many scenes that felt truly authentic- I thought it was great
Spoiler ahead...My favorite scene is when he finally gets home in the swamp and they accidentally put out the fire while celebrating lol. Awe.
@@m_i_g_5108 Well, yes, all you had to do was listen to Macbreak Weekly's latest episode just before the keynote to hear a summary of the most credible rumors, which all pretty much turned out to be true. "Quest for Fire" also had people in the know about how to start a fire.
i totally agree with you, this part is amazing, and the music composed by Philippe Sarde is marvellous
That is my country Kenya, I live about 116km away from the place. Thanks for educating us
This video is made of the same stuff that made me love pbs nature documentaries and other pbs shows while growing up as a kid in the 90's. Thank you so much!
Please make: "When we first tamed wolves"
Edit: Thank you
You didn't watch Alpha!? That's how we tamed wolves...I think. Regardless excellent movie.
It's not quite old enough for eons, but something about our relationship with cats and how that started would be cool. I'm willing to bet it's older than most people think.
From what game is that, Patriotis ?
reuireuiop0 Minecraft
Baboons tamed wild puppies.
th-cam.com/video/U2lSZPTa3ho/w-d-xo.html
The First Flame quickly fades.
Darkness will shortly settle.
But one day, tiny flames will dance across the darkness.
Like embers, linked by lords past."
Hey, don't remind me the amazing chest ahead... i might go hollow...
Prithee be careful.
Try tongue, but hole
???
N H Dark souls video game \[Т]/
Many years ago I attended a lecture on early humans and Fire by Louis Leakey. He told of an experiment in which a group of archeologists spent one night outside stark naked with no fire, and another night with fire, and the amazing difference it made to the group.
Thanks you beautiful ancient humanoids for learning how to make fire work for us.
"By someone, somewhere when we first tamed fire..."
The power of one
This episode was 🔥🔥🔥🔥
honestly, "and /steve/" is one of my favorite parts of each of these videos.
it could only be better if it was "and Buddy Steve-o!"
I'm really impressed with the script, especially the explanation of calorie budget and pre-digestion.
I just find is amazing how we are studying our ancestors and trying to find out how they lived.
the more I watch Eons' videos, the more I'm convinced that Homo Erectus were the original heroes of our evolutionary story, the veterans who had completed their main heroic story arc before the arrival of Homo Sapiens.
they were the Luke to our Rey
we're the second primates to conquer the world you guys
More like we are their descendants, so they gave us this culture..fire making.
as soon as i pull myself out of debt I'll buy that eon shirts
Mack Donald Sorry to heat that, dude. Capitalism kinda sucks that way :/
@@gingergamergirl98 (70 years later...) I'm in the same boat. It sucks
Michael-Paul Thompson Hope everything gets better for you soon, dude
69th like
Guys relax; "Debt" might just be the name of his pool.
Finally, the type of video I was looking for, the type that all others avoided talking about...the history, creation and control of fire by mankind. I'm currently learning firestarting, using only sticks!!!
Share what you have learned so far?
"Or just cuddling a lot"...I like that explanation.
Incredible. Also very interesting is how fire could be carried from site to site perhaps even before it could be made allowing us to move north that much earlier. Here in New Mexico Native Americans used plants with massive roots such as bush morning glory, Ipomea sp and desert 4 o'clock Mirabilis sp in containers to keep a living fire with them wherever they go. That would have been a hell of a responsibility. Anyhow that's how I like to imagine we mozied on north so early. Thanks Hank!
I’ve been getting so deep into evolution because of this channel
It's not that simple to start a fire without matches or a lighter. I wouldn't be surprised if it were a more exclusive skill for a long while before it became something every member of the general population could do. Which means there could very well have been vast differences between tribes of the same species based on wheter they had a "firestarter" or not.
The original weapon of mas distruction
Yes fire is tough to start the old-fashioned way but have you ever tried making the simplest stone tools from stones? It is very humbling when a modern Homo sapiens cant do what the typical 2 to 3 million year old Homo or Australopithecine could do.
@@dilaudid1 That's what I remark everytime they say ''ancients were dumb monkeys''.
Just try flintknapping to being able to cut some animal, and oh man...you'd better buy it on the market or get starving. And YES, they had the same problem to solve! Being hungry developes creativity, we have everything solved by now and don't realize how easy we live.
@@VeronicaGorositoMusic That is a great point, Gitana. Even throwing any of us back 200 years would be nearly impossible for us to function. Now surviving in the stone age is at least an order of magnitude more difficult!
@@VeronicaGorositoMusic compared to modern humans they are, but they have more survival instincts and are better survivalist
You mean the world isn't six thousand years old?? I am devastated.
Because of this kind of TH-cam channel I wanna be a biology teacher!!! Thank you, guys!!
It's a beautiful thing to look back and think of my ancient ancestor sitting by a fire 1 million years ago
Awesome. Thank you so very much Hank and friends. It is quite funny how early humans and other extinct hominids are always depicted with terrible hair and skin. As if people who don't have mirrors or tooth paste would not care about their appearance. As far as I can tell, small primates, cats, birds even seem to like a good groom and appear to care a lot about their appearance. Certainly, isolated tribes in the modern day spend a great deal of effort making themselves look the way they like. Why would early hominids have been any different?
Because they had different notions of beauty and attractiveness which were based on the abilities they had. If you don't have any makeup, you don't expect people to wear any makeup. If you don't have any scissors, you don't expect people to have nicely cut hair. I think that a lot of the illustrations of these people take those things into consideration. I also think that your observation is very important and should color our perceptions of the observations made in videos like this.
I think that most animals groom themselves because clean fur works better than dirty fur, or feathers.
@@HulljI'm pretty sure they did have 'make up', from plant dyes and wood ash. Making woad paint, for example, is a pretty simple technology.
@@chriswarburtonbrown1566 True. I was thinking more about glam shiny makeup and dreads, though. And while we're at it, tattoos seem to be makeup that was intermittent in its social acceptance. All I meant was applying our (Western) modern ideas of "beauty" aren't the way every human culture for the past 50k years or so, regardless of location, saw it.
“... and now it’s time to talk about FIRE.
in the early 1980s, humans discovered fire”
sound about right
But they didn't start it.
@@ArloMathis they didn't start the fi-yur!
I kinda thought that for a split second, too, when I first heard it.
@@ArloMathis ,,, But they shot the sheriff ...
This Video gon be Lit
Lit + eg = L(eg)it
I'm so stoned
Why can I reply to myself???
Azanath Whateley
Idk
I can do this
"Fire", so easy even a caveman can do it.
This was totally fascinating. Movement of humans around the globes is still my #1 Eons vid, but this one is definitely top 5. So much info in so little time!
There are so many excellent myths and stories about this pivotal moment. Ancient (like Prometheus), modern (like Starkid's Firebringer). I love how culture can combine the hopeful and the terrifying: hopeful, in that fire allows us the use of the night; terrifying, in that we put ourselves in the way of danger by bringing fire into our homes, and the long road from hunting and gathering to climate change is traveled in the name of progress by the many things we burn. What a symbol. Contemplating it is so cool.
2:00 Well, the song does say, "We didn't start the fire"
I like that song. Funny comment.
It was always burnin since the world's bin turnin!
Could you do a video that talks about how we learned which plants are safe to eat? Did they just dare each other to try different fruits?
One of their videos makes fun of the 'paleo diet' by pointing out we have found paleo skeletons deformed from eating weird things
The history of Fire!
For a very long time our ancestors loved fire but couldn't create it. They likely tossed foods in a wildfire noting that it was a tasty treat and made some things more edible.
Then someone came up with the idea of taking fire from the wildfires and cooking with it back at the homestead. A few burning branches near home made a fun, safe, and tasty food prep item.
As time went on there were probably a lot of our ancestors that kept fires burning as long as they could, maybe even for years, but at some point they always went out.
As the stone-age intensified and stone tools were being made regularly, there were likely places around the world where stone workers noticed that their sparks could start fires if around dried plants or fur. It was a happy circumstance, a gift from the spirits of nature, but it was fleeting.
After many more centuries, they figured out how to create the circumstances of starting a fire themselves and began doing so regularly. The knowledge of fire starting was probably discovered, lost, and found again many times over the centuries.
Still, some of those groups started keeping a tradition of knowing how to start fires, and over time nearly every group had this fire-starting knowledge. It was at this point in time, when cooked food could be a regular occurrence, that fire began to change the course of human evolution and human history forever!
And over the millennia, no matter how many disasters were caused by fire, or how many people were killed by their precious fire, humans always rekindled the flame.
Even though your story is only speculation, I found it a fun read :)
I wonder how close it actually was to this.
@@xxXthekevXxx Thanks I found it fun to write.
Imagine how delicious that first roasted meal must’ve been to a creature who’d only ever eaten raw food up until that point
Der erfarer vi igjen hvor viktig det var for det tidligere mennesket være KREATIV
Hey Eons team!!! Would love to see a video on the evolution of language. Books on this subject I would recommend are Robin Dunbar's Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language and also Susan Blackmore's radically different The Meme Machine. Love the videos as always, will be sure to pick up a tee!!
There are videos comparing multiple languages to find the first language on Earth. They believe languages with similar grammar and sounds have common cultural origins. So they divide things in language families. Their is Sino-Tibetan language family, Indo-European language family, Pueblo language family, Semitic language family (Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic).
Today, somebody would try to patent fire. 🔥
Us corporations take tribal cultavated plants and patent them, without permission or payment. Next step is to sue the originators for using their patented plants.
Couldn’t agree more.
lmao we devolved so much
how about when we tamed other animals im not gonna stop asking
@@TheBelrick excuse me what
@@GageoftheJungle Don't feed the troll(s).
@@TheBelrick What? If you mean nothing was domesticated in Africa, well there are cats, asses, and Guinea fowl. If you mean nothing was domesticated outside of Africa, there are horses, camels, and llamas.
I think they have already done a video on that, though more on specific instances of domestication would be great.
@@nolanwestrich2602 You mean like a video about the origins of our cattle? I thought they already had one about dogs
It's great for the human race to have a clear/interesting/important video like this available free, for everone, forever.
Science is hard to do, but it sparks a fire in my heart.
I would like to see a vid on when the atlatyl first appeared.
Me, a Boy Scout, mastered fire about 1.5 decades ago in the middleschoolerian period.
I like his presentation the best. Thanks Hank.
our lineage is far older than we imagine. So many forgotten stories
"Stoned Ape Theory"... I know it's not currently scientific, but dammit, it's a fascinating hypothesis.
Hey, there's no doubt that mind altering substances had a profound affect on the evolution of our consciousness, and anyone who's taken a psychedelic wouldn't doubt that
@@post-leftluddite I honestly wouldn't be surprised our prehistoric ancestors experienced mind altering substances. The chances of coming across some psychedelic mushrooms in the forest seem just as likely (if not more so) than intentionally walking up to a dangerous forest fire to harness it.
Wow , I’d never heard of this theory , I’m just reading about it thanks to you . Thanks man !
Just looked it up and while I definitely don't believe it, it's an interesting and kinda funny theory nonetheless.
@@post-leftluddite That's not what "evolution" means, is the problem.
I don't know about you but I burned my foot on a hot coal on my 9th birthday and I don't feel like I tamed any type of fire
...thank you for a person of reason. I don't think the WILDFIRES that burned parts of California TO ASHES for the past few years was aware "WE TAMED IT "....
...maybe "WE " should inform it .
@@applebirds1nthefuture646 😔 I think I stomped the coal to death though
@@kylethompson6837 we can use fire but we'll never control it
Humans have mastered very little.
I find it so funny how the single best thing that they can say about the shirt is that it has a functional pocket 😂😂😂😂😂
i dunno what kind of sales psychology it speaks to, but telling me it has a functional pocket makes me actually want to buy it.
"Me too" says the easily impressed Home erectus
One thing I missed here -- fire frees the skull from its duty as an anchor for heavy jaw muscles, allowing the brain case to balloon up to its cartoonish modern size.
We've tamed nearly everything but ourselves
Thats facts
Amen to that time traveling man
new evidence suggests tad we actually "domesticated" ourselves in the biological sense.
@Eriss R. sure, but that is not what I was getting at in terms of biological domestication. It has to do with physiological changes over time.
That's not a bad thing, for instance, did you know that domesticated animals on average have approximately 25% smaller brains than their wild predecessors?
When you sit around a campfire and talk, and maybe make something with your hands, even just whittling, you can feel the deep human history in your bones. It works for everyone and is a special magical feeling that ties all humans together regardless of race.
Yeah I did exactly that last weekend and it was amazing how deep ( and hilarious) the conversation got very quickly. We ended up in a circle round the fire dancing the Time Warp. There's just something magical about fire for the human spirit.
Megafauna of austrailia or newzealand wiuld be
We'll have to be patient. Hopefully it's sometime soon!
Am I to understand that this incredible channel has only FOUR top tier Patrons?
That is a sad thing indeed, y'all deserve better.
@thanks Sure, I know that. But having more than one revenue stream is very common for most successful channels, and in the current climate, basically a requirement. I would have just expected more people to want to support Eons as patrons. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, I'm subbed to NASA's official channel and they get like 50 upvotes per video despite being literally NASA lol 🙄
@@Jesse__H You can also blame TH-cam for promoting only certain types of videos.
Humans didn’t find fire. A magical guy in the clouds snapped his fingers and we automatically learned it
🤣
I saw in some other video a long time ago that being able to cook food also made us more intelligent because we had reserve energy to do other stuff
Please please please make a video of the evolution of bats. It would be so cool! I will never stop asking until you do :^)
That would be an awesome video! Hopefully they make one soon!
Y'all should do a video on the difference between archaea and bacteria and how they diverged if we know anything.
Yes!!
All hail the mighty STEVE
Big shoutout to our ancestors 🙌🙌
The person who invented fire probably felt so special
thanks this series is teaching me what 12 grades of christian school didn’t 👍
😂
How accurate could the wonderful film "Quest For Fire" be ?
Drawn by quest for fire
They searched all through the land
Drawn by quest for fire.
Discovery of man!
\m/
Mystic Mind Analysis up the irons
Hey it's Hank, he starts with commercials then begging, goodbye Hank. You got my attention for 10 seconds. And that's all you will get
The first 2 things that got us to win was : Collective hunting methods copied on wild dogs and the tools used to hunt, kill and cut with less chewing on skin and tendons, leading his directly to the energy of the flesh. Fire then boosted it all. My vison today ;)
I think this channel is my favorite on TH-cam. Keep up the hard work!!!
Can you do a video on the Dodo, the Rodrigues Solitaire, the Reunion Ibis, and other extinct giant birds of the Indian Ocean islands?
Awesome episode.
I would like to learn more about the evolution of animals with radial symmetry.
What would happen if a different animal evolve to be intelligent as us. It’s possible to happen even now, its just that humans are keeping them beck from becoming more intelligent.
First, he was afraid of the dark. But when he received his electricity bill, he became afraid of the light.
Cooking food gives new molecules of nutrition that animals do not have access to. Its also gave us warmth, and especially dry surrounding, more healthy. The food is most significant to our intellectual explosion past the animals IMO.
I would love to see you do a video on the evolution of venom as a defense mechanism in organisms
just a printed pocket is kinda... meh. maybe do something with a full shirt print of a scene with dinosaurs, or fossils, or a picture or space/galaxies/nebulas, those would look awesome and probably sell very well:)
make a t-shirt that folds into a dinosaur so kids fold their clothes
Thank you for this fascinating video!
I could say it's lit...but...ok I will anyway.
:-)
Are you, by any chance, a relative to Marques Brownlee (MKBHD)? Lol
'Quest for Fire' is a very good movie , made in 1981
I started playing Far Cry Primal few days ago and all of this got so interesting suddenly.. Good stuff