Archeologists using artificial intelligence are able to discern subtle signs of heating by fire in stone tools that date from about one million years ago
Archeologists in Israel and Canada have used artificial intelligence to uncover traces of the use of fire from a time that predates all but a handful of similar discoveries, in a place where no such evidence has previously been found.
There is ample evidence of the controlled use of fire as far back as 200,000 years ago, when Neanderthals and other close relations to modern humans were on the scene. But the evidence that fire was used during earlier periods is more scarce. Researchers debate whether fire was rarely employed in those times, or is simply too hard to detect in older samples.
The presence of hand-held flint tools there suggests the site was used by Homo erectus – an early human ancestor – to butcher game between one million and 800,000 years ago. No traces of fire use had been found there before.