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Earliest evidence of making fire

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Abstract

Fire-making is a uniquely human innovation that stands apart from other complex behaviours such as tool production, symbolic culture and social communication. Controlled fire use provided adaptive opportunities that had profound effects on human evolution. Benefits included warmth, protection from predators, cooking and creation of illuminated spaces that became focal points for social interaction1,2,3. Fire use developed over a million years, progressing from harvesting natural fire to maintaining and ultimately making fire4. However, determining when and how fire use evolved is challenging because natural and anthropogenic burning are hard to distinguish5,6,7. Although geochemical methods have improved interpretations of heated deposits, unequivocal evidence of deliberate fire-making has remained elusive. Here we present evidence of fire-making on a 400,000-year-old buried landsurface at Barnham (UK), where heated sediments and fire-cracked flint handaxes were found alongside two fragments of iron pyrite—a mineral used in later periods to strike sparks with flint. Geological studies show that pyrite is locally rare, suggesting it was brought deliberately to the site for fire-making. The emergence of this technological capability provided important social and adaptive benefits, including the ability to cook food on demand—particularly meat—thereby enhancing digestibility and energy availability, which may have been crucial for hominin brain evolution3.

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Fig. 1: Location and site plans of Barnham.
Fig. 2: Photographs of excavation of Area 1 East.
Fig. 3: Schematic diagram through palaeosol complex with analytical results.
Fig. 4: Handaxe and pyrite fragments from palaeosol.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank M. Stahlschmidt for the analysis and interpretation of initial work on the micromorphology and invaluable assistance to S.H. on the additional thin sections. We are grateful to C. Jeans and W. Lord for discussions on the pyrite. We also thank C. Williams for help with the illustrations. Access to the site on the Euston Estate has been provided by the Duke of Grafton and the Heading family, and we are grateful to M. Hawthorne, D. Heading, E. Heading and R. Heading for their ready assistance throughout the fieldwork. Further logistical support has been provided by D. Switzer of PR International. We thank the excavation and post-excavation teams, in particular L. Dale, X. Ding, S. Hunter, D. Jones, I. Klipsch, M. Özturan, A. Rawlinson and I. Taylor, and site manager T. B. Jones. The research was supported by the Calleva Foundation through the Pathways to Ancient Britain project and for S.M.B. through the Human Prehistoric Behaviour in 3D project, and the paper is a contribution to the Natural History Museum’s Evolution of Life research theme.

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Author notes

  1. Deceased: Sylvia Peglar

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department Britain, Europe and Prehistory, British Museum, London, UK

    Rob Davis, Claire Lucas, Simon O’Connor & Nick Ashton

  2. School of Geography, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

    Marcus Hatch & Simon G. Lewis

  3. Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, HLC, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    Sally Hoare

  4. Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, UK

    Simon A. Parfitt & Nick Ashton

  5. CHER, Natural History Museum, London, UK

    Simon A. Parfitt, Silvia M. Bello, Mark Lewis & Chris Stringer

  6. Independent researcher, Campagnac-lès-Quercy, France

    Jordan Mansfield

  7. Core Research Laboratories, Natural History Museum, London, UK

    Jens Najorka

  8. Independent researcher, Cambridge, UK

    Sylvia Peglar

  9. Faculty of Archaeology, University of Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Andrew Sorensen

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Contributions

R.D., N.A., S.M.B., M.H., S.H., S.G.L., J.M., J.N., S.O.’C., S.A.P., A.S. and C.S. wrote the paper. R.D., N.A. and C.L. analysed the artefacts. M.L. and S.P. were responsible for palynology. S.H. performed micromorphology and environmental magnetism experiments, and analysed PAHs. M.H. performed FTIR spectroscopy. S.M.B., J.N., S.A.P. and A.S. analysed pyrites. S.G.L. and N.A. performed lithological analyses. J.M. performed photogrammetry and photography.

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Correspondence to Nick Ashton.

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Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Fig. 1 Geology of Barnham.

a. Map of the Breckland area showing sites of Barnham, Beeches Pit and Devereux’s Pit. Also shown is the boundary of the Lower and Middle Chalk and key superficial deposits discussed in the text. b. Schematic cross-section of the sedimentary sequence at East Farm Barnham, showing locations of samples for dating, biostratigraphy, palynology and contexts containing archaeology. Units 1–3 = glacial sediments; unit 4 = lag gravel; unit 5 = lacustrine sediments with lateral transition between unit 5c in the middle of the basin and unit 5e on the edge; unit 6 = palaeosol; unit 7 = brickearth. Credits: Panel a contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0 (British Geological Survey UKRI, 2025). Panel b created by C. Williams.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Heat shattered handaxes from Barnham.

a. Central part of heat-shattered handaxe with 25 refitting pieces excavated from within a small zone (35 cm across) in Area I East. b. Top part of heat-shattered handaxe from Area I East. c. Heat-altered handaxe from Area I East.

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Davis, R., Hatch, M., Hoare, S. et al. Earliest evidence of making fire. Nature (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09855-6

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