I’ve spent many nights camping in the woods and noticed how the trees always seem to rest at night. Same as humans shed their hair and dead skin trees seem to shed their dead branches or limbs that have become too heavy. Natural disasters aside, on more than one occasion I’ve missed a very painful night by where I’ve decided to position my tent and narrowly escaped a tree limb falling on my tent in the middle of the night. Fortunately, nature always seems to provide me with enough wood for an adequate campfire.
Fire has always been an active element in nature. Necessary to burn away the dead foliage, induce seed pods to open for new growth, and for a multitude of other uses by humans and Mother Nature alike. What is important to understand is that humans never discovered fire; they learned to control it. Of the elements found in nature, earth, water, fire, air, and some include space, fire remains the element humans have exerted the most control over. But why? Each of the elements can be both destructive and useful to humans so why do humans remain to have an utter fascination with fire and why did they decide to harness this element most of all?
Perhaps one of the least useful elements to early humans; scientists have long entertained the strange relationship between humans and fire. Unlike most, fire is an element that does not simply exist like the earth, water, and air. Fire, still a natural element, needs to be created and is fleeting. Humans need water to stay hydrated, earth for sources of food to grow from and so that photosynthesis can maintain a balance of necessary air quality for survival. Humans don’t really need fire. There are places warm enough for humans to live without needing a heat source and food sources are available that do not require cooking.
My initial thought was that humans may have first decided to learn to control fire for a source of heat to stay warm but given how quizzical human behavior is it is entirely plausible that humans relationship with fire was derived from pure curiosity not from necessity and later the uses of fire were developed and found to be useful. This would explain the spontaneous instances of fire in early human history and it not being until much later that actual heaths were discovered as being used by humans who had discovered ways in which fire would benefit their existence.
Gowlett, J. A. (2016, June 5). The discovery of fire by humans: A long and convoluted process. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2015.0164
Recker, J. (2022, June 29). When did early humans start using fire? To find answers, scientists enlist artificial intelligence. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/evidence-of--fire-artificial-intelligence-180980319/
Scott, A. C. (2018, June 1). When did humans discover fire? Time. https://time.com/5295907/discover-fire/