Old Fire

Two stories about the "earliest fire":

Middle Eastern Site Yields Fire Evidence More than three-quarters of a million years ago, early humans gathered around a campfire near an ancient lake in what is now Israel, making tools and perhaps cooking food, in the earliest evidence yet found of the use of fire in Europe or Asia. Researchers have found evidence that these early people hunted and processed meat and used fire at a site called Gesher Benot Ya'aqov in the northern Dead Sea valley.

Fossils Reveal Oldest Wildfire Scientists have discovered evidence for the earliest known wildfire in Earth's history, the journal Geology reports. It comes in the form of small plant fossils preserved as charcoal, which were unearthed by researchers near the town of Ludlow on the Welsh borders. The plant remains date to the Silurian Period, about 443 to 417 million years ago, say a Cardiff University team.