Ice Age Humans Were Skilled Firebenders, Scientists Find

Hominids have been using fire for at least a million years — but scientists have found that human fire-wielding skills during our planet's last great Ice Age became so advanced that they would have made Bobby Flay proud. A group of archaeologists from across Europe has found, per a new study in the journal Geoarchaeology, that tens of thousands of years ago, Homo sapiens — better known as modern humans — figured out how to make fires that burned up to 600 degrees Celsius, or more than 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit. Led by researchers from Austria's University of Vienna and Portugal's University of Algarve, the scientists identified three hearths in modern-day Ukraine from the coldest portion of the last Ice Age, between 26,500 and 19,000 years ago. As a press release from the University of Vienna explains, the researchers were surprised to find that the simple fireplaces didn't just burn wood, but also had remnants of bone and animals fats in them — both of which could have helped them b ... Read full article.