This is the earliest known evidence and pushes the timeline back by roughly 350,000 years compared with previous estimates. The findings distinguish between using naturally occurring fire and deliberately creating it, and fire-making would have supported cooking, warmth, protection, and longer occupation of colder regions.


Archaeologists at a Palaeolithic site at Barnham, Suffolk, reported that the site contains burnt clay surfaces, heat-fractured flint hand axes, and iron pyrite fragments found together in the same archaeological layers. Pyrite, which can be struck with flint to produce sparks, does not occur naturally at the site, suggesting it was brought there intentionally.