Overview
- A British Museum–led team reports a repeatedly used hearth at Barnham, Suffolk, dated to roughly 400,000–415,000 years ago, in research published in Nature.
- Micromorphology, FTIR, magnetic data and PAH signatures show localized burning at temperatures above about 700–750 °C, consistent with controlled fires rather than wildfire.
- Two iron pyrite fragments—absent from local geology—were found with heat‑shattered flint handaxes, supporting the use of pyrite struck against flint to ignite tinder.
- The finding shifts the earliest confirmed fire‑making back by about 350,000 years, supplanting a 50,000‑year‑old Neanderthal site in northern France as the prior benchmark.
- Researchers infer early Neanderthals as the likely fire‑makers based on regional fossils, note that no hominin bones were recovered at Barnham, and plan to apply the same toolkit to other sites.