fire

combustion
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Top Questions

What is fire?

When did humans begin using fire?

Why was fire important to early humans?

How did prehistoric peoples make a fire?

What role has fire played in the growth of civilization?

fire, rapid burning of combustible material with the evolution of heat and usually accompanied by flame. It is one of the human race’s essential tools, control of which helped start it on the path toward civilization. The original source of fire undoubtedly was lightning, and such fortuitously ignited blazes remained the only source of fire for aeons. For some years Peking man, about 500,000 bce, was believed to be the earliest unquestionable user of fire; evidence uncovered in Kenya in 1981 and in South Africa in 1988, however, suggests that the earliest controlled use of fire by hominids dates from ...(100 of 1024 words)