Archaeologists have unearthed 400,000-year-old heated deposits and fire-cracked flint hand axes next to two fragments of pyrite – a mineral used in later periods to strike sparks with flint – in Barnham, Suffolk, United Kingdom. The discovery shows that humans started making fire about 350,000 years earlier than previously thought.
An artist's impression of the fire at Barnham some 400,000 years ago. Image credit: Craig Williams/Trustees of the British Museum.
Humans' ability to start and maintain fire marks an important moment in human development: fire provided warmth, provided protection from predators, and allowed for cooking, which expanded the variety of foods that could be consumed.
Signs of fires in human-inhabited areas date back more than a million years.
However, it is difficult to determine when people learned to make fire.
The use of fire probably began with the opportunistic exploitation of natural forest fires before our ancestors mastered the art of deliberately starting fires.
Previous evidence of early fire-making has been found at Neanderthal sites in France dating back to 50,000 years ago, where hand axes were found that appear to have been used to carve pyrite to create sparks.
New evidence discovered by Professor Nick Ashton, an archaeologist at the British Museum and Institute of Archaeology at University College London, and his colleagues suggests that fire-lighting may have taken place 400,000 years ago in Barnham, United Kingdom.
Archaeologists have discovered heated sediments in ancient soils, as well as fire-cracked flint hand axes.
These features indicate that the fire in the populated area was under control, but a third finding suggests that the arson was deliberate.
Two fragments of pyrite were discovered at the site; however, the mineral is rare in the region, leading researchers to speculate that the pyrite was intentionally brought to the site for use in fire making.
Taken together, the results point to complex behavior of ancient people at the Barnham site.
For example, these people may have understood the properties of pyrite to use it as part of a fire-making kit.
Developing this skill would have many benefits, including the ability to cook food and potentially spur the development of technologies such as making glue for tool handles, which may have contributed to marked changes in human behavior.
“The people who made fires at Barnham 400,000 years ago were probably early Neanderthals, judging by the morphology of fossils of roughly the same age from Swanscombe, Kent and Atapuerca in Spain, which even preserve early Neanderthal DNA,” said Professor Chris Stringer, a palaeoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London.
“This is the most exciting discovery of my career and I am very proud of the teamwork it took to achieve this ground-breaking finding,” said Professor Ashton.
“It is incredible that some of the earliest Neanderthal groups knew about the properties of flint, pyrite and tinder at such an early age.”
“The implications are huge,” said Dr Rob Davies, curator of the project at the British Museum.
“The ability to create and control fire is one of the most important turning points in human history, with practical and social benefits that changed human evolution.”
“This extraordinary discovery pushes that turning point back to about 350,000 years ago.”
The discovery is reported in paper published today in the magazine Nature.
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R. Davis etc.. Earliest evidence of fire starting. Naturepublished online December 10, 2025; doi: 10.1038/s41586-025-09855-6
