‘Who invented fire’, is one of the chief questions that people, especially young children, ask their parents curiously. The most common answer that parents tell their children is that it was their ancestors who invented fire. But, this answer is only partly correct, and as it is dangerous to know half information, it is very important to know the full truth about the question.
It is accurate that it was our ancestors who invented fire, but they fall in a category. This category is called Homo Erectus. It is discovered by scientists that fire was invented around two million years ago. By finding this, the scientists have also been able to find that the ancestors called Homo Erectus, inhabited planet Earth two million years ago. As time slowly passed by, fire kept becoming more and more popular, not only in the civilization where it was invented, but also in the other neighboring civilizations. As its popularity increased, early men and women began to use it for daily purposes, such as cooking; melting metals to give them a shape and make a tool; and keeping the fire on for the whole night, to scare off the beasts hidden in the jungle.
Here is a common story that tells us how some common caveman would have invented fire —
Once a caveman in search of food, just heard an animal walk by. With his beautiful sense of hearing, threw a stone in the same direction, killing the animal. The man used the same stone for a couple more preys and thought the stone to be lucky. So he carried it to his cave. He also found another similar looking stone. One day when he threw the stone on the second one angrily, it produced a very small, minute, golden coloured spark. As it was night time, the spark was clearly visible. By trying the same throw another thousand times, he had mastered it. One day when he tried it on dry grass, the grass was lit with fire in just one go. As his curiosity grew and grew, he tried the same on many more various surfaces, and ended up having three conclusions, that the tiny spark could be created only with the same type of stones, it could spark up on any dry substance (mostly dry grass), and that no one could really feel the spark, but when they stuck out their hands in the real fire, it was sure to burn them. When this man showed his mind blowing talent of creating sparks of fire with just a couple of pieces of an ordinary stone, the other cavemen were absolutely stunned and could not imagine that such a thing existed.
The invention of fire has not only helped the cavemen at nights when they are searching for something, but also in severe winters when the fire was the only thing that could keep them warm, and not let them freeze to death. Fire is now considered to be one of the most important elements of the Earth, and just like the way it had helped our ancestors, it also helps us in many ways.
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