The Origin of Controlled Fire Use

控制火的发展被广泛视为人类进化的分水岭。根据这一过程的公认日期，人类采用火作为烹饪、取暖、抵御捕食者和无数其他用途的工具的后果是深远的。然而，尽管解剖学、遗传学和灵长类动物的数据表明，人类对火的依赖进化得很早（约170万年前），但对考古记录中有关火的证据的严格检查表明，不仅火的起源要晚得多（约100万年前），而且在大约45000年前之前的所有时期，火的使用只是零星的。这导致了一种假设，即在这一时期之前的人类祖先，包括晚更新世欧洲的尼安德特人，并不是强制性的火使用者，也没有生火的能力，而只是使用他们在自然光照下发现的火。这个问题可能导致当时来自非洲的现代人取代了欧洲的尼安德特人。由明尼苏达大学的Gilbert Tostevin博士和Gilliane Monnier博士组成的多学科团队，将与黑山、塞尔维亚、西班牙、法国、加拿大和以色列的同事一起，通过研究在黑山的Crvena Stijena岩石避难所的欧洲最长的考古序列之一中使用火的频率和背景来验证这一假设。该项目培训了来自巴尔干半岛各地的20名学生，学习高分辨率考古、地质和文化遗产3D数字方法。黑山特别需要培养一代考古学家，因为他们在独立后失去了唯一的考古学院（位于塞尔维亚的贝尔格莱德）。该项目既将培训专业考古学家，也将参与公共宣传活动，如黑山政府每年举办的Dani Nauka（“科学日”）活动。用现存的考古资料来调查尼安德特人对火的控制是很困难的，因为遗址内的地质过程经常会抹去火的物理证据（通过构成壁炉的灰烬、木炭和烧焦的沉积物的溶解）。因此，很难区分真正没有火灾和仅仅没有证据。然而，考古科学家最近使用的新技术能够识别火的微观证据，即使它在宏观上不再可见。这个多学科项目是围绕这些新技术的应用而设计的，用于分析尼安德特人在现代人类出现之前的4万年中使用火的背景。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The development of control over fire is widely seen as a watershed in human evolution. Depending upon the accepted date for this process, the consequences of the human adoption of fire as a tool for cooking, warmth, protection from predators, and countless other uses are profound. Yet despite indications from anatomical, genetic, and primate data that human dependence upon fire evolved early (~1.7 million years ago), critical examinations of the evidence for fire in the archaeological record indicate not only that its origins are significantly later (~1.0 million), but that its use, for all time periods prior to approximately 45,000 years ago, was only sporadic. This has led to the hypothesis that human ancestors previous to this period, including the Neanderthals of Late Pleistocene Europe, were not obligate fire users and did not have the ability to make fire but only to use the fire they found on the landscape resulting from natural lighting strikes. This issue could have contributed to the replacement of European Neanderthal populations by modern humans from Africa at this time. The multidisciplinary team created by Dr. Gilbert Tostevin & Dr. Gilliane Monnier, both of the University of Minnesota, along with colleagues in Montenegro, Serbia, Spain, France, Canada, and Israel, will test this hypothesis by studying the frequency and context of fire use throughout one of the longest archaeological sequences in Europe, at Crvena Stijena Rock Shelter in Montenegro. This project trains 20 students from all over the Balkans in high-resolution archaeological, geological, and cultural heritage 3D digital methods. Montenegro in particular needs to train a generation of archaeologists, since they lost their only archaeology faculty (in Belgrade, Serbia) when they became independent. The project will both train professional archaeologists as well as engage in public outreach events, such as the yearly Dani Nauka ("Days of Science") events run by the Montenegrin government.Investigating Neanderthal control of fire with extant archaeological data is difficult, since geological processes within sites frequently erase the physical evidence of fire (through the dissolution of the ash, charcoal, and burnt sediment which make up hearths). As such, it is hard to distinguish between a real absence of fire and the mere absence of evidence. Newer techniques recently made available to archaeological scientists, however, are able to recognize microscopic evidence for fire even when it is no longer visible macroscopically. This multidisciplinary project is designed around the application of these new techniques for the analysis of the context of Neanderthal use of fire against the 40,000 year occupation of the site before the appearance of modern humans in the region.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.