Before people invented the steering wheel , went to place , or launched the internet , they first get a line how to harness flak . National Geographic ’s new seriesOrigins , premier Monday , March 6 at 9/8c , unwrap how this landmark consequence in human story led to countless more milestones . For better or for worse , here are just a handful of slipway fire has shaped ( and is still shape ) the destiny of humanity .
1. IT ALLOWED HUMANS TO MIGRATE.
lasting human communities can be find on six of the Earth ’s seven Continent , and that ’s partly thanks to fire . For early humans , tackle fire was more of a fashion to cook food than supply heat . Research has register that our hominid ancestors first learned to rule natural fires almost 1 million year ago , but they only started systematically managing and defend fires of their own in fireside about 400,000 eld back . Sixty to seventy thousand years ago , around the same time humans left Africa and started migrate to new continents , humans began using tools to make fire . In gain to acting as a heat source , fervour would have also allowed migrate humans to protect themselves from predators and draw out the shelf life of their nutrient supplies .
2. IT HELPED OUR BRAINS GROW.
Never underestimate the importance of have it off how to cook . Some scientists have argued that humans would have never developed the prominent brains that set us apart from other order Primates without this skill .
Cooking food does n’t just make it tastier and dependable to eat — it also makes it easier to chew and digest . After finding a way to make meat go down easier , early humans were able to spend less meter gnawing away on knotty pieces of uncooked cartilage , and a circumstances of those extra large calorie croak to nurture their growing head , according to a squad of Brazilian neuroscientists . Even though the brain only account for 2 percent of our body muckle , it expend up 20 percent of the calories we sunburn . So the next clip you find yourself crave barbeque , you may blame your head word as well as your breadbasket .
3. IT SPAWNED TUBERCULOSIS.
The destructive nature of ardor call to mind blazing forest and burn construction , but one of ardour ’s most devastating encroachment on humans may have less striking origins . At least that ’s according to one mathematical group of Australian biologists who trace the parturition of tubercular back to smoke . Their inquiry suggest that the disease developed from a line of germ visit mycobacterium . Human lungs weakened by particulate smoke are more susceptible to infection from the microbes , and groups of human hosts ( like you usually find around fires ) might have allowed it to spread and develop apace into the pathogen we know today . tubercular is still the most deadly infective disease on Earth , claiming 1.8 million lives a year .
4. IT WAS USED AS AN AGRICULTURAL TOOL.
Early humans learned that firing could be used as a tool to educate nutrient even before planting germ in the ground . By chopping down patches of trees and igniting “ controlled burns ” to get disembarrass of the stumps , Farmer were left with clearings of nutrient - robust ash tree and soil for growing crops . The power to carve out plain with fire helped fuel the rise of agriculture . This same method was also used by hunter - gatherer to create attractive environments for biz animate being .
5. IT HELPED ERADICATE THE GREAT PLAGUE.
London was already well conversant with tragedy when a fire span through town in 1666 . The bubonic pestilence had arrived in the city the class before and claimed the life of 15 percent of its residents in one summer . After the Great Fire of London rupture through 436 acres of actual the three estates in a few days , the devastation had a surprising side effect : It clean the region of many of its flea - ridden rats which carried the disease . The epidemic faded away from London that same year .
6. IT MADE PASTEURIZATION POSSIBLE.
Humans had been cooking food for thousands of geezerhood when Louis Pasteur reveal that controlled heating system could also be used to make beverages safer to drink . In the 19th C , the Gallic chemist discovered that inflame up wine to a exact temperature for a sealed amount of prison term could pour down harmful bacteria without changing its flavor . The cognitive process was also used to winnow out harmful organism in beer , vinegar , and eventually milk ( once a rough-cut carrier of T.B. ) .
7. A NEW TYPE OF FIRE COULD HELP CLEAN OIL SPILLS.
While preventing oil spillway all together is idealistic , it ’s important to be able-bodied to cleanse them up quickly in pillowcase they do happen . In 2016 , a group of scientists foretell they had detect a new case of fire that does just that . Unstable fervor whirls fall out in nature , but a so - called “ blue spin ” created in a lab burn off cleanly and more predictably . Its blue color signal “ complete combustion ” which leave behind little or no soot . If regurgitate on a big scale , the Modern type of fire would burn off oil spills more efficiently while leaving behind less pollutant than traditional a flaming . This could save ecosystem from major devastation if such a calamity were to take place in the future tense .
