Researchers Uncover Signs of Widespread Human Use of Fire Dating Back 50,000 Years

Fire has existed as a natural force on Earth for more than 400 million years, playing a key role in shaping ecosystems, influencing the carbon cycle, and responding to shifts in climate and vegetation.

As humans emerged, fire evolved from a purely natural occurrence into a tool that could be deliberately used to serve various purposes. Yet, the timeline of when people began using fire extensively to manage their environment has remained uncertain.

To explore this, scientists from the Institute of Oceanology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOCAS), along with researchers from China, Germany, and France, examined pyrogenic carbon—a residue from incomplete vegetation burning—found in a 300,000-year-old sediment core from the East China Sea.

“Our results challenge the common assumption that humans only began significantly impacting the environment with fire during the more recent Holocene epoch,” stated Dr. ZHAO Debo, the study’s lead author.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), this study highlights the discovery of charred plant material—known as pyrogenic carbon—produced when vegetation burns but isn’t fully consumed by fire. The findings show a marked increase in fire activity in East Asia around 50,000 years ago. This pattern mirrors earlier evidence of intensified fire use in Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Papua New Guinea–Australia region, indicating a widespread, continental-scale rise in human-driven fire activity during that time.

READ ALSO: Fruit flies are a crucial inspiration for the field of robotics.

READ ALSO: The final segment of the central solenoid structure has been delivered to ITER

READ ALSO: Solid-state battery road tests begin.

According to paleoanthropologists who support evolutionary theory, all modern humans trace their origins to Africa roughly 300,000 years ago, with the emergence of Homo sapiens. Between 70,000 and 50,000 years ago, these early humans began migrating out of Africa, eventually spreading across Europe, Asia, Southeast Asia, and Australia, where they replaced local archaic human populations.

The research emphasizes that this surge in fire use globally coincided with the rapid expansion of Homo sapiens, increasing population sizes, and a growing dependence on fire—particularly under harsh, glacial conditions. Fire not only enabled cooking, improving nutrient absorption, but also offered protection from predators and supported survival in extreme environments. This growing reliance on fire played a key role in cultural development, technological progress, and had lasting effects on natural systems, especially the carbon cycle.

Humans likely started influencing ecosystems and the global carbon cycle through their use of fire even before the Last Ice Age. “It's probable that fire use was already beginning to transform ecosystems and carbon dynamics during the Last Glaciation,” noted Professor WAN Shiming, another lead author of the study.

These findings carry important implications for how we understand Earth's responsiveness to human activity. If early fire management by humans affected atmospheric carbon levels tens of thousands of years ago, then current climate models may be underestimating the long-term extent of human influence on the environment.