Earliest form of firelighting in the UK

[forestwalker]

That is such a good point
Preserving fire is a much under rated area of research.

I've done it, for days on end. Basically I took a leaf from ötzis book, and adapted it to my own circumstances. In my no-tools version I took a tube of birchbark from a rotting birch (karate kid style), stuffed some damp sphagnum moss into one end, added a smoldering F. fomentarius inside some more damp sphagnum moss, stuffed some more into the remaining end, and added a carry handle from spruce roots. Walk through the woods like some bushy choirboy, gently swinging it every now and then to improve airflow. Works even in pouring rain, redampen moss as needed, restart a new chunk of fungi when you get low. Extra benefit; no mosquitos.

 

[pango]

Basically I took a leaf from ötzis book...

Explain, please? I take it you're referring to some artifacts found in Ötzi's kit. Mindblowing stuff.

(As an aside, during the time the Austrians and Italians were arguing over Ötzi's nationality, a German mate told me that it was clear Ötzi was a German... he couldn't have been Austrian, as he had a brain and he couldn't have been Italian, as he had tools.)

 

[John Fenna]

Preservation of fire has to be a lot more efficient!
The energy expended in bow or hand-drilling or making a spark from rock and metal (not to mention preparing your tinder) is demanding on the body (ever raised a sweat bow-drilling - I have!) while gathering a couple of fungi and some moss is easy work...
Fire is a gift from the gods and not to be wasted!
Having seen "primitive" tribes (on TV) moving from camp to camp they all seem to have a couple of folk carrying embers for fire lighting.....and cigar lighting come to that!

 

[redneck]

Preservation of fire has to be a lot more efficient!
The energy expended in bow or hand-drilling or making a spark from rock and metal (not to mention preparing your tinder) is demanding on the body (ever raised a sweat bow-drilling - I have!) while gathering a couple of fungi and some moss is easy work...
Fire is a gift from the gods and not to be wasted!
Having seen "primitive" tribes (on TV) moving from camp to camp they all seem to have a couple of folk carrying embers for fire lighting.....and cigar lighting come to that!

I agree completely that fire preservation/transporting was far more common and usual that we give credit for, but the point of this thread is to find out the most primitive form of initial fire lighting in the UK area..flint existed before the bow, therefore it's sensible to believe that fire from sparks existed before fire from a friction creating devise constructed by a lateral thinking intelligent brain..

 

[Toddy]

Flint may have been here for a while, but wood, a stick, is the first tool.

Even crows use sticks, so do chimps and the other great apes.

I only really know of thrushes and otters using stones to crack shells.

I don't think you can claim one way or the other.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Bushwhacker]

Capuchins have been observed using rocks to smash open nuts/seed pods - a hammer and anvil method.
Maybe our early ancestors did this and noticed sparks when they had a mis-hit on certain types of rock.

 

[gregorach]

You can speculate endlessly, but in the absence of any real evidence one way or the other, it's all just waffle. We do not know what the earliest method of fire-lighting used in Britain was, and we are extremely unlikely to ever know.

I also don't understand why some seem to be assuming that the bow-drill must have been derived from the archery bow. If anything, the opposite seems more likely to me - but again, in the absence of any real evidence, that opinion is almost entirely worthless. We just don't know.

I do think you have to say the second they started working stone, they got sparks.

I don't think so. It's really, really hard to generate sparks even if you've got exactly the right two stones. Typical flint-working techniques never generate sparks, as far as I know.

 

[andy_e]

It's really, really hard to generate sparks even if you've got exactly the right two stones. Typical flint-working techniques never generate sparks, as far as I know.

It's not that hard once you've been shown the technique. In my experience most people pick it up and retain it within a few hours of being taught how and the type of materials to use. Also, remember our ancestors lived very much more *in* the landscape than most of us can these days and skill/teachings such as these were as necessary a part of daily survival as teaching our own children to cross the road sensibly.

Anyone that's walked along the quartz-rich West of Scotland beaches and thrown quartz pebbles about at night knows you get oddly bright "sparks" when they bounce of other quartz pebbles. It's not a great leap to investigate further - I did it myself as a kid, long before I knew anything about percussive fire-lighting, though I had no idea at the time how to take it further to flame.

As far as I can see the real problem with the technique isn't the sparks, it's as Toddy says, ensuring you have a receptive material to hand, there's only so many that will reliably take the cool flint/iron spark without some form of processing, charred fibres, etc.

Friction requires no less preparation and technique, but the materials are easier to come by.

But as you say, unless Doctor Who turns up we're never going to know.

 

[gregorach]

Anyone that's walked along the quartz-rich West of Scotland beaches and thrown quartz pebbles about at night knows you get oddly bright "sparks" when they bounce of other quartz pebbles. It's not a great leap to investigate further - I did it myself as a kid, long before I knew anything about percussive fire-lighting, though I had no idea at the time how to take it further to flame.

Those aren't actually sparks per-se - they're luminescing shards of quartz. I'm pretty sure they're cold.

 

[Toddy]

It's called triboluminescence and it's a kind of shock wave through the quartz caused by pressure. It's not hot and it's not a spark.
It is a kind of magical light though.
I'm told that the Hopi use it in some of their dances.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[forestwalker]

Explain, please? I take it you're referring to some artifacts found in Ötzi's kit. Mindblowing stuff.

In his pack was a birch bark container, containing partically charred leaves. The interpretations I've seen was that it was used to carry smoldering coals or fungi. His was sewn up with spuce roots (IIRC, too lazy to dig out the book), while mine was a quickie no-tools version made as needed on a 10 days survival trek (with the weather we had the bowdrill fire was not quite as dependable as we would have liked it to be). A few minutes work, held up for 10 days, could have lasted another week at least. I carried it as a horizontal tube, with the spruce roots tied around the middle and forming a loop handle.

(As an aside, during the time the Austrians and Italians were arguing over Ötzi's nationality, a German mate told me that it was clear Ötzi was a German... he couldn't have been Austrian, as he had a brain and he couldn't have been Italian, as he had tools.)

I think he must have been American; he had hi-tech fancy state of the art gear, and he still didn't make it, probably because he had gotten into a stupid fight he could not win.

 

[pango]

I think he must have been American; he had hi-tech fancy state of the art gear, and he still didn't make it, probably because he had gotten into a stupid fight he could not win.

Ouch, that smarts, you bitch!!! LOL.

I'll just take 5 minutes to clean the tea off my laptop!

I agree with what Gregorach says, that we'll never know, even if an ancient flint and iron kit were removed from an alluvial fan it still wouldn't answer the question.

Although John Fenna's observation may not refer to "first fire making in the UK", as such, it is still very relevant, as it doesn't only make perfect sense to preserve and carry fire with you in order to reduce energy expenditure, but it is logical to assume that preserving naturally occurring fire was more than likely our only option for a long, long time before some genius put empiricism into practice. They may even have, to our minds, broken all the rules and gone straight for Deconstructionism, having noticed that from tiny ember, bonfires grow!

It doesn't take long to see that charred wood takes the tiniest of embers, but will it take a spark? (I'll check it out tomorrow morning, as I'm going stravaiging with a mate for a couple of days.)

In this case, I think the chicken came first, and that fire-making with hand or bow-drill was a long way off. But we probably arrived in what is now Western Europe a good while after that, and the fire in our first hearth was more than likely carried here.

Has it occurred to anyone that the ones most often tending the fire were likely to be women? I'll get my coat!

 

[Toddy]

.........Has it occurred to anyone that the ones most often tending the fire were likely to be women? I'll get my coat!

Uhuh



cheers,
Toddy............that's Mrs Craig to those who don't know.

 

[forestwalker]

Ouch, that smarts, you bitch!!! LOL.

I'll just take 5 minutes to clean the tea off my laptop!

Ahh, the greatest of rewards. But since I'm built like an English house, with the plumbing on the outside, would that not be "*******" instead?

Although John Fenna's observation may not refer to "first fire making in the UK", as such, it is still very relevant, as it doesn't only make perfect sense to preserve and carry fire with you in order to reduce energy expenditure, but it is logical to assume that preserving naturally occurring fire was more than likely our only option for a long, long time before some genius put empiricism into practice. They may even have, to our minds, broken all the rules and gone straight for Deconstructionism, having noticed that from tiny ember, bonfires grow!

It doesn't take long to see that charred wood takes the tiniest of embers, but will it take a spark? (I'll check it out tomorrow morning, as I'm going stravaiging with a mate for a couple of days.)

I suspect that anyone who has spent a few years carrying fire around would be very good at coaxing small, tiny embers into a fire (and my personal opinion is that man first spent quite a bit of time carrying fire around before we could make it).

Rotten weather, cold, hunger, darkness; that is the time you would need fire the most, but is also pretty much the definition of the conditions when starting one would be the hardest.

 

[Minotaur]

You can speculate endlessly, but in the absence of any real evidence one way or the other, it's all just waffle. We do not know what the earliest method of fire-lighting used in Britain was, and we are extremely unlikely to ever know.

The problem is the only evidance, until time travel, is made of stone. My argument would go something like this if they made holes they must have come across friction, so heat. The question is did they make holes in the wood age, or not until the stone age.

I also don't understand why some seem to be assuming that the bow-drill must have been derived from the archery bow. If anything, the opposite seems more likely to me - but again, in the absence of any real evidence, that opinion is almost entirely worthless. We just don't know.

This seems to make the most sense. To be honest, how else can they have come up with it? If anything it makes more sense this way, because they must have been making holes etc, and looking for ways to make it easier. Then as I said some idiot sends a stick across the fire, and for the first time the immortal phrase is uttered ' watch it you could have someone's eye out with that!'

I don't think so. It's really, really hard to generate sparks even if you've got exactly the right two stones. Typical flint-working techniques never generate sparks, as far as I know.

It not that hard to make hot shards, it hard to make usable sparks. Kids copying adults, and make sparks. There had to be an experiment phase as well.

 

[spiritwalker]

As for humans taking fire from a natural fire........maybe, maybe..........with a heck of a lot of courage and fear, or from lava ??? don't see that one myself. Waaaaay too stupid. I think those scenarios are from something like the Raquel Welch in a fur bikini type daydreams

cheers,
Toddy[/QUOTE]

When at timan al faya national park in lanzerote the guide there threw dry grass in a hot hole which burst into flames so it aint as dumb as you think :-D

 

[Toddy]

Earliest evidences for fire using amongst hominids appears in Africa.
Britain only emerged from the ice c10,000 years ago. The nearest volcano would have been the Italian ones.........hell of a distance to carry fire.

I attended an anthropological conference a long while ago, and they reckoned that humans desired to cook meat only after they had scavenged after a natural fire had raged through an area and roasted the creatures that hadn't been able to escape.

If that is taken to it's logical conclusion then the first skill would have been preservation of embers.

That's not Making Fire though.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[spiritwalker]

i still wager on lightning strikes on heather bracken fields but as you stated its not really firelighting but i guess it all starts somewhere once they carried and used it they may have found ways to start it, friction or sparks who knows. I would like to think man had the knowledge before moving as far north as Britain and thus already had a mobile fire kit passed down the lines from Africa