New study shows that early humans living about 800,000 years ago depended on fire in smart, practical ways. Instead of searching for the “best” wood, they took advantage of what nature provided, mainly driftwood collected along the lakeshore. This reliable fuel supply helped them keep fires going for cooking and daily life, and may even explain why they kept coming back to the same spot. In other words, they weren’t just choosing a place to live, they were choosing a place where fire was easy to maintain.

Link to pictures: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uovu8ot6YH_ky7XFmBgDmiKDddOZGXqS?usp=drive_link

Nearly 800,000 years ago, early humans gathered along the shores of a lush lake in what is now northern Israel. Here, they returned again and again, hunting large animals, cooking fish over controlled fires, and organizing their daily lives around hearths. Now, a new study shows that even the wood fueling those fires, which is preserved as rare fragments of charcoal, can reveal how carefully these ancient communities understood and used their environment.

Published in Quaternary Science Reviews, the study offers a vivid reconstruction of life at the Acheulian site of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov (GBY). By examining an exceptionally rich and rare collection of ancient charcoal, an international team of researchers from Israel, Spain, and Germany, including
Prof. Naama Goren-Inbar (Hebrew University), Prof. Nira Alperson-Afil and Dr. Yoel Melamed (Bar-Ilan University), Prof. Ethel Allué (Universitat Rovira i Virgili and Institut Català de Paleoecologia), and Prof. Brigitte Urban (Leuphana University), has uncovered new evidence of how early hominins gathered and used firewood, revealing behavior far more sophisticated than previously assumed.

Charcoal rarely survives at such early prehistoric sites, making this unusually large assemblage a unique window into the daily practices of early fire users. While many ancient sites preserve only fragmentary or ambiguous traces of burning, GBY provides a remarkably detailed record of repeated fire use over tens of thousands of years.

GBY preserves a layered history of human occupation along the shores of paleo–Lake Hula, with more than 20 archaeological horizons documenting generations of Acheulian hunter-gatherers returning to the same location. Excavations led by Prof. Naama Goren-Inbar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have revealed a dynamic landscape of activity: stone tools crafted from flint, limestone, and basalt; the remains of hunted animals; and a wide array of plant foods, including fruits, nuts, and seeds gathered from the lakeshore.

One particularly striking layer captures a dramatic moment in time. Alongside stone tools and plant remains, researchers uncovered the skull and bones of a straight-tusked elephant, evidence of large-scale hunting and butchery. The spatial arrangement of the remains suggests that the animal was processed on-site.

At the heart of this ancient camp life was fire. First identified at GBY by Prof. Nira Alperson-Afil of Bar-Ilan University, fire was habitual. It structured how space was organized, anchoring activities such as tool production, food preparation, and social interaction.

The new study focuses on a single occupation layer dated to approximately 780,000 years ago. Researchers analyzed 266 charcoal fragments, using microscopic techniques to identify the internal structure of the wood and determine its botanical origin. The results revealed a surprisingly diverse mix of plant species, including ash, willow, grapevine, oleander, olive, oak, pistachio, and even pomegranate, which is the earliest known evidence of this fruit tree in the Levant.

Unexpectedly, the charcoal assemblage showed greater plant diversity than other botanical remains from the site, such as seeds, fruits, or unburned wood. This suggests that firewood collection captured a broader cross-section of the surrounding environment than other forms of plant use.

Together, these species paint a vivid picture of the ancient landscape: a mosaic of wet lakeshore vegetation and open Mediterranean woodland. But more importantly, they reveal how early humans interacted with that landscape.

Rather than selectively gathering specific types of wood, GBY hominins appear to have relied primarily on driftwood naturally accumulating along the lakeshore. Fallen branches and logs, carried by water and deposited along the shore, would have created a readily available fuel supply. The composition of the charcoal closely mirrors the wood available in this environment, suggesting a practical and efficient strategy, using what the landscape provides.

This insight points to a broader conclusion: access to firewood may have been a decisive factor in where these early humans chose to live. The lakeshore offered not only fresh water, edible plants, animals, and raw materials for tools, but also a constant supply of fuel, essential for maintaining fire.

Even more striking is how fire was used. Spatial analysis shows that dense clusters of charcoal overlap with concentrations of fish remains, primarily the distinctive teeth of large carp. This co-occurrence adds compelling evidence that fish were being cooked at the site nearly 800,000 years ago, likely using carefully controlled fire.

These findings reinforce the idea that GBY hominins possessed advanced cognitive abilities. They were capable of controlling fire, organizing space around it, and integrating it into complex subsistence strategies. Yet interestingly, while hunting and tool-making required elaborate planning, firewood collection itself appears to have been a more routine activity, based largely on availability rather than careful selection of specific tree species.

Together, these behaviors paint a picture of a community that was both highly skilled and deeply attuned to its environment, returning repeatedly to a place that offered everything they needed to survive and thrive.

The GBY charcoal assemblage provides a unique dataset for examining the intersection of fire use, environmental context, and hominin behavior. These findings refine current models of early fire-related practices and emphasize the importance of local resource availability in shaping patterns of occupation and subsistence during the Middle Pleistocene.