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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Science
Hannah Devlin Science correspondent

Humans made fire 350,000 years earlier than previously thought, discovery in Suffolk suggests

Early humans cooking meat over a fire
The latest evidence suggests humans made fire at least 400,000 years ago. Illustration: Aleksei Gorodenkov/Alamy

Humans mastered the art of creating fire 400,000 years ago, almost 350,000 years earlier than previously known, according to a groundbreaking discovery in a field in Suffolk.

It is known that humans used natural fire more than 1m years ago, but until now the earliest unambiguous example of humans lighting fires came from a site in northern France dating from 50,000 years ago.

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