You are a researcher excavating a site in a cave in Israel.There are many layers of sediment and primitive artifacts (flint tools for cutting and scraping)from ancestral Homo species within the cave.As you work your way deeper and deeper through the layers,you notice that artifacts in the deeper layers (laid before 350,000 years ago)do not show any signs of having been exposed to fire.Artifacts in layers less than 350,000 years ago show rapidly increasing evidence of exposure to fire.Your colleagues working in nearby caves and caves scattered around the eastern Mediterranean Sea have found similar evidence dating in the same time frames.The evidence is also consistent with that of European sites.What does this suggest about the use of fire by ancestral humans?

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The fact that artifacts in deeper layers (older than 350,000 years ago) do not show any signs of exposure to fire, while those in younger layers show increasing evidence of exposure to fire, suggests that ancestral humans who had migrated to areas around the eastern Mediterranean Sea and Europe very likely learned to control and use fire around the same time (about 300,000 to 350,000 years ago), and they became increasingly good at it. This is consistent with evidence found in nearby caves and caves scattered around the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The other options are not supported by the given evidence. Option A is incorrect because the presence of fire in younger layers suggests that ancestral humans were using fire before 150,000 years ago. Option B is incorrect because the evidence suggests that ancestral humans were making and maintaining their own fires. Option D is incorrect because other human ancestors, such as Homo erectus, were known to have used fire.

You Are a Researcher Excavating a Site in a Cave