Fire Cooked Up Early Human Culture

An anthropologist studying current hunter-gatherers finds that nighttime around the fire is when conversation turns from business to bonding. Cynthia Graber reports. Sep 24, 2014 | |

Some scientists say the helped make us modern humans—it dramatically changed and may have even altered our anatomy. But University of Utah anthropologist thinks that fire was also important in shaping human social interactions and cultural traditions. Her conclusions are in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Polly W. Wiessner, ]

Wiessner evaluated day and night activities and conversations of Kalahari Bushmen from Botswana and Namibia. These communities still live by hunting and gathering, as most humans did over evolutionary history.

During the day, nearly a third of the conversations dealt with economic issues such as hunting strategies and foraging plans. Another third covered complaints, criticisms and gossip.

But at night around the fire, more than 80 percent of group conversations were storytelling, often about people living far away or in the spirit world.

Weissner says that humans are unique in that we create ties to others outside of our immediate group. Gathering at the fire expanded listeners’ imaginations and allowed for the development of cognitive processes that made it possible to form those links to distant communities. Which makes fire the precursor to Facebook.

—Cynthia Graber