Did the first inhabitants of the Caune de l’Arago between 700,000 and 400,000 years BP have domesticated fire? Did they know how to light the fire at will?

Abstract

This note is a comment to the article “Search for early traces of fire in the Caune de l’Arago at Tautavel (Eastern Pyrenees, France), combining magnetic susceptibility measurements, microscopic observations, and Raman analysis” by Deldicque et al., published online on July 29, 2021, in Comptes Rendus Géoscience in Volume 353, 2021, pages 247-264, https://doi.org/10.5802/crgeos.66. The authors’ response to this comment has also been published in Comptes Rendus Géoscience in Volume 354, 2022, pages 47-50, https://doi.org/10.5802/crgeos.114.

Keywords

• charcoal
• Caune de l’Arago cave
• Magnetic susceptibility
• Raman spectroscopy
• Fire
• Middle Pleistocene
• Magnetic minerals