Fire-making was the first, essential step in the long process leading to today's technology and fire enabled another essential step: metallurgy. Wood, rock, etc., could not replace the properties of metals in our modern life.
The Bronze Age (copper and tin) started about 3500 B.C. Copper requires heat of about 2000 degrees fahrenheit, but the most important metal requires even more heat. Iron smelting was mastered around 1200 B.C. and the iron age began. Strength and durability took tools to a whole new level.
"The mastery of fire and . . metallurgy , , prepared the stage for the coming of the industrial revolution . . . Inventions followed thick and fast: dynamos and electric motors ushered in the modern electric age, the internal combustion engine, the first airplanes, jet engines, and the development of the electronic computer during World War II."
But fire came first. And the mastery of fire depended on unique properties of both humans and the natural world.
(cont'd tomorrow)
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