In African cave, Israeli, international scientists find signs of earliest use of fire

The Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa. (Michael Chazan at the University of Toronto) “In 2012, when we published the article about the Wonderwerk Cave at one million years ago, we had the indications that there was fire in a lower, older level. Now, we pushed the use of fire back to well over a million years ago,” she said. The expert explained that the two levels are separated by around 80 centimeters of sediments. The deeper level was in use between circa 1.79 and 1.079 million years ago. “The sample we use for this study was close to the bottom, and therefore to the 1.8 million years ago period,” Kolska Horwitz said. Prehistoric animal bones found in the Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa and examined with an innovative method to detect signs of burns through luminescence, as explained in a PLOS ONE study published in June 2026. The fire must have been introduced there by someone.” Dr. Liora Kolska Horwitz of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. (Courtesy) Kolska Horwitz has been working at Wonderwerk for over 20 years. She explained that the site is unique because humans lived in the cave for two million years, from the earliest known occupants to a farmer’s family that temporarily sheltered there in the early 20th century. “The cave occupation begins at about two million years and is associated with a stone tool culture called the Oldowan,” she said. “Most Oldowan sites were little campsites in the open air. The researcher expressed hope that they will find human bones at some point, saying, “Perhaps it is going to happen when we go back to excavate in July.” Prof. A reconstruction of a 1,600,000-year-old Homo erectus based on the fossil specimen known as ‘Turkana boy’ is seen at the Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann, Germany, on July 3, 2019. (AMartin Meissner/AP) The technique entails applying a substance to the bone, waiting for it to react, and examining the bone under UV light, where the burnt areas glow white. Kolska Horwitz said the team hopes that other researchers around the world will adopt the method, which could pave the way for additional evidence of the use of fire in early prehistoric times. A timeline buried in the soil The dating of the site was carried out in previous years mainly , including Kolska Horwitz, and the Geological Survey of Israel. In the laboratory, we can [analyze] that signature that tells us when the sediment entered the cave.” Now that they have managed to prove fire was used close to 1.8 million years ago, the archaeologists plan to check for evidence of it even in the deepest level of the cave’s occupation, dating to two million years ago. “This is the big question now,” Kolska Horwitz said We can't do this work alone.