Prehistoric Firelighting with Dr. James Dilley

Рет қаралды 16,711

4 жыл бұрын

Controlling fire was a major step in the evolution of early humans and their technology. Our earliest evidence of consistently controlled fire comes in at around 400,000 years ago from Qesem Cave (Israel). However researchers are finding evidence of burned bone and stones dating from 800,000 years - 1.6 million years old in Africa, but does this show controlled fire? Or opportunistic use of bush fires and lightning strikes? Experimental archaeologist Dr. James Dilley demonstrates one of the methods used by our Neanderthal cousins to created fire using iron pyrite, flint and some tree fungus. He also discusses the archaeology behind proving our Neanderthal ancestors beat us to making fire on demand.
Filmed & Edited by Emma Jones of ELWJ Media - www.elwjmedia.co.uk
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Fancy having a go yourself?
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Пікірлер: 64

@karmaarachnid8345 3 жыл бұрын

Excellent! Stefan Milo sent me here. I look forward to watching the rest of your videos.

@wheatgrowssweet 3 жыл бұрын

I've learned so many small details about how our ancestors lived from watching this series of videos. A history book will focus on the big picture events, but seeing it enacted like this really gives you the gritty details. Thank you so much!

@MrVvulf 3 жыл бұрын

I assume your favorite member of the cast from the show "Time Team" was field archaeologist Phil Harding, the man who loved flint knapping.

@6bonjour 10 ай бұрын

I recently came upon your channel and you tick all the boxes. Educational and interesting. Thank you.

@ErtachKernow 3 жыл бұрын

Excellent video James. Presumably this type of fire making continued well into much later ages until iron was being produced and used rather than the stone against the flint. Very useful information for those of us involved in the heritage sector in explaining how ancient people lived. Thank you.

@ancientcraftUK 3 жыл бұрын

Definitely up to the arrival of iron. There’s a few burials around the UK from the early Bronze Age with firelighting sets just like the above

@MrBottlecapBill 3 жыл бұрын

I can never hear anything in these videos without cranking my volume to max.

@ancientcraftUK 3 жыл бұрын

We had some sound compression issues with the first lot of videos. Hopefully the later ones are better?

@BirdLegacyBlades 3 жыл бұрын

Came here by way of Stefan Milo's channel and this is an equally excellent channel! Great explanation and historical information. i am looking forward to watching more!! I think James has a winner here.

@QuantumMechanic_88 4 жыл бұрын

Excellent demonstration and the success was fast . Good quality pyrite is hard to find and the sparks are difficult to see unless in low light . The Old Ones must have considered viable pyrite like gold . Congrats for living where Daldinia is . Thanks again for another great video and all the best .

@GoldFaceFella 3 жыл бұрын

Love your channel. Great content.

@MonAirPaleoTV 4 жыл бұрын

Thank you! We like your way of educating very much.

@marycomeau9364 3 жыл бұрын

Thank you for your time and easy to follow lessons.

@tedred2657 4 жыл бұрын

Really interesting and great demonstration

@janetmackinnon3411 3 жыл бұрын

Such a clear and interesting explanation. Thank you.

@errantball2012 3 жыл бұрын

Thanks. Much appreciated!

@Mgt461 Жыл бұрын

An excellent video demonstrating and explaining an early fire making technique. Fascinating. Thank you,

@MaikeVogtLueerssen 8 ай бұрын

Absolutely great!!!!

@glen9593 3 жыл бұрын

That was great. Thanks.

@KelvynTaylor 4 жыл бұрын

Thanks for this !

@MrShinobiguy 2 жыл бұрын

Love your videos

@williamlake6151 4 ай бұрын

Great video

@robertmeadows7508 2 жыл бұрын

Enjoyed watching ,thank you ! I have attempted several times to produce fire using these materials with little success ! However I took great delight in at least producing many 'cold' red sparks that failed to 'germinate' upon the fungi no matter how I prepared it ! I ended each long attempt filthy dirty & exhausted ,but feeling great respect for our ancestors !

@azgrapefruit 2 жыл бұрын

You are a great teacher! Have been able to emulate this technique with practice…very labor intensive compared to lighting a match…but this is much more fun.

@revolvermaster4939 3 жыл бұрын

That’s far superior to building a friction fire, takes far fewer calories! Excellent presentation as are the rest.

@thechildofthedamned 4 жыл бұрын

i gotta say i am blown away by all the amazing and educating content you have been making. i am learning so much. i have a question about the king alfreds cake fungus. are there similar fungus like it? because i found some that look exatcly like it on a dead ash, but no matter what i try i cant get it to catch a spark, not even if i put a lighter to it.

@ancientcraftUK 4 жыл бұрын

Not really, King Alfred’s have brown concentric rings in the interior which is the giveaway. Hence the Latin “concentrica”

@greenjack1959l 3 жыл бұрын

Nicely explained as in all of your videos, great channel. I have tried this with gold coloured pyrites bought from a shop in Swanage, but it was really fragile and kept crumbling away, so I gave up on it. This has inspired me to try again, if I can obtain some of better quality.

@ancientcraftUK 3 жыл бұрын

I actually sell fire lighting kits on my website with marcasite pyrite rather than the non- sparking gift shop stuff. Check out my webshop

@waveman0 2 жыл бұрын

the cost of marcasite has really jumped lately, a nodule like you showed at the beginning would be worth several hundred dollars for me to buy and unfortunately, I cannot seem to find any in the bush here in Australia. Direct evidence for percussion fire-lighting is at least 5000 years ago with Otzi, his fire kit contained marcasite, flint and tinder fungus. To think that early humans were using percussion fire-lighting 50,000 years ago is astounding. very informative video mate. May I suggest when using chaga use a fine saw (from a swiss army knife, which I found perfect) to grind it up into a fine powder and then drive the sparks into the fine powered, it seems to pick up the spark better? Once the spark catches and the ember forms allow it to grow, gently adding more chaga dust into the ember. Once it is established then transfer that into your tinder bundle.

@TheAca300 3 жыл бұрын

I've watched every video on your channel, I enjoyed all of them, very informative, educational and the quality is great! The only thing I don't like is the sound, some videos are a little bit quiet, maybe that is my phone's fault. Thank you for your videos and I hope you keep on making them :D

@ancientcraftUK 3 жыл бұрын

Thank you! Yes the sound issue has been a frustrating area. But we’re working on it for season 2!

@TheAca300 3 жыл бұрын

@@ancientcraftUK very nice to see you are working on the issue! can't wait for S2 ! 👌

@Pyropithecus 4 жыл бұрын

If anyone is curious about the research on Neandertal fire making mentioned by James, check out our open access article here: www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28342-9.

@LuxisAlukard 2 жыл бұрын

Surprisingly, no dislikes. Nice!

@Hellemokers 3 жыл бұрын

Great. Next time turn up the volume

@ancientcraftUK 3 жыл бұрын

Yes the sound issue has been a frustrating area. But we’re working on it for season 2!

@lindasue8719 2 жыл бұрын

( off-topic: does anyone know how to make volume louder within the app? When I'm on my laptop I can adjust the volume with my laptop settings, but there's also a volume slider on the app. I don't see that here, and my phone volume is as loud as it will go)

@littledockens 3 жыл бұрын

Hello James, I came across a video some years ago (USA) where they used amadou (chaga) on a flat wooden surface, a grooved marcasite nodule held down on top of it and a very short bladed flint "knife". By jabbing the blade down into the marcasite groove, sparks and ember were seemingly guaranteed after a few seconds. This is perhaps because the stone doesn't move when hit with the blade, more energy transferred into the strike. Further research turned up a Victorian book describing the contemporary use of same by the Inuit. Otzi's "knife" looks remarkably similar, are they by any chance connected?

@ancientcraftUK 2 жыл бұрын

From the use-wear analysis, no traces of marcasite were found on Otzi's knife. It showed the knife had been reflaked however even if the knife had come into contact with marcasite before being reflaked it's still likely traces would have been found. There were tiny fragments of marcasite found in one of the birch bark containers that held an ember wrapped in maple leaves but the nodule and tool were never found.

@gummy1188 3 жыл бұрын

Oh hey, you were on Stefan Milo's video that time

@daniels4209 3 жыл бұрын

like will be given. subscribe will be held as long as its one video or less a week.

@PaleoGreenByrd 2 жыл бұрын

I love your videos, I just wish I could hear you better. My volume is maxed and I can barely hear you. I turn on CC and all is fine, just thought I would share the feedback. Thanks for everything you share.

@ancientcraftUK 2 жыл бұрын

Yeah it was a real annoyance when we realised YT had compressed the audio file. But we’ll be starting the new series soon! Thanks for your feedback 👍

@PaleoGreenByrd 2 жыл бұрын

@@ancientcraftUK Can't wait!

@mikethemaniacal Жыл бұрын

biggest thing i learned is a new way to say "pyrites" (pie-rights)

@MrCasual14 4 жыл бұрын

Cool video mate. Are there any other stones that are able to produce sparks in a similar fashion?

@Pyropithecus 4 жыл бұрын

Not really. To my knowledge, the sparking properties needed for fire making seem to be confined to iron sulphide minerals like pyrite and marcasite (FeS₂), though I have heard of one bushcrafter using pentlandite, and iron-nickle sulphide mineral ((Fe, Ni)₉S₈), to make sparks, though I've not tried it personally. I have tried using chalcopyrite, a copper iron sulphide mineral (CuFeS₂), but without success. As for the striker, this can be pretty much any stone or mineral that is as hard as or harder than the pyrite/marcasite (so at or above 6.5 on the Mohs hardness scale), so flint, chert, quartz, quartzites, etc. (all ~7 on the Mohs scale) all work well and would have been readily available to ancient people for fire making given that these materials were often being used to make their stone tools. Also noteworthy, Inuit/Eskimo people were known to use two pieces of pyrite to make fire, according to ethnographic sources.

@ancientcraftUK 4 жыл бұрын

Very grey, quartz-rich flint will spark against quartzite. Though the sparks are very unpredictable and go out quickly

@Pyropithecus 4 жыл бұрын

@@ancientcraftUK But, in your experience, do the sparks carry, and have you managed to light a fire this way? It's generally understood that the sparks produced by silicious rocks bring struck together produces only light, not heat, a phenomenon called "triboluminescence", and is therefore unsuitable for producing fire. However, I'd be very interested to be shown otherwise!

@ancientcraftUK 4 жыл бұрын

You’re right, they don’t even burn your skin. As I said they go out very quickly, though I have not tried to start a fire with them. I think I’d need very very good tinder! Magic tinder even! 😂

@Pyropithecus 4 жыл бұрын

@@ancientcraftUK Not even sure adding powdered manganese dioxide would help you in this situation, but it certainly helps with pyrite! Using it with your normal tinder during fire making demos will not only get you a spark captured more quickly (thereby making you look extra cool!), but it also adds a nice extra (though still hypothetical, at this point) element to the Neandertal fire making story!

@GorFrag 2 жыл бұрын

volume!!

@schoolofthenomad 2 жыл бұрын

Volume is a bit low, my friend. Just a heads up.

@Smikkelboy69 3 жыл бұрын

Why is the audio volume so low?

@ancientcraftUK 3 жыл бұрын

Hey, it’s a compression issue when you upload to KZfaq. We’ve worked out the problem and hope to make new versions soon

@Smikkelboy69 3 жыл бұрын

@@ancientcraftUK Thank you for the reply :) That is great to hear. Your videos are very pleasant to watch, and your way of speaking makes the knowledge you are trying to share very comprehensible.

@MrJento 2 жыл бұрын

Can’t hear you....!

@SenorTucano 2 жыл бұрын

It’s called pyrite…. Literally fire rock

@johnchristopherrobert1839 Жыл бұрын

The audio is terrible. Using a external mic will improve your content quality substantially.

@thephenom724 3 жыл бұрын

I know this is not a reliable method of starting a fire, but it's still interesting. Is it weird that I want to try this?

@antoniescargo4158 Жыл бұрын

Use a microphone.

@kurtisengle6256 Жыл бұрын

England and America Two peoples seperated by a common language. Py rit ease. Py rite. Alu-mineum. Aluminum. Patato. Pa tato. Tomato. To mahto. Africa. Arfircar. For some reason Australia doesn't end with an imaginary 'r'. Why not? Maybe you English would please either LEARN ENGLISH or at least butcher English consistantly. So we can translate.