Earliest Direct Evidence of Fire-Making Found in England — Neanderthal Hearth at Barnham Dated to ~415,000 Years Ago

Scientists have uncovered what appears to be the earliest direct evidence of deliberate fire-making by prehistoric humans at a former clay pit near Barnham in Suffolk, England. The team identified a concentrated patch of heated clay, heat-shattered flint handaxes and two pieces of iron pyrite — a spark-producing mineral — that together point to a repeatedly used hearth dated to roughly 415,000 years ago.

Key Finds

The feature lies beside what would have been a prehistoric watering hole where groups camped. Excavators recovered:

Excavation of the ancient campfire at an archaeological site near the village of Barnham in England, dating to around 400,000 years ago, removing diagonally opposed quadrants. The reddened sediment between band B? is heated clay, in this handout image released on December 10, 2025. Jordan Mansfield, Pathways to Ancient Britain Project/Handout via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES

• Heated and fired clay consistent with prolonged, high-temperature exposure;
• Flint tools showing heat-shattering and use-wear;
• Two pieces of iron pyrite (a known spark-producing material) found in context with the hearth;
• Faunal remains and cut marks indicating regular human activity at the site.

Who Made the Fire?

The research team, led by Nick Ashton (Curator of Palaeolithic Collections at the British Museum), argues that the most likely makers were early Neanderthals. While no human bones were recovered at Barnham, skull fragments with Neanderthal-like features were found in the mid-20th century at Swanscombe (less than 100 miles to the south) and closely match fossils from Sima de los Huesos in Spain. As Chris Stringer, a co-author of the study, notes, these regional connections make Neanderthal authorship probable.

"We think humans brought pyrite to the site with the intention of making fire. And this has huge implications pushing back the earliest fire-making," said Nick Ashton.

Broader Significance

Deliberate fire-making is a major milestone in human evolution. Controlled fire enabled cooking, which reduces pathogens and toxins and makes foods easier to digest, potentially reallocating energy to support larger brains. Fire also provided warmth, protection and a social focus—nighttime gatherings around a campfire may have promoted storytelling, social bonding and the development of language and cultural practices.

An artist’s impression shows a fire burning at an archaeological site near the village of Barnham in England around 400,000 years ago, in this image released on December 10, 2025. Craig Williams, The Trustees of the British Museum/Handout via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES

How the Team Confirmed Intentional Fire

Over four years the researchers applied multiple lines of evidence to rule out natural wildfire or other accidental causes. Geochemical analyses indicate temperatures exceeding 700°C (1,290°F) and signs of repeated burning in the same spot. The presence of pyrite, heat-altered artifacts in tight spatial association and consistent stratigraphic context together support the interpretation of deliberate and repeated fire-making at Barnham.

Context With Earlier Records

Previous evidence for humans using naturally occurring fires (for example from wildfires or lightning) stretches back more than a million years in Africa, but those records lacked clear signs of intentional fire production. Until now, the earliest widely accepted evidence for deliberate fire-making dated to roughly 50,000 years ago at a northern French site.

The Barnham findings, published in Nature, push back the earliest direct evidence of deliberate fire-making by hundreds of thousands of years and show that the use and production of fire was within the behavioral repertoire of Neanderthals and possibly other contemporaneous large-brained human relatives.

Source: Research led by Nick Ashton and colleagues, published in Nature. Reporting and analysis by the study team and associated paleoanthropologists including Rob Davis and Chris Stringer.