ESL Blogs

It is unknown yet on how the prehistoric human found fire in the so called premature context, but it is very clear that the control of fire was one of the greatest achievements of humankind’s evolvement towards a better life.

At the beginning, the primitive humans would have deeply thought of that fire was a gift of god – the concept of god would have been assigned to all invisible phenomenons in the environment, so in that setting, new concepts, cults, beliefs came into sight based on the power of fire. Early humans would have looked at lightening, forest fire and burning lava as curses/magic of invisible power that was in charge of the whole system existing around and beyond.

In the history of humankind, a number of tools, life-enhancing ways and so forth have been invented by chance while getting connected to some other activities. Hence, early humans would have invented fire accidently as a secondary invention in the process of making tools with wood or stone because their main task was at that time to develop tools for hunting animals. It is known now that primitive societies used a number of practical means to make fire based on “friction theory”. Some would have used wooden rods in making fire while another group with a different mean but basically the theory behind it should be the same.

With the accumulation of knowledge and experiences, people would have been encouraged to do a variety of experiments in order to make fire on changed backgrounds. For example, people who live closer to desert-patches would have tried the solar radiation in the fire-making-process because of the plenty of sunlight around their lands. According to history, the ancient Greeks, Mexican Aztecs and Chinese were the leaders who developed successful glassy tools such as concave mirrors, burning glasses and so forth to trap the solar radiation for making fire for their use.

With the discovery of iron, the whole process was dramatically leapt, and some communities such as Eskimos produced fire by striking quartz against iron pyrites that contains sulphur. European communities used the combination of steel and some other stuff for producing fire; it is said by some experts that this combining-steel method was the main method for Europe till the mid-19^th century. The discovery of phosphorus was a remarkably specific milestone happened in this course of action, and it paved the way towards a “new hope”. The concept of “fire-lighting” was brought to light with this historical discovery of phosphorus in the social development process of humankind.

In the modern world, the fire and lighting are essential components for all activities in the life. It is impossible to imagine on how to live without “fire and lighting” in the contemporary world. The form of “fire and lighting” could be totally different from that of old-days, but still our civilization is mainly relied on these two factors.