Imagination, and learning, around prehistoric campfires By Los Angeles Times, adapted by Newsela staff Oct. 03, 2014 1:00 AM
Bushmen in Deception Valley, Botswana, demonstrating how to start a fire by rubbing sticks together.
Roasting marshmallows may not have been part of the menu. But telling stories and singing around a campfire may have played an essential role in early societies. A new study suggests that talking and storytelling around a fire may have expanded the minds and imaginations of our prehistoric ancestors. This would have been impossible during the hard work and bright light of daytime. Humans first learned to control fire about 400,000 years ago. The quality of their lives changed dramatically, a researcher believes. Brain size and gut size increased and predators no longer posed such a terrible threat. Our ancestors’ biological clocks also shifted as firelight extended the day by several hours, according to the study. Firelight interfered with melatonin production. People were able to stay awake during the dark when it was difficult to do any work. Melatonin is a hormone that helps people fall asleep by causing drowsiness. Anthropologist Polly Wiessner wondered whether this new leisure time may have let people socialize in different ways.
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“At Night By A Fire” In a paper published Monday, Wiessner argues that conversations that take place at night around a fire have a different quality than during the day. People also talk about different things. “I think people are much more open at night by a fire,” said Wiessner, who teaches at the University of Utah. Her paper was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). “We are always checking people’s facial expressions, but at night people are mostly staring into the fire and expressions are concealed.” In 1974, Wiessner spent two months recording conversations of the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen. The group of hunters and gatherers live in northeast Namibia and northwest Botswana in southwestern Africa. Since then, their culture has changed. They get only a small amount of food from hunting animals and gathering wild plants and berries. Wiessner originally made the recordings hoping to learn how the Bushmen created and maintained friendships across a vast area of 124 miles. Recently, she listened again to the recordings. She was interested to see how their communication was different during the day and at night. She returned to Namibia three times between 2011 and 2013 to record stories from people she knew in the 1970s.
Campfire Stories About Adventure The conversations she collected took place generally between at least four or five adults and lasted for 20 to 30 minutes. Of the 122 daytime conversations she recorded, 31 percent of them were about economic issues. People spoke about finding food or hunting plans or technology. Another 34 percent were devoted to criticisms, complaints and conflict. Joking made up 16 percent of conversations in the daytime and stories were just 6 percent. At night, however, when the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen gathered around a fire, they told stories 81 percent of the time. “During the day, the conversation was kind of nasty a lot of the time,” Wiessner said. “But at night they would mellow out and talk about the past. They would space travel and talk about group gatherings happening far away. They would cross time to their forefathers, and they traveled, in the stories, to other realms.” The stories were mainly about the adventures of people they knew. They were filled with information about how their society worked and about their traditions. Through hearing about the experiences of other people, the listeners gained empathy, Wiessner said.
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Weissner doesn’t think that the lives of the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen foragers in the 1970s were the same as our early ancestors’. However, they can help anthropologists form educated guesses about our hunter-gatherer ancestors who probably lived under similar conditions hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Naturally Drawn To Fire Next, Wiessner would like to examine how the firelight acts on our bodies. She hopes to measure how people’s hormone levels change when they relax and talk by the fire. Wiessner would also like to know how the lack of firelight and storytelling time in our lives affect our society and sense of empathy. After all, many of us are naturally drawn to fire. Think candlelight dinners, romantic rooms with fireplaces or making s’mores during a family camping trip. Today, long after electricity has largely replaced firelight, our nighttime hours are still often spent involved in the stories. However, these stories are ones we watch on television or read in books, although that seems to be changing. “Like hunter-gatherers, we work our imaginations, gain new (ideas) and expand our horizons from stories,” she wrote in the paper. Even so, she added, electric light and computers are turning the night into work time for many people. They are replacing social and story time.
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Quiz 1. When humans first learned to control fire, what effect did it have on them? (a) There was no effect on their lives. (b) They were able to defeat all predators. (c) Everything remained the same except the size of their brains. (d) The quality of their lives changed dramatically. 2. What was anthropologist Polly Wiessner hoping to learn when she first recorded conversations among the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen? (a) She wanted to learn how their lives resembled the lives of early humans. (b) She wanted to know how they maintained friendships across an area of 124 miles. (c) She wanted to know why they were no long hunting for food. (d) She wanted to know about their history and future. 3. Who are the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen? (a) They are a group of hunter-gatherers from Namibia and Botswana. (b) They were a group of early humans from Africa. (c) They are a group of hunter-gatherers from northwest Africa. (d) They were a group of early humans who settled in farming communities. 4. In the section “Campfire Stories About Adventure” select the paragraph that BEST explains how nighttime conversations of the Ju/’hoansi differ from daytime conversations.
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Answer Key 1. When humans first learned to control fire, what effect did it have on them? (a) There was no effect on their lives. (b) They were able to defeat all predators. (c) Everything remained the same except the size of their brains. (d) The quality of their lives changed dramatically. 2. What was anthropologist Polly Wiessner hoping to learn when she first recorded conversations among the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen? (a) She wanted to learn how their lives resembled the lives of early humans. (b) She wanted to know how they maintained friendships across an area of 124 miles. (c) She wanted to know why they were no long hunting for food. (d) She wanted to know about their history and future. 3. Who are the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen? (a) They are a group of hunter-gatherers from Namibia and Botswana. (b) They were a group of early humans from Africa. (c) They are a group of hunter-gatherers from northwest Africa. (d) They were a group of early humans who settled in farming communities. 4. In the section “Campfire Stories About Adventure” select the paragraph that BEST explains how nighttime conversations of the Ju/’hoansi differ from daytime conversations. ¶ 11 “During the day, the conversation was kind of nasty a lot of the time,” Wiessner said. “But at night they would mellow out and talk about the past. They would space travel and talk about group gatherings happening far away. They would cross time to their forefathers, and they traveled, in the stories, to other realms.”
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