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As Important As Fire
How the steam engine profoundly changed human psychology
Although we live in an age of astonishingly rapid technological change, for most of our evolutionary history the pace of change was glacial at best. If we could by means of some time machine go back 300,000 years and pluck a small group of humans out of their era and shift them forward fifty-fold more years than those that separate us from the days of the Roman Empire, those humans would likely notice no differences at all in the technologies their new neighbors were using, nor in their forms of social organization.
This is because the most fundamental change in human history was already long in the past by 300,000 BCE. As best as we can tell from archeological evidence, humans more-or-less mastered fire around 1.7 million years ago. This was some 1.4 million years before our hypothetical group of time-traveling humans were born and so the psychological impact of controlling fire was already firmly embedded in the human brain.
It’s difficult for us living in our modern world to grasp just how precariously our ancestors lived. Humans don’t have strong muscles, powerful jaws, sharp claws, or a surface resilient to tears and penetrations. We aren’t quick and we aren’t large relative to the many species that regarded our ancestors as potential meals. Mastery of fire, however, tilted the balance in favor of humans just enough that we eventually became as numerous as we are today. The psychological impact of this change must have been profound. It shifted humans from being a timorous prey species to being in a more ambiguous situation. It’s likely our very distant ancestors survived by consuming mostly fruits and roots and other vegetables, supplemented by scavenging scraps of rotting carcasses and when possible whatever small morsels could be plucked from rivers, lakes, and seashores.
Once fire was a component of human life, our distant ancestors were able to expand the range of foods they could consume. Fire enabled the creation of fire-hardened spears. It enabled slightly greater security from large predators at night. It enabled humans to maintain much of their way of life during long cold winters, especially when those fire-hardened spears meant that large animals with furry exteriors could be hunted, killed, and their…
