Refuting Creationism
Humans All Fired Up
Tens Of Thousands Of Years Before 'Creation Week'
Humans All Fired Up
Tens Of Thousands Of Years Before 'Creation Week'
Family life in the Ice Age
AI-generated image (ChatGPT4o)
Section through the large fireplace 1.
Credit: Philip R. Nigst.
Excavation site Korman' 9 located at the shore of the Dnister river in Ukraine.
Credit: Philip R. Nigst.
In a discovery that defies any literalist interpretation of the Bible's creation narrative—where humans were fashioned ex nihilo only a few thousand years ago—archaeologists have uncovered compelling evidence that Ice Age humans in Eurasia had not only mastered fire but employed it in remarkably sophisticated ways. Far beyond simple warmth and cooking, fire appears to have served as a focal point for social gatherings and perhaps even ritual activity.
What remains puzzling, however, is the relative scarcity of well-preserved hearths from the coldest phases of the Ice Age—precisely when one would expect fire to have been most vital for survival.
Nonetheless, the sites that have been identified reveal an advanced command of pyrotechnology. These early humans used wood, and possibly bone and animal fat, as fuel—achieving temperatures exceeding 600 degrees Celsius.
Life in Ice Age Ukraine: The Last Glacial Maximum.Picture the scene. This is how our Eurasian ancestors would have lived:Around 20,000 years ago, during the height of the Last Glacial Maximum, the region now known as Ukraine was part of a vast and frigid steppe-tundra ecosystem. Although glaciers did not cover most of Ukraine itself, the climate was bitterly cold, dry, and windy, with temperatures far below freezing for much of the year. Forests had retreated, leaving open plains dotted with hardy grasses, mosses, and shrubs.
Despite the harshness, this landscape teemed with Ice Age megafauna. Woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, reindeer, steppe bison, and wild horses roamed the steppes, hunted by highly mobile bands of Homo sapiens. These human groups were well-adapted to the extreme environment, using sophisticated stone tools, tailored clothing made from hides, and complex hunting strategies.
People likely lived in semi-permanent shelters—possibly built from mammoth bones and covered with hides—situated in areas with access to water, game, and fuel. Fire was not merely a tool for survival; it was a vital element of daily life, essential for heat, cooking, tool-making, and perhaps social cohesion and ritual.
Scene from the Ice Age: A Winter Gathering on the SteppeThe discovery of how these early humans had mastered fire is the subject of an open access paper in the journal, Geoarchaeology by an international team of archaeologists which included Philip R. Nigst of Vienna University, Austria, and a press release from Vienna University:
As the icy wind swept across the vast, treeless steppe, a faint glow flickered from within a low, dome-shaped shelter of mammoth bones and hides. Inside, the hearth blazed with a carefully tended fire, fuelled by wood, bone, and animal fat, casting shadows that danced across the rough walls.
A group of hunters and their families sat in a loose circle, wrapped in thick furs, their breath visible in the frigid air. The scent of roasted meat mingled with the sharp tang of smoke. Children dozed beside their mothers or played quietly with carved figurines of animals and humans—objects that may have held symbolic or spiritual meaning.
Stories were told—perhaps of the hunt, of ancestors, of the spirits that moved across the windblown plains. Rhythmic tapping on bone or wood, or the low hum of a chant, might have accompanied these tales, binding the group together through shared memory and meaning.
For these Ice Age communities, fire was far more than warmth—it was the heart of the group, the centre of life, continuity, and connection in a world of extremes.
Sophisticated pyrotechnology in the Ice Age: This is how humans made fire tens of thousands of years ago
Differences between the fireplaces indicate ingenious use
Whether for cooking, heating, as a light source or for making tools – it is assumed that fire was essential for the survival of people in the Ice Age. However, it is puzzling that hardly any well-preserved evidence of fireplaces from the coldest period of the Ice Age in Europe has been found so far. A group of scientists led by the University of Algarve and the University of Vienna has now been able to shed some light on the mystery of Ice Age fire. Their analysis of three hearths at a prehistoric site in Ukraine shows that people of the last Ice Age built different types of hearths and used mainly wood, but possibly also bones and fat, to fuel their fires. The results have been published in the journal Geoarchaeology.
Archaeological research shows that Homo sapiens in Europe during the Upper Paleolithic period, between 45,000 and 10,000 years ago, used fire in a variety of ways.
Fire was not just about keeping warm; it was also essential for cooking, making tools and for social gatherings.
Philip R. Nigst, co-lead author.
Department of Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology
University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
It has often been assumed that fire was essential for the survival of hunter-gatherers in Ice Age Europe. Surprisingly, however, there is little well-preserved evidence of fire use from the coldest period of the Ice Age – between 26,500 and 19,000 years ago – in Europe.
We know that fire was widespread before and after this period, but there is little evidence from the height of the Ice Age.
William Chase Murphree, lead author.
Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and the Evolution of Human Behaviour (ICArEHB)
Universidade do Algarve, Faro, Portugal.
The current study is all the more significant because the scientists discovered and analyzed three hearths at a prehistoric site in Ukraine. This was possible thanks to a series of innovative geoarchaeological techniques. Through microstratigraphic analysis, micromorphology and colorimetric analysis, the team identified three simple, flat, wood-fired hearths. One interesting finding from this was that these fires reached temperatures of more than 600°C, which proves sophisticated mastery of pyrotechnics even in the face of extreme environmental stresses.
The large fireplace 1 covered by 2.5 metres of loess sediments.Credit: Philip R. Nigst.
The analysis also shows that humans used wood as their main fuel during the peak of the Ice Age, with charcoal analyses indicating spruce wood. However, other fuels such as bone or fat could have been used.
Some of the animal bones found at the site were burnt in a fire with a temperature of over 650 degrees Celsius. We are currently investigating whether they were used as fuel or just accidentally burned.
Marjolein D. Bosch, co-author
Research Group Prehistoric Identities,
Department of Prehistory and Western Asia and North African Archaeology,
Austrian Archaeological Institute,
Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria.
All three fireplaces are open and flat. However, the new results suggest that the use of fire was sophisticated, as the fireplaces were likely to have been built and used differently in different seasons. One of the three fireplaces is larger and thicker, suggesting that higher temperatures were achieved here.
Despite these new findings, the small number of fireplaces from the Last Glacial Maximum remains puzzling.People perfectly controlled the fire and knew how to use it in different ways, depending on the purpose of the fire. But our results also show that these hunter-gatherers used the same place at different times of the year during their annual migrations.
>Philip R. Nigst
Was most of the evidence destroyed by the ice-age-typical, alternating freezing and thawing of the soil?
William Chase Murphree.
Or did people not find enough fuel during the Last Glacial Maximum? Did they not use fire, but instead relied on other technological solutions?
Philip R. Nigst
By further uncovering the role of fire in human evolution, the researchers hope to shed light on what is arguably one of the most fundamental technologies that has shaped our species' success in populating every corner of this planet.
Original Publication:
William Chase Murphree, Cruz Ferro‐Vázquez, Larissa Kulakovska, Vitalii I. Usyk, Olesia Kononenko, Marjolein D. Bosch, Paul Haesaerts, Freddy Damblon, Stéphane Pirson, Philip R. Nigst & Vera Aldeias:
Fire use during the Last Glacial Maximum: evidence from the Epigravettian at Korman' 9, Middle Dniester Valley, Ukraine.
Geoarchaeology, 40(2), e70006, 2025
ABSTRACTCuriously, the Bible makes almost no mention of fire in the context of human ingenuity or daily life. When it does appear, it is often as an instrument of divine wrath—used by a vengeful God to destroy cities and their unfortunate inhabitants. Yet the biblical authors were clearly familiar with fire. They depended on it to smelt and cast the bronze tools of their time, and would have witnessed its everyday use in cooking, heating, and craft.
The Last Glacial maximum (LGM), spanning from 26.5 to 19 thousand years before present (ka bp), is a period of extreme climatic degradation associated with reduced biomass production and resource stress throughout Eurasia. Arguably, one of the most fundamental tools for human survival during this cold and arid period was the ability to create, maintain and use fire. While fire is widely considered a ubiquitous tool in modern human behaviour, there are surprisingly few well-described combustion features during the LGM in Europe. In this paper, we provide high-resolution geoarchaeological research into three combustion features associated with Epigravettian occupations at the site of Korman' 9 (Ukraine) with ages falling in the LGM. Our results show distinct variations in the size and structure of the combustion features, potentially indicating multiple occupations within the same layer or reflect differences in site organization or function during a single occupation. Additionally, our analysis shows clear evidence of the effect of solifluction and the lack of preservation of the ash layer(s) of the combustion features, as well as the development of bioturbation features enhanced by anthropogenic input. To better estimate heating temperatures of the combustion events, we employed a novel approach using colour analysis showing temperatures reaching 600°C in the substrate underlying the combustion features. In all, the combustion features at Korman' 9 provide invaluable new insights as well as high resolution description of pyrotechnological behaviours during the LGM, which has been lacking during this critical period in our evolutionary history.
1 Introduction
The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) in Europe, roughly 26.5 through 19 thousand years before present (ka bp), corresponds to the latest period where the global volume of ice reached it maximum extent within the northern hemisphere (e.g., Hughes and Gibbard 2015; (Mix 2001). This period is characterized by rapid climatic deterioration, with extreme cold and arid conditions resulting in habitat loss and geographic isolation (e.g., Banks et al. 2008). These harsh climatic conditions are thought to have greatly impacted the distribution of Upper Palaeolithic anatomically modern human (AMH) populations and influenced both their behaviour and technology (Banks et al. 2008; Moreau et al. 2021). It's commonly hypothesized that populations were geographically isolated in so-called refugia in the Balkans (Stiner et al. 2022) or Western Europe, including southern France and Iberia, where conditions were more favourable for both humans and animals (Straus 2015). Whereas areas like the Middle Danube region of Central Europe show a clear decrease in population densities, with prevalence of spatially smaller and more widely scattered sites (Škrdla et al. 2021, 164). Moreover, from a lithic technological aspect, there is a clear trend for more regionalized named stone tool industries, such as the Solutrean in southwestern Europe and the Epigravettian in central, southern, southeastern and eastern Europe (e.g., Banks et al. 2008; Hauck et al. 2017; Kulakovska et al. 2021; Nuzhnyi 2006; Straus 2015).
The LGM landscape in eastern Europe can be generally characterized by open and boreal steppe environments with numerous river systems flowing into the Black and Caspian Seas (Demidenko 2021; Maier et al. 2023; Willis & Van Andel 2004). The East European Plain is constrained by the Urals to the east and the Carpathian Mountains to the southwest. Many of the sites occupied during the LGM are located near the banks of the major river systems, with a significant number of known sites located on the Don (Russia), Prut (Romania and Ukraine), Dnieper and Dniester rivers in Ukraine and Moldova (Klein 1973; Nigst et al. 2021; Noiret 2009; Noiret et al. 2021; Noiret and Otte 2010). Similarly, to central Europe, Epigravettian occupations during the LGM appear to be ephemeral in nature with lower density of finds compared to the earlier Gravettian technocomplex (Anghelinu et al. 2020; Demay et al. 2021; Demidenko 2021; Škrdla et al. 2021).
It is widely assumed that a key tool for human survival, particularly during cold periods, is the ability to create, maintain and use fire (Gilligan 2010; Gowlett 2006; Roebroeks and Villa 2011; Sandgathe et al. 2011). A large body of literature has provided data on the benefits of fire use on hominin evolution and its fundamental function in everyday life (Aiello and Wheeler 1995; Mallol and Henry 2017; Roebroeks and Villa 2011; Stahlschmidt et al. 2020; Wrangham 2017). More recent papers on experimental and ethnographic research have also shown the labour-intensive nature of using pyrotechnology; meaning fire use is not only an essential survival tool but also played a key role in how hunter-gatherer populations organize themselves (Mallol and Henry 2017; McCauley et al. 2020; Pryor et al. 2016). This includes: how hunter-gatherers acquire resources like wooden fuels (Beresford-Jones et al. 2010; Pryor et al. 2016), if they stored or cached fuel materials for future use (Beresford-Jones et al. 2011; Pryor et al. 2016), how they started and maintained fires (Mallol and Henry 2017; Mallol et al. 2007; McCauley et al. 2020), or how sites and activities are organized around combustion features (Clark et al. 2022; Galanidou 1997; Rolland 2004, 2018).
While there are several on-going debates on the prevalence of habitual fire use behaviour in early hominins (Roebroeks and Villa 2011; Sandgathe 2017; Sandgathe et al. 2011; Stahlschmidt et al. 2015) or even in later European Middle Palaeolithic (Dibble et al. 2017; Dibble et al. 2018; Sorensen et al. 2014; Sorensen 2017), it's widely assumed that pyrotechnology was a ubiquitous behavioural adaptation during the Upper Palaeolithic (Chazan 2017; Pryor et al. 2016). It is, therefore, surprising that in a recent review (Murphree and Aldeias 2022)—authored by some of us—on the available data on Upper Palaeolithic found an overall lack of well- described combustion features during the LGM. We currently lack both macro- and micromorphological descriptions of fire features for this period beyond brief mentions of presence of features or combustion-related residues (such as concentrations of charcoal, ash or indirect proxies of fire use like burned lithics). This scarcity of published data could be attributed to several factors, namely: either lack of preservation of fire remains during cold periods, a publication bias, or a potential lack of widespread fire use by modern humans during this period (Murphree and Aldeias 2022). Concerning the latter possibility, we could consider that, with the onset of extreme cold conditions, the lack of available wood fuel in steppe and grassland environments could have been an issue in which case human groups used other behavioural adaptions to survive, namely the consumption of rotten meat (Speth 2017).
To address a possible gap of publications and preservation bias, we must better understand how we recognize and describe fire use in the archaeological record, both in the field and in subsequent reporting. Upper Palaeolithic combustion features vary significantly in terms of their structure: ranging from open flat hearths to potential kiln-like structures found at Upper Palaeolithic sites in Moravia (Mallol et al. 2017; Murphree and Aldeias 2022; Svoboda et al. 2018). Based on the available descriptions of combustion features, it can be suggested that open flat hearths dominate the LGM and post-LGM landscape of Europe (Murphree and Aldeias 2022). These simple flat combustion features are commonly comprised of three distinct strata: a reddish-brown basal layer, followed by a black, organic-rich layer overlain by a white/grey layer (Aldeias et al. 2016; Goldberg et al. 2017; Mallol et al. 2013b; Mallol et al. 2017; Mentzer 2014). A basal rubified layer can result from the thermal alteration of a substrate on top of which a hearth was built (Aldeias et al. 2016; Canti and Linford 2000; Ferro-Vázquez et al. 2021; March et al. 2014). While the presence of a black layer consists of burned material related to either the occupational surface on which the fire was built or fuel that was not fully combusted (Mallol et al. 2013a; Mallol et al. 2013b). In well-preserved features, the uppermost whitish layer is typically rich in ash and is the result of the complete combustion of wooden fuels (Braadbaart et al. 2012; Canti 2003; Karkanas 2021; Karkanas et al. 2002). These distinctions are important as much sedimentary features, like combustion features, are susceptible to syn- and post-depositional alterations. Combustion remains can easily be displaced by human actions (such as trampling or hearth rake out), whereas ashes can be dissolved or blown away by wind if left in an exposed surface (Goldberg et al. 2017; Miller et al. 2010; Schiegl et al. 2003). As a result, the identification of fire features based solely on field observations is not always straightforward, which may have an implication on the lack of in-depth archaeological reporting of so-called simple flat combustion features. Moreover, as fire can be either natural or anthropogenic in origin, the distinction between the two can, at times, be problematic (Goldberg et al. 2017; Mentzer 2014; Stahlschmidt et al. 2015). Generally, there is a clear need to better standardize the descriptions and consistently report combustion features in archaeology.
In this paper, we present both macroscopic field-based descriptions and microstratigraphic analysis of three combustion features associated with Epigravettian occupations of Korman' 9, Ukraine. The combustion features were located in two separate archaeological layers (AL I and AL II) dating to around the height of the LGM, approx. 23–21 ka bp (Kulakovska et al. 2021). Macro-stratigraphic descriptions are based on the criteria outlined by Mallol et al. (2017) and Murphree and Aldeias (2022), while higher resolution analysis was conducted through employing soil micromorphological techniques, with descriptions following the nomenclature of Stoops (2003). We also provide a colorimetric analysis of the red layers for firing temperature estimation as proposed by Ferro-Vázquez et al. (2021). We then compare the results of our study in terms of similarities with neighbouring LGM sites. Finally, we discuss our results for understanding how combustion features and residues are preserved in periglacial conditions and their implications for understanding paleoenvironment, site organization, and fire use behaviours during the LGM in eastern Europe.
Murphree, W.C., Ferro-Vázquez, C., Kulakovska, L., Usyk, V.I., Kononenko, O., Bosch, M.D., Haesaerts, P., Damblon, F., Pirson, S., Nigst, P.R. and Aldeias, V. (2025)
Fire Use During the Last Glacial Maximum: Evidence From the Epigravettian at Korman' 9, Middle Dniester Valley, Ukraine. Geoarchaeology, 40: e70006. https://doi.org/10.1002/gea.70006
Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
Now, we have yet another piece of evidence that contradicts the creationist narrative. These archaeological findings point to Ice Age humans—completely unknown to the Bible's authors—using fire tens of thousands of years ago, long before any supposed creation ex nihilo. Their hearths, preserved beneath layers of alluvial silt in ancient river valleys, tell a story of innovation and adaptation that biblical literalism simply cannot accommodate.
It is the work of archaeologists, not theologians, that uncovers our real history—rooted in evidence, not inherited superstition.
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