• Spice Hoarder@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    4 days ago
    1. Smell delicious burn meat from a brush fire
    2. Associate delicious flavor from roasting flesh
    3. Observe how fire naturally starts.
    4. Use intuition.

    Rubbing my hands makes me warm. Thus rubbing dry wood makes wood warm. Really warm wood causes fire. Use fire to eat delicious meat.

    I’m pretty sure the defining feature of homo erectus is the ability to grasp cause and effect, fire should be pretty early game.

    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      3 days ago

      i’m curious how many inventions we just passively consider advanced or accidental were in fact people going “this copper stuff is great but it’s pretty hard to find, there’s green rock all around it so… let’s try melting that? wuhey it worked! Now we have access to way more copper! Hm, wonder if other rocks melt into something neat…”

      • iocase@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        2 days ago

        I always thought it would be from fire pits reducing ore into metal. Suddenly your firepit rocks have little beads of copper metal in them for some reason. Cause and effect again.