Fire! Human Origins 2017

Students in Human Origins, a multidisciplinary science course, tried creating fire with several primitive methods, including the bow drill, the hand drill, and percussion (rocks as well as flint and steel). All proved rather challenging, though we had lots of smoke! Students also read Richard Dawkins 1976 chapter "Memes: the new replicators" and discussed the stages of hominin-fire interaction, thinking about how fire was likely encountered and created a number of times in our distant history.