Fire-Free Hominin Strategies for Coping with Cool Winter Temperatures in North-Western Europe from Before 800,000 to Circa 400,000 Years Ago

Abstract

There is no consensus on the chronology of fire use, with suggestions ranging from earliest use by Homo erectus1.8 mya to relatively recent Anatomically Modern Humans. While it is widely agreed that fire would have been of great assistance in moving into areas with a temperate climate, early sites from middle latitudes across Eurasia lack convincing evidence for fire use before about 400,000 years ago. It is not clear whether this represents a real pattern, or a limitation to past research methods and survival. Establishing a firm chronology for the use of fire re-quires refined interpretation of fire residues at early sites. An alternative approach, taking the pattern (provision-ally) as real, is to investigate how hominins could have solved important survival problems at middle latitudes without using fire. This article addresses strategies for thermoregulation in the absence of fire in conditions experi-enced by hominins in north-west Europe before 400,000 years ago. Four main hypotheses are proposed, involving strategies based primarily on 1) winter fur and subcutaneous fat, 2) hibernation, 3) enhanced heat production, and 4) a combination of cultural insulation particularly clothing and insulative baby carriers with enhanced heat pro-duction. Given the trade-offs of these strategies, I will consider their plausibility for the early occupants of Europe, and discuss how the most plausible strategies could be detected in future research.