"Hello, firemen? This is Homo naledi"

[NomoneyNohoney]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/homo-naled ... th-africa/

The controlled use of fire was supposedly unique to humans...and from a personal point of view, all my life I have wondered how cave dwellers in prehistory managed, if they couldn't see...

[NotSure]

Depends what you mean by humans (homo xxx or specifically homo sapiens). Use of fire has long been known to predate HS.

e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_humans

[NomoneyNohoney]

Thanks for that - I'd never looked before, but it always seemed obvious that, to explore the depths of caves or live in them, you'd need a light source. Up until now, I'd not heard of anyone saying that 'here is the proof', I always thought it was something that was never discussed, but to my mind there was only one conclusion..

[NotSure]

I believe that both cooking to more efficiently release nutrients and defence from predators is suspected to have driven the development, allowing us to live on the plains. Our nearest relations, other primates still in the jungles, need to eat for most of the day just to sustain themselves (they all have bodies like barrels to contain their digestive tracts). We seem to have successfully traded intestines for brains by using fire.

[mc2fool]

I believe that both cooking to more efficiently release nutrients and defence from predators is suspected to have driven the development, allowing us to live on the plains. Our nearest relations, other primates still in the jungles, need to eat for most of the day just to sustain themselves (they all have bodies like barrels to contain their digestive tracts). We seem to have successfully traded intestines for brains by using fire.

Our predecessors ventured onto the plains long before the control of fire. Indeed they'd left Africa long before it.

"Several expansions of populations of archaic humans (genus Homo) out of Africa and throughout Eurasia took place in the course of the Lower Paleolithic, and into the beginning Middle Paleolithic, between about 2.1 million and 0.2 million years ago (Ma). These expansions are collectively known as Out of Africa I, in contrast to the expansion of Homo sapiens (anatomically modern humans) into Eurasia, which may have begun shortly after 0.2 million years ago (known in this context as "Out of Africa II")."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_expansions_of_hominins_out_of_Africa

Undoubtedly the control of fire had the advantages you list, but the start of the big boost in brain development was also long before that, rather being co-incident with or soon after the development and spread of stone tools. The first widespread tool technology was the Oldowan, which were in use 2.6-1.7mya (they took a while to spread ). Now look at this chart of hominin brain sizes, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_size

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Trends_in_hominin_brain_size_evolution.jpg