The fossil record is an ever-changing map of paleontologists’ best estimates of where human ancestors existed relative to each other and time. The three timelines below are from different but reliable sources attempting to cover the same fossil record. The general timelines are reasonably similar. Homo Sapiens came about relatively recently, and Neandertals preceded them. While most ancestors’ and their most significant achievements/developments are placed around similar times, there are some minor differences between the three charts.
One of those deviations is the placement of fire. The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History places the discovery of fire around 1 million to 800 thousand years ago (Smithsonian, 2022). However, in Professor DeSilva’s 2022 First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human, the record at the beginning of the book places the discovery around 1.5 million years ago. Another deviation is the placement of tool use. According to the Smithsonian’s chart, the earliest evidence of tool use is around 2.8-2.7 million years ago. However, in the First Steps chart, it is placed around 3.3-3.2 million years ago.
Unfortunately, in the dynamic field of Anthropology, discoveries alter prior knowledge quickly, which leads to out-of-date publications or, even more challenging to grasp, debates between two accredited researchers. These disagreements between sources are typically solved using multiple sources referencing the finding for added integrity.
