New evidence for Early Pleistocene use of fire at Wonderwerk Cave (South Africa) | PLOS One
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Abstract<br>Tracing the earliest evidence of burning in archaeological contexts is essential for understanding the emergence of fire use—an innovation that underpinned critical behavioral and biological developments in the genus Homo. However, identifying unambiguous traces of early fire use remains challenging. To enhance detection of incipient burning in early occupation layers, we introduce a rapid, non-invasive protocol based on bone luminescence properties, validated through comparison with Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). Using these methods, we provide evidence for fire use in two Early Pleistocene (Acheulean) deposits at Wonderwerk Cave (South Africa), extending the chronology of one of the world’s earliest paleo-fire records. This combined approach improves the resolution with which early fire use can be identified and opens new avenues for investigating the emergence of pyrotechnology in deep time.
Citation: Marin-Monfort MD, Shaw CL, Natalio F, Grossman L, Andrews P, Campos J, et al. (2026) New evidence for Early Pleistocene use of fire at Wonderwerk Cave (South Africa). PLoS One 21(6):<br>e0347480.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0347480<br>Editor: Javier Baena Preysler, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, SPAIN<br>Received: January 30, 2026; Accepted: April 1, 2026; Published: June 1, 2026<br>Copyright: © 2026 Marin-Monfort et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.<br>Data Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting information files. Further information may be provided under requisition.<br>Funding: Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to MC funded the fieldwork at Wonderwerk Cave. This research was supported by a Leakey Foundation grant to YFJ. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.<br>Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Introduction<br>The use of fire is a critical component of the evolutionary dynamics of genus Homo that led to a momentous shift in the relations between hominins and their natural and cultural environments. The tempo and scale of innovation in hominin pyrotechnology are the subject of debate, yet it seems likely that early Homo was only able to acquire fire from natural, mostly seasonal wildfire resources, bring it to their occupation sites, and maintain it until it was extinguished. The ability to make and control fire only developed much later [1,2].
Currently, the oldest evidence of fire use associated with hominin activity (though not necessarily control of fire) comes from sites in Africa. Early hominins in Africa were associated with a tropical savanna biome that today is responsible for ~60% or more of global carbon derived from biomass burning, resulting in the sobriquet “fire continent” for Africa [3,4]. Thus, natural fires on this continent would have been ubiquitous. Fire-cleared grasslands may have allowed early hominins to detect predators more efficiently, as observed in current primate populations [5,6], and also facilitated spotting of potential prey [7]. Fire use by hominins also provided warmth and extended daylight hours, protected against predators or scavengers, and facilitated consumption of a wide range of meat and plant foods through exposure to flames. In sum, together with lithics, fire was, a decisive innovation enabling hominins to be independent and modify many crucial facets of their natural and cultural environments.
The most robust dataset supporting early fire use currently derives from the Acheulean of Wonderwerk Cave (South Africa), Excavation 1, Stratum 10 (hereafter St. 10), dated to ~1.0 Ma. This is based on finds of burnt bone, stone, sediment, and in situ ash together in the same layer [8]. Additionally, in Member 3 at Swartkrans Cave (South Africa, dated to ~1.0–1.5 Ma) [9], burnt fossil bones have also been reported, but the deposit appears to be in a secondary context [10]. Evidence for burnt lithics and/or sediment has been documented in several Early and Middle Pleistocene open-air sites in Africa [11–13] such as Koobi Fora (Kenya, ~ 1.5 Ma) [11,14] However, natural wildfire rather than hominins as the source of burning in these African open-air localities, becomes a factor not encountered inside deep caves such as Wonderwerk Cave. Moreover, while it has been suggested that burnt sediments in many open-air localities may have...