Forged by fire, our Promethean origins

Prometheus by Jan Cossiers

Our relationship with fire is ancient and intimate. Early in our hominid prehistory we borrowed useful fire from natural causes. Later, like mythological Prometheus, we stole fire from the gods: We learned to create fire at will.  That essential primitive skill energized a cultural leap and much more. Our relationship with fire became reciprocal: Arguably, fire recreated us. We have been torch bearers, dependent upon fire, shaped by fire, from that early time.

Early humans obtained mastery of fire as they came to depend on fire for warmth, for light, for cooking, for hunting, for landscape management, and for defense. They obtained far reaching impacts through mastery of fire. Early humans manipulated local habitats and broad ecosystems in favor of human utility through broadcast fire, intentionally igniting landscapes of dry fuel for coordinated fire-hunting and to create favorable conditions for attracting and supporting desired game species, and to ease overland travel.

Early humans became hearth-centered. The hearth became the crucible of human evolution, both biological and cultural. Fire was the soul of the family hearth, whether a nuclear family or a clan. Even today, we gather 'round our occasional campfires and stare into flames as they stared long ago. Flickering flames connect us with past and present native peoples across time and space.

Few moderns possess primitive fire knowledge and fire skills. For most, fear of fire has replaced utility fire. Today, we ask our engineers to control fire, indoors and out. Most societies, even native societies, have surrendered their mastery of primitive fire methods in favor of technological dependence. Western societies have transitioned from manual open combustion to mechanical internal combustion. During our lifetimes the last of the ancient societies may give up their traditional skills in trade for purchased fire systems and other modern tools. Like loss of languages, loss of skills sets for primitive living is an ongoing tragedy unfolding today in forgotten corners around the world. For now, at least, we still can travel to remote tribes and see and learn of ancient technologies passed through hundreds of generations for as long as they remember their primitive life-ways and so long as they will allow us a peak.

Our ancient ancestors understood the different functions of tinder, kindling, fuels, portable fire carriers, and much later, fire starters. Today, we purchase fire and all of its functions.

Explore our Promethean origins. We recommend a couple good reads by Stephen Pyne, Fire: A Brief History, 2001 and Fire in America, A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire, 1982 and 1997. We have gained essential insights from these works.

Your blogger met Stephen Pyne at a lonely outpost in Antarctica, Dome C, long ago, where Pyne developed insights and gathered materials for his book, The Ice, A Journey to Antarctica 1986 and I spent my days digging, coring and studying ice dynamics. Our few evening conversations left indelible insights that still enrich my thinking of human impacts on global ecosystems, today.

Lightning makes kindling of hickory tree

Lightning strikes about 100 times each second somewhere on Earth (see NASA's Lightning Primer).

About 2000 active thunderstorms rain electrical discharges at any given moment, mostly during spring and summer.

One of these thunderstorms found this Lawrence County, Ohio hickory tree, a ready conductor between airy thermal and moist ground.

This tree shows damage from a double-strike, right and left spalls. Lightning's strobe-effect results from repeat strikes separated by 40 or 50 milliseconds. Two of these repeat strikes hit this hickory tree last summer. Each strike lifted a series of long splintery spalls exposing sapwood.

Lightning's enormous current is conducted mainly along surfaces: This is known as the skin-effect. The skin-effect often results in damage to the bark and outer sapwood of trees, leaving the core of the tree relatively undamaged. The spalls seen here are about two inches deep, at most.

This hickory is alive today, and may repair the damage, or it may be stricken in years to come by secondary infestations. Many trees heal-over lightning damage, and go on shading the forest floor for decades or centuries.

Many forms of disturbance modify forests annually, opening niches for diverse organisms. What insects or fungi are adapted to exploit frequent lightning damage?

Hickory splinters raised by lightning strike.

The lightning bolt's current was conducted through the inner bark and outer sapwood of this hickory tree. Internal moisture was flash-heated and instantaneously vaporized. The super-heated vapor expanded so rapidly it violently splintered bark and wood into kindling still dangling from the tree from high on a major branch, down to ground-level.

Lightning strikes occasionally result in forest fires, a natural and necessary force shaping forest composition. Most natural fires occur during dry summer months when thunderstorms are frequent and woodlands are tinder-dry. Oak seedlings and saplings survive fires more frequently than other young hardwoods like maples. Many forest professionals believe that fire-suppression during the 20th Century resulted in shifting forest compositions.

Prior to the era of massive cataclysmic wildfires resulting from accumulated logging-slash in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, fire was a cultural tool, not a cultural fear.

Mixed oaks, hickory, maple, and pine on shoulder of hill,

Brushy Fork area, Wayne National Forest, Lawrence County, Ohio.

Native Americans and early settlers were fire-savvy. They used fire as a primary tool for clearing forest undergrowth, influencing large mammal populations, and for slash and burn agriculture. They used fire without devastating consequences: Frequent fires reduce the likelihood of destructive conflagrations.

Numerous references to fire frequency are found in contact-period literature. One early reference may be found in the Diary of George Washington*. During October and November 1770, our future first president led an expedition to the Ohio County to survey and mark tracts of land for service-grants to Virginia military officers. Washington valued Native American first-hand terrain descriptions and landscape information. In an entry for November 4, referring to Native American description of the hills flanking the Ohio River across from Millersport, Ohio, Washington writes,

"& to the Hills, wch. the Indians say is always a fire to which the Bottom from the Mouth of the Kanhawa continues & then ends."

*The Diaries of George Washington. Vol. 2. Donald Jackson, ed.; Dorothy Twohig, assoc. ed. The Papers of George Washington. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976.

Recommended further reading: Stephen J. Pyne's Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire (1982; paperback edition, University of Washington Press, 1997)