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How domesticating fire facilitated the evolution of human cooperation

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Abstract

Controlled fire use by early humans could have facilitated the evolution of human cooperation. Individuals with regular access to the benefits of domestic fire would have been at an advantage over those with limited or no access. However, a campfire would have been relatively costly for an individual to maintain and open to free riders. By cooperating, individuals could have reduced maintenance costs, minimized free riding and lessened the risk of being without fire. Cooperators were more likely to survive and reproduce than uncooperative individuals because the former would have been better able to maximize a fire’s returns and enjoy regular access to its benefits. This is how the emergence of controlled fire use in Pleistocene human populations could have facilitated the evolution of cooperation.

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Notes

  1. Interestingly, fire use may be the earliest human behaviour that involved a public good in a strict sense. Dubreuil (2010) has argued that cooperative breeding and hunting by Middle Pleistocene humans around 500 kya is indicative of increased cognitive control in this respect. While recognizing the significance of cooperative breeding, Vaesen (2011) counters that we have no evidence for this behaviour, and that cooperative hunting does not necessarily involve human kinds of cooperation. However, cooperative hunting in non-human animals does not involve transporting, cooking and sharing the food (Stiner et al. 2009).

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  1. School of Social and Political Sciences (Anthropology Program), Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia

    Terrence Twomey

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  1. Terrence Twomey
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Correspondence to Terrence Twomey.

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Twomey, T. How domesticating fire facilitated the evolution of human cooperation. Biol Philos 29, 89–99 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-013-9402-2

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