Wild Hearth A Prolegomenon to the Cultural Fire History of Northern Eurasia

Abstract

Since the time of Homo erectus hominids have, through fire, interacted with the Earth. Anthropogenic fire has been present throughout northern Eurasia whenever ice sheets, sea levels, and climate have permitted; throughout the Holocene, occupation by Homo sapiens has been continuous. Through their fire practices humans have sought, from the earliest times, to reshape and render habitable their surroundings. The ways by which humans have protected themselves from wildfire and the means by which they have projected their own domesticated fires onto the land have varied considerably — they have changed over historic time as well as across geographic space. But their fires mark human presence as surely as flint arrowheads or burial mounds. Everywhere fire has mediated between humans and the land. The biota of northern Eurasia has thus coexisted, if not coevolved, under the pressures of anthropogenic fire.

The last and wildest stretch of earth Where Europe’s genius built a hearth - Zachris Topelius

“But perhaps this was all possible because every farm had its comforter. One that came to rich and poor alike, that never failed and never tired… it was nothing but the fire, burning on the hearth on a winter’s night. “- Selma Lagerlöf, The Löwensköld Ring