Foreign Media: Chinese Scientists Reveal Humans Have Been Using Fire to Modify Ecosystems for 50,000 Years
An international study led by the Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, reveals that early humans had widely used fire to alter the environment as early as 50,000 years ago, much earlier than previously believed.
The research team analyzed a 300,000-year-old marine sediment core extracted from the East China Sea and found a sharp increase in fire activity in East Asia 50,000 years ago. Researchers reconstructed the region's fire history by analyzing pyrogenic carbon, which consists of tiny charcoal particles formed by incomplete combustion of vegetation.
This study challenges the traditional view that systematic human use of fire began 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. This discovery indicates that humans' large-scale impact on ecosystems and the carbon cycle was tens of thousands of years earlier than previously thought, calling for a re-evaluation of the timeline of human impact on the Earth system.
Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/1836254404810820/
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