780,000-Year-Old Charcoal Reveals Early Humans Used Lake Driftwood
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- Researchers analyzed 266 charcoal fragments from a single occupation layer at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov (GBY) dated to approximately 780,000 years ago, identifying ash, willow, grapevine, oleander, olive, oak, pistachio, and pomegranate — the earliest known evidence of pomegranate in the Levant.
- The charcoal assemblage showed greater plant diversity than other botanical remains at the site (seeds, fruits, unburned wood), suggesting firewood collection captured a broader cross-section of the surrounding environment than other plant-use activities.
- GBY hominins appear to have relied primarily on driftwood naturally accumulating along the paleo–Lake Hula shoreline rather than selectively gathering specific wood types, indicating a practical, efficiency-driven fuel strategy.
- Spatial analysis showed dense clusters of charcoal overlapping with large carp teeth, adding compelling evidence that fish were being cooked with controlled fire at the site nearly 800,000 years ago.
- The international research team includes Prof. Naama Goren-Inbar (Hebrew University), Prof. Nira Alperson-Afil and Dr. Yoel Melamed (Bar-Ilan University), Prof. Ethel Allué (Universitat Rovira i Virgili), and Prof. Brigitte Urban (Leuphana University).
- Access to firewood may have been a decisive factor in where these early humans chose to live — the lakeshore offered freshwater, edible plants, animals, tool-making raw materials, and a constant fuel supply, helping explain why GBY was revisited across more than 20 archaeological horizons over tens of thousands of years.
- The same occupation layer preserved the skull and bones of a straight-tusked elephant alongside stone tools and plant remains, with spatial arrangement suggesting the animal was butchered on-site, painting a picture of a community highly skilled in both hunting and fire management.
Why it matters: The study, published in Quaternary Science Reviews, reframes early fire use as opportunistic rather than selective — hominins at GBY harvested whatever driftwood the lake delivered rather than curating specific fuelwoods, yet still organized camp space around hearths, cooked fish, and butchered elephants. For paleoanthropologists, the 266-fragment assemblage is a rare, high-resolution dataset that links local resource availability directly to repeated site occupation across 20+ archaeological horizons, sharpening models of Middle Pleistocene subsistence.
