It's easy to take for granted that with the flick of a lighter or the turn of a furnace knob, modern humans can conjure flames — cooking food, lighting candles or warming homes. For much of our ...

BurnBot is a huge, Zamboni-like vehicle that executes precisely controlled burns of flammable grass alongside buildings and roadways. It’s designed to create fire breaks — lines of charred land — that ...

The controlled use of fire was a key part of the development of human technology with a range of uses that greatly expanded human cultural evolution. Although evidence at a number of archaeological ...

Fragments of iron pyrite, a rock that can be used with flint to make sparks, were found by a 400,000-year-old hearth in eastern Britain. (Jordan Mansfield | Courtesy Pathways to Ancient Britain ...