A stunning discovery at an archaeological dig in the UK is rewriting the timeline of when humans first made fire.
Researchers have discovered the earliest known instance of human-created fire, which took place in the east of England 400,000 years ago.
The new discovery, in the village of Barnham, pushes the origin of human fire-making back by more than 350,000 years, far earlier than previously thought.
The ability to create fire was the moment that changed everything for humans. It provided warmth at will and enabled our ancestors to cook and eat meat, which made our brains grow. It meant we were no longer a group of animals struggling to survive – it gave us time to think and invent and become the advanced species we are today.
The team say they found baked earth together with the earliest Stone Age lighter – consisting of a flint that was bashed against a rock called pyrite, also known as fool's gold, to create a spark.
BBC News has been given world exclusive access to the prehistoric site.
Under the treetops of Barnham Forest lies an archaeological treasure, buried a few metres beneath the Earth, that dates back to the furthest depths of human pre-history.
Around the edges of a clearing, tangled green branches frame the scene like a curtain, as if the forest itself were slowly revealing a long-buried chapter of its past. Prof Nick Ashton of the British Museum leads me through the trees and we both step into his astonishing story.
"This is where it happened," he tells me in a reverent tone.
We walk down onto a dirt floor carved into deep, stepped hollows of raw earth and pale sand.
This was an ancient fireplace at the heart of a prehistoric "town hall", around which early Stone Age people came together hundreds of thousands of years ago.
www.bbc.co.uk
