How the hell did our mastery of fire happen...

How the hell did our mastery of fire happen, what convinced multiple people all over the planet to look at sticks and say to themselves, "I better rub that shit together pretty fucking fast."?

Autism? I can see all the schizos becoming shamans while the spherglords are busy playing with objects until one accidentally makes fire and the chads steal his technology

That's my point though, you don't "accidentally" make fire, it's an involved, arduous process

It was tinkering yeah, not some kind of rationalization, at least that's what I assume

Even some modern inventions arose out of toying and tinkering around

Nassim Taleb claims this how most inventions arise, or at least some of the inventions thought of as arising out of knowledge arose out of random tinkering

Definitely, it just seems bizarre with the kind of effort stick fires take, unless i guess they realized friction made heat and just went to fucking town on wood until they got some results

Based Prometheus gifted it to us.

That isn't how it happened. Fire use began from capturing existing fires, learning how to make it from nothing came a lot later when the concept of fire was well established within.

But lightning fire is so rare and unless you live next to a volcano i just don't get it

Once you've got fire its pretty hard for it to go out, and usually people have methods of keeping fire like special fungus which smoulders for weeks

this raises the interesting question of what the longest burning flame is/was, no way to tell i suppose

>you don't "accidentally" make fire,

Oh but you do! The earliest source of fire was probably lightning, the savages living on Tasmanian before they got genocided didn't have the technology to make fire, instead they carried embers around from camp to camp and "resupplied" with fire when a tree got zapped during a storm, or from wildfires.

>didn't have the technology to make fire
IT'S JUST STICKS

You forget the primary incentive:

Warmth.
Light.

The harsh winters could kill us. We needed to stay warm through some sustainable means.

It was dark at night and the beasts of creation could enter our flocks and devour us and our children.

These two primary incentives, along with the observation that down from the nebulous sky often issued forth streams of energy which could pass their power onto wood, inspired us to capture this power, and sacrifice more wood to it, in exchange for its protection.

The Flame was the first God. Its desired sacrifice was always reasonable:

"More wood."

It commanded authority by not letting us come too close, while simultaneously showing us the consequences of straying too far.

It showed abstract potentiality in its shape.
It always appeared from some incomprehensible dimension of flame, and returned to it when sacrifices ran out.

We fell in love with it. We told our stories around it. We formed circles around it. We optimized its capture, and found new sacrifices for it (oil, etc.)

We came to understand it as a phenomenon, and ceased our reverence for it as a God.

That is the story of man and flame.

I think autism caused most awesome things throughout history.

Invention of writing notwithstanding.

The obsessed weirdos looking for more than the bare minimum do EVERYTHING.

Oh and eventually we found out we could purify our food in it.

Well, I would assume that some cavemen encountered a wildfire and thought it would be pretty badass to be able to create that on demand.

If you're trying to think of how fire works, you'd look at it and notice certain qualities of fire. It's hot and it tends to burn wood and dried leaves/grasses. You have the idea that if you can get some wood really hot, it should turn into fire. You also know that things get hot when you rub them together, so you rub some wood together and there you go, you've got fire.

I seriously think so. Also think of all the Darwin award people that gave us the knowledge of what's poisonous or not

Of course do note that I am talking of high-functioning autism

YHWH:
Adon olam asher malach beterem kol yetzir niv'ra.

>more wood

sounds like your mom

u funny nucca

t. him

the oldest star in the universe duh

I watched a Ray Mears and he went to stay with a tribe in the Amazon. They lived self sufficient, hunted all their food, made their houses etc, but they'd actually forgotten how to make fire from scratch, due to matches. Ray had to reteach them how to do it.

Seems pretty self explanatory
>Rub two objects together quickly
>They produce heat through friction
>What happens when this object gets too hot?
>Fire starts
There were no reptilian overlords to teach this user, its just simple curiousity

>Be caveman
>Be cold, wet and uncomfortable
>Lighting strikes a nearby tree
>Tree sets alight and burns
>Burning branches fall down
>You put the burning branches together and huddle around them for warmth
>The fires start to die out
>You notice that if you rub a burning branch with a stick the stick keeps on burning for longer
>After the fire burns out you are left with hot sticks
>Rubbing them together gives you fire
>You realise that rubbing sticks together for long and hard enough makes smoke and fire

Just one way it could have happened