EPHE, CNRS UMR5805, EPOC, Université Bordeaux 1, Talence, France.
PLoS One. 2010 Feb 11;5(2):e9157. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0009157.
It has been proposed that a greater control and more extensive use of fire was one of the behavioral innovations that emerged in Africa among early Modern Humans, favouring their spread throughout the world and determining their eventual evolutionary success. We would expect, if extensive fire use for ecosystem management were a component of the modern human technical and cognitive package, as suggested for Australia, to find major disturbances in the natural biomass burning variability associated with the colonisation of Europe by Modern Humans.
METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Analyses of microcharcoal preserved in two deep-sea cores located off Iberia and France were used to reconstruct changes in biomass burning between 70 and 10 kyr cal BP. Results indicate that fire regime follows the Dansgaard-Oeschger climatic variability and its impacts on fuel load. No major disturbance in natural fire regime variability is observed at the time of the arrival of Modern Humans in Europe or during the remainder of the Upper Palaeolithic (40-10 kyr cal BP).
CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Results indicate that either Neanderthals and Modern humans did not influence fire regime or that, if they did, their respective influence was comparable at a regional scale, and not as pronounced as that observed in the biomass burning history of Southeast Asia.
有人提出，在非洲的早期现代人类中，对火的控制和使用的增加是行为创新之一，这有利于他们在世界各地的传播，并决定了他们最终的进化成功。我们预计，如果广泛使用火来进行生态系统管理是现代人类技术和认知包的一个组成部分，就像澳大利亚那样，那么在现代人类殖民欧洲时，与自然生物质燃烧变化相关的重大干扰就会出现。
方法/主要发现：利用保存在伊比利亚和法国外海的两个深海岩芯中的微炭分析，重建了 70 至 10 千年前的生物质燃烧变化。结果表明，火的发生遵循了Dansgaard-Oeschger 气候变异性及其对燃料负荷的影响。在现代人类到达欧洲或在上旧石器时代的剩余时间（40-10 千年前），没有观察到自然火发生变化的重大干扰。
结论/意义：结果表明，尼安德特人和现代人要么没有影响火的发生，要么如果他们有影响，那么他们的影响在区域尺度上是相当的，而不是像在东南亚的生物质燃烧历史中那样明显。
