Early Tools Were Born Of Fire

How long ago did early humans begin using fire to make tools? Previous reports suggest it was a relatively new invention - dating back a mere 30,000 years or so. However, a team from the University of Capetown have re-calibrated the event. They discovered that it was impossible for them to re-create the stone tools found at the Pinnacle Point caves in South Africa unless they used 20 to 40 kilograms of hardwood and heated the silcrete from which they were fashioned to more than 300 degrees C over 30 hours. Tests reveal that original heat-treated tools are at least 70,000 years old and may even be as old as 164,000 years. So, humans had a much more sophisticated fire-assisted technology, earlier than previously thought. My interest lies in Richard Wrangham's theory for cooking being the explosive force behind earlier human brain expansion. His theory is be-deviled, so far, by lack of evidence for hearths going back 2 million + years. Evidence suggesting a far more sophisticated use of fire than that for cooking, dating back to the earliest origins of Homo sapiens in Africa, pushes the boundary of fire technology deeper into the past and may help make Wrangham's theory more tenable.