Using AI to detect the subtle ways in which extreme heat warps a material’s atomic structure, scientists have discovered the potential presence of a nearly 1-million-year-old fire at an archaeological site in Israel.
It’s not always easy to find clues to ancient campfires. Bits of charcoal, cracked bones, and discolored rocks often give a prehistoric blaze away. But not every blaze leaves such obvious traces, especially after hundreds of thousands of years.
Most studies of fire rely on the obvious bits of charcoal and other clues. But Filipe Natalio, an archaeological biochemist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, wanted to find a way to identify the invisible evidence fire leaves behind. Previous work, led in part by forensic scientists, has shown that burning alters bone structure at the atomic level, so burnt and unburnt human bones absorb different wavelengths of the infrared spectrum.
The researchers devised a computer program to hunt for subtle patterns that would have taken ages for the scientists to find on their own, Natalio says. The AI worked. Using a technique called ultraviolet Raman spectroscopy, which measures the absorption of UV light, the AI could reliably differentiate burnt and unburnt pieces of modern flint and even reveal the temperatures at which they burned.
That, Natalio says, may be evidence that the site’s inhabitants cooked their kills. If so, that would make it—along within South Africa’s Wonderwerk Cave—among the oldest known cooking sites.
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