it was possible to estimate the approximate temperatures to which 

 each had been subjected (Brain and Sillen, 1988; Sillen and Hoering, 

 1993; Brain, 1993b). 



It is to be expected that natural grass fires passing the entrance 

 of a cave should burn any pieces of bone lying around, and that 

 these could later make their way back into the lower parts of the 

 cave. In fact, three pieces of fossilized burnt bone had turned up in 

 the Lower Bank of Member 1 and one may assume that the burning 

 could have occurred in this way. But when pieces of burnt bone 

 made their appearance in 17 excavation grid squares (1 m X 1 m) 

 and in up to 23 vertical excavation spits (each 10 cm thick) in the 

 newly exposed Member 3 deposit, one is obviously dealing with a 

 different situation. The interpretation that we proposed was that fires 

 had been tended in the entrance area of the Member 3 gully re- 

 peatedly during the accumulation period of this sedimentary profile, 

 and that pieces of bone heated in these fires had made their way 

 down the talus slope to their final repository. There is no evidence 

 that people at this time had mastered the technique of fire making, 

 but had presumably collected burning branches from natural, light- 

 ning-induced grass fires — which are very much a feature of the high- 

 veld grassland in early summer — and brought this fire back to their 

 sleeping place. If Member 3 is about one million years old, hundreds 

 of thousands of years would probably have had to pass before the 

 deliberate making of fire became a reality. But whatever the source 

 of the fire, its presence at the cave entrance would have given these 

 early human groups some measure of protection from the ever-pre- 

 sent danger of waiting leopards. 



In addition to the burnt bones, Member 3 also provided 14 bone 

 pieces with unmistakable cut marks on them and 2 with chop marks. 

 Such damage has not been seen on any of the fossils from Members 

 1 and 2, suggesting that hominid meat-eating at the cave, presum- 

 ably round a campfire, became a reality then. Presumably, without 

 the protection afforded by fire, it would have been too dangerous to 

 bring meat to the cave for fear of attracting other carnivores. In my 

 view, fire-management of this kind must have represented a critical 

 early step in human emancipation from subservience to more pow- 

 erful carnivores, which ultimately led to their domination. 



24 



