h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What you know about first dicovary of fire?

It was prometheus wot done it...

Well, one day during the Paleolithic, at about 2:30 PM, a bunch of folk were hangin' out in their cave and there was a big thunderstorm, because the cave they were hangin' in was in down in northern New Mexico, not too far from Chama, round-about late July when this sorta thing happens. Anyway, those folk remembered when their mommas told them that they oughtn't do no huntin' an' gatherin' in no thunderstorm or they'd get burnt. So there they sat, all bored in their cave, drinkin' some cold ones.

Well, they ran out of beer (the nearest liquor store wouldn't be built for another 10,000 years) so Ugg picked up a coupla sticks an' started rubbin' 'em together. Everyone else thunk he was up an' inventin' music so they up an' started tappin' their toes to the beat, but then them sparks came a-flyin' from them thar sticks Ugg was rubbin' together.

Well, soon them sticks caught a-fire and I'll tell you, them cavefolk sure got discombobulated, an' Oona up an' dropped that piece of mastadon she'd been munchin' on into the fire. Everyone was all skeered 'till Thag, who later met an early end when he tried to learn some of them desert scorpions some new acrobatic tricks while ridin' bare-back on a saber-tooth tiger, tried somma that charred mastodon and found it mighty tasty, I'll tell you what.

Anyway, by the next Fourth of Joo-ly, not that that was a holiday yet or nothin', they was shootin' off lots of fire and that's how it got discovered.

There is no real way of knowing when or where this first happened. Humans have been spreading all over the place since we, you know, became homo sapiens sapiens. I would assume that different groups figured it out at different times, maybe even a few of them concurrently, but as to when and where, this is lost in time. Hmm.. Now I'm gonna go run into the woods for a few days and not speak a word. See ya'll later!

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