“Peking Man” Could Use Fire: New analyses verify the use of fire by Peking Man

There is an idea that we've been able to control fire since somewhere around the 2 mya mark because of the morphology of Homo ergaster (Homo erectus in Africa). The size of the gut shrunk considerably between Australopithecus and Homo erectus (there is not enough post cranial bones from the intermediary species such as Homo habilis to assess the size of their guts but we know by Homo ergaster that it had come about) as can be seen by the rib cage which has become less barrel shaped, which was needed to house a long intestine required for digesting food. A shortened digestive tract suggests that food was cooked and more easily digested.

Also, the skeleton changed to become fully bipedal from semi bipedal and I suggest that it is because previously, without fire, hominins had to sleep in the trees at night to avoid big cat predation. After fire was mastered, they could sleep on the ground at night, and the fire kept the big cats away. Therefore we could properly get out of the trees.

My point here is that I think we mastered fire at ~2 mya but no firepit evidence has been found yet and may never be because of poor preservation.

wow good posts by both of you! thank you.