[ExI] Fire and evolution (was hypnosis)

[lists1 at evil-genius.com]

From: "spike" <spike66 at att.net>

"I have long pondered if speciation between humans and chimps was 
accelerated by the fact that for some reason the protohumans figured out 
that little burning bush trick, and the chimps didn't, or just couldn't 
master it.  This would represent the technology segregation we talk 
about today, that separates those humans who use electronics from those 
who do not.  Today it is called the digital divide.  Back then it was 
what we might call the conflagration chasm."

That would be surprising, as the earliest current evidence for the 
domestication of fire is ~1.7 million years ago, and that is hotly 
disputed: many archaeologists put it ~400,000 years ago.  All these 
dates are long, long after the human/chimp/bonobo split 6-7 million 
years ago.

Of course, the progression of protohuman evolution from the split onward 
had many different branches, and was not a neat linear sequence...there 
were many species of Australopithecus and Homo which died out.  So 
Spike's hypothesis may well be correct for a more recent evolutionary 
divide.