4.3.1 Pyrotechnic Primate: A pyrophilic genus joins the phylogenetic tree of life

“In the most revolutionary event since flame appeared in the Devonian, a creature acquired the capacity to manipulate fire directly.” Pyne, 2012.

Fire wasn’t the only thing to be ignited by the arrival of angiosperms, for evolution was likewise. Having spread at speed during the Cretaceous, studies suggest that species of the phylum Anthophyta [97] may have been so prolific in their pyrophilic propensities as to extinguish several ancient lineages, while propagating others (Bond and Midgely, 2011). The origins of the order Primate reside in the Paleocene [c. 65>mya] (Bloch et al, 2007). Their evolution primarily attributed to the flourishing of angiosperms, of which the flowers and fruit provided food source for insectivores, frugivores, and foliovores [98], by the late Eocene [<35 mya] and for a period 20 million years thereafter (Gowlett, 2016), primates populated the forests of Eurasia and Africa.

However, by the Mid Miocene [10 mya] a monumental climatic shift was dawning, as was the arrival of hominids. Paleo datum reveals that the “relatively homogenous” home (Maslin et al, 2014, p.1) of our East African superfamily Hominoidea ancestors was to undergo a series of tectonic and climatic changes, the latter aligned to a “long- term trend toward increasingly drier” conditions (deMenocal, 2011, p. 541), punctuated by extreme variability (Maslin and Trauth, 2009). 10 mya, regional members of the family Hominidae inhabited relatively level landscapes covered in mixed tropical forests (Maslin et al, 2014). By 8 mya, East Africa’s landscape was markedly more open and arid, and its biotic assemblages were largely comprised of woody and graminoid species (Bond and Midgley, 2012; deMenocal, 2004, 2011). By 1.2 mya, progressive rifting and tectonic uplift had pushed, pulled and pummelled the terrain into more or less the morphological configuration of the present (Maslin et al, 2014). The fossil record indicates that faunal extinction, speciation and dispersal was at higher than background levels during periods of abiotic change (Ibidem), and no less so than for the subfamily Homininae (Ibidem; Gowlett, 2016). While manifold were the functional traits that evolved in the Hominin species of the Mid - Late Miocene, bipedalism is considered the foremost central to genus Homo evolution. Hypotheses as seek to explain how and why some species of the taxon Hominidae took to two legs, not four, include the Savannah Hypothesis (Bender, Tobias, and Bender, 2012), Aridity Hypothesis (deMenocal, 1995, 2004; Reed, 1997), Turnover Pulse Hypothesis (Vrba, 1988), and the Variability Selection Hypothesis (Potts, 2013, 1998), each of which couples Homo evolution to environmental change. Paleogenetic data suggests that genus Homo diverged from its closest extant relative, genus Pan, between 8 - 4 mya (Tocheri et al, 2008; Patterson et al, 2006), the date falling within the range supported by the fossil record [7 - 4 mya] (Maslin et al, 2014). Therein, regardless of the causations of the advent of bipedalism within some members of the taxonomical tribe Hominini, and the specifities of the place and time of its arrival in Messinian [7.2 – 5.3 mya] Africa, regional paleoclimatic and paleobotanical records make evident that our ancient antecedents stepped forth toward fire-prone habitats.

We need not invent a time machine and travel back to the Miocene to gain insight into how proto Homo may have first interacted with fire. Savanna chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in modern-day Senegal have been observed “calmly monitoring wildfires”, appearing to “conceptualize” fire behaviour, and anticipate its course (Pruetz and LaDuke, 2009, p. 646). Furthermore, troop members, including the alpha male, have been witnessed engaging in what appears to be a celebratory activity upon the advent of fire, the action thereof dubbed ‘fire dancing’ (Ibidem). Thus, the capacity to conceive of the potentialities inherent in wildfire has been posited as a synapomorphic [99] trait of which the origins are “primitive” within the human- chimpanzee clade (Ibidem). Studies in wide-ranging fire-prone habitats in both the Southern and the Northern Hemisphere suggest that chimpanzees are by no means the only non-human species to exhibit fire-specific behaviours. For example, dubbed “fire followers” (Berthold, Bauer, and Westhead, 2001, p.46), several extant diurnal bird species, including the Savannah hawk (Heterospizias meridionalis), Plumbeous kite (Ictinia plumbea), Common caracara (Polyborus plancus), and Turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) have been observed “systemically” exploiting the feeding opportunities that fires present [i.e. hunting prey that breaks cover to flee fires] (Ibidem). The antecedents of these, and many other feathered fire followers, coexisted with generations of genus Homo in the fire regimes of Messinian Africa and Eurasia. However, a yet more pertinent avian behaviour has been observed in Australia’s tropical savannas. A just-published study documents “indigenous ecological knowledge and non-indigenous observations of intentional fire-spreading by the fire- foraging raptors Black Kite (Milvus migrans), Whistling Kite (Haliastur sphenurus), and Brown Falcon (Falco berigora)”, (Bonta et al, 2018, p.700). The raptors were observed propagating fire, both individually and in groups, in some instances successful on their first attempt, their method transporting “burning sticks in talons or beaks” (Ibidem). Hence, one might reasonably speculate upon the possibility that the origin of one of the foremost ancient and widespread of symbolic motifs (Cranston, 1998), the Phoenix, stems not purely from imagination, but from recognition on the part of our forebears of the cyclical nature of fires and their role in the regeneration of landscapes, therein of life, and in turn of the symbiosis of fire and species. A century- old paper published in the proceedings of the London Entomological Society describes a scene akin to that which early humans would have witnessed:

“large areas of the reeds and papyrus on the White Nile which constitute “the Sudd” are annually burned. Many birds are attracted to these fires... Dr. Longstaff had, on more than one occasion, seen a number of kestrels in the smoke to the leeward of the fire, and had once watched for some time a pair of bee-eaters [Merops nubicus, known locally as “fire-birds”] perch within a few feet of a fire”. Longstaff, 1912.

A further form of fire-foraging was observed by the late fire ecologist Edward V. Komarek during a trip to Victoria Falls National Park in 1968. He observed that contemporaneous African herbivorous species “will seek this type of [post-fire] grazing to such extent that under certain conditions they will literally mine the soil... eating the roots of grass plants and grazing sprouted bushes down to 1 inch, [2.54cm] although there were hundreds of square miles of adjacent unburned grasslands” (Komarek, 1969, p.196). Thus, Miocenean Man was, more likely than not, one of many species that would have foraged in post-fire grasslands, perhaps following in the tracks of larger fire-miners, such as Black Rhino [Diceros bioconis], which have been found to feed on a significantly higher number of burned versus unburned plots (Goldammer and de Ronde, 2004).

Early members of the Hominina lineage, including genera Sahelanthropus tchadensis [circa. 7 mya], Orronin tugenensis [circa. 6 mya], Ardipithecus [5.6 – 4.4 mya], and Australopithecus [circa. 4 – 2 mya] had physiological adaptations befitting of both bipedalism and arborealism [tree-dwelling] (Gowlett, 2016; Maslin et al, 2014; Compton, Sellers, and Thorpe, 2010; White et al, 2009). In the period 2.9 – 2.6 mya, several proto Homo species, including that of specimen AL 288-1, which is better known as ‘Lucy’ (Australopithecus afarensis), became extinct (deMenocal, 2011), all the while others evolved. Several significant steps within the physiological and behavioural development of the Hominin species occur in quick succession thereafter. A recent archaeological find dates the earliest known tool use by genus Homo to a site in West Turkana, northern Kenya, 2.6 – 3.3 mya (Gowlett, 2016; Harman et al, 2015), which is over 1 million years earlier than previous Oldowan [100] tool finds (Bradshaw Foundation, n.d). The date thereof coinciding with a period of environmental flux, increasing dispersal of Hominin species, and the development of physiological traits including larger brains, and jaw and teeth adaptations strongly suggestive of dietary changes (deMenocal, 2011), the Pyrophilic Primate Hypothesis posits that early humans became dependent on fire in this period [2 – 3 mya] (Parker et al, 2016). Given their range encompassed paleoecoregions in which fire was frequent (Gowlett, 2016), and their Oldowan innovations are suggestive of knowledge of the “properties of heat and friction” in the making thereof (Ibidem, p. 2), several anthropologists are exploring the possibility that early humans’ understanding and use of fire developed through a trial and error process in which several early Homo species participated.

>Continue to Chapter 4.3.2 here.

Footnotes

[97] Anthophyta is the taxonomic phylum more commonly known as ‘angiosperms’.

[98] Frugivore refers to a fruit eater, whereas foliovore refers to a leaf eater.

[99] Synapomorphy refers to phylogenetic traits that descend from a common ancestor unto its lineal descendants.

[100] Dating to 2.6 – 1.7 mya and akin to a ‘paleoindustry’, Oldowan refers to stone tools that were plentifold produced by early humans during the Lower Paleolithic.

The thesis is also available in PDF format, downloadable in several parts on Academia and Researchgate.

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Citation: Sterry, M. L., (2018) Panarchistic Architecture: Building Wildland-Urban Interface Resilience to Wildfire through Design Thinking, Practice and Building Codes Modelled on Ecological Systems Theory. PhD Thesis, Advanced Virtual and Technological Architecture Research [AVATAR] group, University of Greenwich, London.