The oldest traces of a 400,000-year-old bonfire in Europe have been found in England.

Anthropologists have discovered in Suffolk County in Great Britain the oldest traces of a bonfire in Europe, lit by the first inhabitants of the continent about 400 thousand years ago. This was announced on December 10 by the press service of the British Museum.

"The people who lit the first fire in British history were most likely early Neanderthals, as indicated by the morphological features of fossils found in Kent County in sediments from the same era, as well as in the Spanish cave Atapuerca. Our colleagues even managed to isolate ancient DNA from the remains of local Neanderthals," explained Chris Stinger, a professor at the National Historical Museum.

Soil analysis showed that the fire pits were maintained at temperatures of 400-600 degrees for several hours. This indicates the deliberate use of fire for survival in the Ice Age.

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Earlier, on December 5, it was reported that archaeologists in Tanis, Egypt, had found a rare collection of funerary figurines, which made it possible to identify the empty royal tomb of Pharaoh Sheshonk III. The figurines retained the royal symbols, which helped to link the find with the ruler of the period 830-791 BC.

All important news is on the Izvestia channel in the MAX messenger.