Something about a warm, flickering campfire draws in modern humans. Where did that uniquely human impulse come from? How did our ancestors learn to make fire? How long have they been making it?

Billy Joel famously sang, we didn't start the fire - it was always burning since the world's been turning. But that's not entirely true. Humans do start fires to cook, to heat, to gather around.

A 400,000-year-old site excavated in England reveals signs of deliberate fires made using the mineral iron pyrite to produce sparks. Ségolène Vandevelde is at the Centre for Mineral Resource Studies ...