Burning man

How fire helped create humans — and even ChatGPT

Some people are worried about gas shortages. But the worry isn’t really about gas. Deep down, it’s about something bigger — what it means to be human.

Humans are, in a way, children of fire. About 1.5 million years ago, our ape-like ancestors learned how to control fire. Most fires probably started from lightning strikes. One day, they discovered something amazing: cooking food.

Cooking changed everything. It made food tastier, softer, and easier to digest. Because of this, humans didn’t need huge teeth, big jaws, or very large stomachs anymore. While apes had to chew tough plants for six hours a day, humans could eat enough in about one hour.

This saved a lot of energy. And that extra energy helped our brains grow bigger.

Human brains use a huge amount of energy — about 20% of the calories our bodies burn even when we’re resting. That’s a lot! Without cooked food and fire, our brains might never have grown this big. And if our brains hadn’t grown, there would be no modern humans — and no ChatGPT either.

Fire helped us in another important way. It gave us light and safety at night. A dark, moonless night is incredibly dim — about a trillion times darker than a sunny day. Humans also don’t see well in the dark, which once made us easy targets for animals like leopards.

But fire scared predators away and lit up the night. For the first time, humans could stay awake after sunset — talking, thinking, and creating.

Over time, fire helped humans build many important things: bricks, cement, engines, rockets, electricity, and much more.

So humans have always depended on fire. Today, many of us use gas as our main way of making fire. That’s why people feel uneasy when gas becomes hard to find.

It’s not just about fuel. It’s about something humans have depended on for hundreds of thousands of years.

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