The earliest and most common way to make a fire actually comes from nature. Lightning ignited the forest fire and its embers, which is skyfire. Then put the fire in a fixed place, such as a cave. In many archaeological discoveries, there are traces of fire in the ancients.
Hammer is a common tool for human beings, that is, iron collides with flint to produce spark ignition. But before I learned how to make iron, I used the sparks generated by the collision between stones (a special kind of stones) to ignite.
Thousands of years later, this was the mainstream way to make a fire until the invention of matches and lighters (actually similar to sickles).
As for the ancients who used mirrors to gather light for fire, this was not used much. On the one hand, mirrors were not widely used after their invention, and on the other hand, not many people knew that mirrors could be used to gather light and make a fire. Like drilling wood for fire, the utilization rate is very low in daily life.
The long-term preservation of kindling is a very important thing in ancient daily life.
196 1 in the spring, I was over seven years old. At that time, the canteen had just been dissolved and the materials were extremely scarce. Matches became scarce, so people couldn't buy them with money, so they made a fire with flint. Today, I can still vaguely remember the general steps: take a black flint (called flint) and put it on another big gravel (called fire curtain). In ancient times, kindling was extremely rare, mostly from natural fires caused by lightning strikes on trees. Generally, there is only one kindling in a tribe, which is guarded by a special person and will not go out all the year round. The caretaker calls it "Huozheng", which is a very important position in the tribe. Thick ash pits are common in Longshan culture and ancient cultural sites, which can span hundreds of years and are the remains of kindling used by ancient humans. I don't know when to drill wood for fire, which is earlier than flint. The appearance of "Suiren" shows that one foot of human beings has stepped into the threshold of civilization. Engels spoke highly of man's mastery of fire technology, and thought that the invention of fire technology far surpassed the invention of steam engine in promoting the progress of human society.
There are still many ways for the ancients to make a fire. The common ones are as follows:
1. Drilling wood to make fire: This is the most common way to make fire, which mainly appeared in primitive society and early slave society with relatively backward productivity. At that time, people often needed to go out to look for food, so this way of making a fire was more convenient.
2. Lightning strike to make a fire: this way of making fire is mainly in primitive society. After the tree was lit by thunder, people took back the fire. This way is also more convenient, but it needs thunder.
3. Breaking stones to make a fire: This way, two stones collide with each other to generate sparks, thus achieving the purpose of igniting a fire.