I was just in my back yard watching the fire die down, (we have a firepit for little campfires ) and every time I sit around a campfire I get mesmerized by it. It caused me to think of how man has used fire in the past, seeing that it is one of our oldest tools. I would be interested in knowing if anyone has any information or insight into any old ceremonies or customs or even rituals that used fire in some way or another.

Thanks in advance for any posts or info.

Here is a good article showing the history between man and fire
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m120...ag=rbxcra.2.a.1

Fire is the symbol of God
A God who gives humans complete freedom: It is pertinent to note that despite some translations to the contrary, the Wise Lord is neither Omnipotent nor is He Omniscient in the Judeo/Christian/Islamic sense. He is the Mightiest, but even He cannot go against His own nature, plan or design. In that sense He is not Omnipotent.

Fire God

Enjoy ur Fire

I could sit and watch a fire all night. As you have said, very mesmerizing!

Fire!! im a pyro lol
humans have always been mesmorized by fire. the indians saw it spirtually and use to dance around it. thats pretty much all i know

I tried to convince a co-worker the importance of fire, that is was THE technological acheivement of all time. He kept pointing out other marvels, cars, planes, etc as being more important than fire. He couldn't grasp the concept that we wouldnt HAVE those things without fire....(yes I work with idiots!)

We call it nature's T.V. It does get pretty hypnotic doesn't it.

Natures TV!

I have open bonfires every winter here on the farm, just like the cavemen did.
As kids we threw hands full of crackers in there, the last one to bolt off...err bad luck.

Quite true. But the majority of people are not that bright. You just somehow know that the first person to cook with a controlled fire was looked at funny, the rest of the tribe was probably like what is wrong with the way we eat our food, all raw with blood dripping down their face, and name calling the person cooking their meal.

i alays thought that fire was originally used to cook there food and later once they gained greater control over it they used it to ward off predators via a large branch

your avatar is mesmerizing...

the whynsos

I can't think of too many cultures that don't hold a special meaning to fire. From tribal meetings around a central fire to a eternal flame for JFK, or even the Olympic torch, fire almost always has a symbolic meaning that accompanies its practical uses.

I was always curious 'when & how' they first went from eating raw meat to cooked.


I've always had a theory on it tho...

There was a group of Homo neanderthalensis cavemen sitting round a campfire one night all eating raw mammoth or whatever. Suddenly one of em accidentally drops his Mammoth steak in the fire. Trying frantically to pull it out with a stick he eventually does so. As he starts munching away at his slightly charred meat, he goes, ''GRR..HMMMM is good...GRR!'' Then passing the ''cooked meat'' around to all his buddies, they all started jumping round waving their raw meat in the air freaked out with excitement. So they all start throwing their raw meat into the fire. Wholla, man's first barbeque...the rest is history.

This is what it looks like when my family gets together.

I bet you're right though. Many great inventions were pure accidents.

Our intelligence allowed us to use fire for our benefit. Later, we learned how to make it. As I understand, thousands of years passed between our use of fire, and the day when we learned how to create it via friction, air compression or the spark produced by rocks.
Few people realize that before we learned to create fire, we were in a perilous position. If the ember or burning stick that the tribe carried went out, the entire group could die of cold or predation (fire kept dangerous animals away).
The 1980s movie Quest For Fire makes a good point of what happens to a tribe when it can no longer produce a fire because it's lost that ember.

God knows who first figured out how to cook, but the why is obvious:
1. Cooking makes it easier to digest food. Raw meat is harder to digest.
2. Cooking kills parasites and potentially harmful microbes such as e. coli.
3. Cooking preserves food longer. Put a well-cooked burger patty next to an uncooked patty and see which goes sour quicker. The ability to preserve food, for when times were lean, was another major leap.
4. Fire will harden wood. The earliest tools were sharpened sticks. A hardwood, sharpened stick that has had its point carefully hardened over a fire will last longer and penetrate deeper in flesh than an untempered stick. Improved spears brought more food to the fire.

I agree with an earlier post that the ability to control and create fire for our benefit was probably the greatest leap Mankind ever made.
Those who couldn't grasp the concept sound like engineers. Ask them how aluminum, steel and copper are produced. Fire is involved in all metalworking, whether it's the purification of the base metal or something as advanced as moulding.
Virtually everything we have today has been purified, improved or produced by the use of controlled fire.

But I've always had a problem with the phrase, "When man discovered fire ..." Frankly, he didn't discover it at all. It was always there. It may be semantics, but he discovered how to use it to his advantage, how to protect it, and later how to produce it when needed.
It's rather like the horse. Man didn't discover the horse. It was there long before Man was, but he learned how to use that animal to his advantage.
After fire, I'd place the wheel as the singlemost important possession. Without it, you're stuck in the stone age.

i too ,funny thing had a fire last night but i notist the color's of the flames some red and some were orange you know .

but strainghly enuff alot were pinkish purple and alot of blue dark or deep but also baby blue as the sky with green in there for the love i geass,ya last night was a good one.