Campfire Site

Lore & Background

The history of campfires reaches back roughly 1.6 million years, when an analysis of burned antelope bones from caves in Swartkrans, South Africa, confirmed that Australopithecus robustus and/or Homo erectus built campfires. Evidence within Wonderwerk Cave, at the edge of the Kalahari Desert, has been called the oldest known controlled fire. Microscopic analysis of plant ash and charred bone fragments suggests that materials in the cave were not heated above about 1,300 °F (704 °C). This is consistent with preliminary findings that the fires burned grasses, brush, and leaves. Such fuel would produce weak flames. The data suggests humans were cooking prey by campfire as far back as the first appearance of Homo erectus 1.9 million years ago.

In Their Own Story

When building a campfire, safety is paramount. Ideally, campfires should be made in a fire ring. If a fire ring is not available, a temporary fire site may be constructed. Bare rock or unvegetated ground is ideal for a fire site. Alternatively, turf may be cut away to form a bare area and carefully replaced after the fire has cooled to minimize damage. Another way is to cover the ground with sand, or other soil mostly free of flammable organic material, to a depth of a few inches. A ring of rocks is sometimes constructed around a fire. Fire rings, however, do not fully protect material on the ground from catching fire. Flying embers are still a threat, and the fire ring may become hot enough to ignite material in contact with it, or heat the water to a vapor thereby cracking the rocks.

Reader's Guide

To build a campfire, you need three types of material: tinder, kindling, and fuel wood. Tinder lights easily and is used to start an enduring campfire. It is anything that can be lit with a spark and is usually classified as being thinner than a human's pinky finger. The tinder of choice before matches and lighters was amadou next to flint and steel. A few decent natural tinders are cotton, birch bark, cedar bark, and fatwood, where available; followed by dead, dry pine needles or grass. Although not natural, steel wool makes excellent tinder and can be started with steel and flint, or a 9 volt battery without difficulty. Kindling wood is an arbitrary classification including anything bigger than tinder but smaller than fuel wood. In fact, there are gradations of kindling, from sticks thinner than a finger to those as thick as a wrist. A quantity of kindling sufficient to fill a hat may be enough, but more is better. Fuel wood can be different types of timber. Timber ranges from small logs two or three inches (76 mm) across to larger logs that can burn for hours. It is typically difficult to gather without a hatchet or other cutting tool. In heavily used campsites, fuel wood can be hard to find, so it may have to purchased at a nearby store or be brought from home. However, untreated wood should not be transported due to the probability that invasive species of bugs will be transported with it. Heat-treated wood such as kiln-dried lumber is safe to transport. In the United States, areas that allow camping, like state parks and national parks, often let campers collect firewood lying on the ground. Some parks do not do this for various reasons, e.g. if they have erosion problems from campgrounds near dunes. Parks almost always forbid cutting living trees, and may also prohibit collecting dead parts of standing trees. There are several construction styles for a campfire, including the teepee, log cabin, hybrid, cross-fire, lean-to, and the traditional Finnish rakovalkea (also called long log fire or gap fire).

Did You Know?

• An analysis of burned antelope bones from caves in Swartkrans, South Africa, confirms that Australopithecus robustus and/or Homo erectus built campfires roughly 1.6 million years ago.
• Evidence within Wonderwerk Cave, at the edge of the Kalahari Desert, has been called the oldest known controlled fire.
• Microscopic analysis of plant ash and charred bone fragments suggests that materials in Wonderwerk Cave were not heated above about 1,300 °F (704 °C).
• The data suggests humans were cooking prey by campfire as far back as the first appearance of Homo erectus 1.9 million years ago.
• The traditional Finnish rakovalkea (lit. 'slit bonfire'), or nying in Scandinavian languages, is also called by English terms long log fire or gap fire.