the.com/fire
the oldest technology, still undefeated, still the reason you exist
means The rapid chemical reaction of burning that gives off heat and light, often as visible flames.
from From Old English 'fyr,' rooted in a Proto-Germanic word ('fuir-') with cousins across the family — German 'Feuer,' Dutch 'vuur.' It traces back to a Proto-Indo-European root sometimes reconstructed as '*paewr-,' which also surfaces in Greek 'pyr' (the 'pyro-' of pyromaniac and pyre). Curiously, many old languages carried two words for fire: this cold, impersonal 'thing' sense, and a warmer 'living' sense (the ancestor of Latin 'ignis' and 'ignite') — as if our forebears couldn't decide whether fire was an object or a beast.
- not a thing
- it's a chemical reaction, not an object
- cooking edge
- unlocked nutrition that grew human brains
- color tells temp
- blue flames burn hotter than orange
- needs three
- heat, fuel, oxygen — remove one, it dies
- oldest hearth
- humans tamed it roughly a million years ago
great chicago fire — 1871 fire that destroyed 3.3 square miles and killed ~300 people
camp fire california — 2018 wildfire that burned 153,336 acres in butte county
peshtigo fire — 1871 wisconsin fire that killed ~1,500 people, same day as chicago fire