The fire of happiness among the Berbers, or how the Berbers sanctified the fire
Le feu du bonheur chez les Amazighs
There is no denying the great merit of fire in the development of man and his civilization for the better. The discovery of fire developed from lighting caves and cooking raw meat to its use in the manufacture of nuclear reactors and spacecraft, and despite the many advantages of fire in human evolution, it is It has caused a lot of fires and destruction to cities and modern industries, and in our time, fire has been used in all areas of life, such as power stations, transportation and weapons factories, and it has also reached the personal use of humans, such as cooking, smoking and camping in the forests.
There are many names that call fire in Tamazight, there are Berbers who call it..lafit.. or.. Three basic elements according to each other. And these elements..are..water..air..and fire..and so we will base our modest research on this last element..fire..when most of the colonial researchers wrote about this element, including Andre Bassi.. and Emile Laoust. Especially in the book, which contains a broad title..The fire of happiness among the Berbers..in which the writer emphasized that the Berbers since ancient times considered fire to be happiness, and this is confirmed by the Berber folk proverb saying:. Other than that, there are other Amazigh folk proverbs that consider fire as a symbol of mercy and happiness.
Archaeologists base their new theory on the remains of charred bones and plants found in a cave in South Africa. The people who lived there did not use wood as firewood, but rather used dry herbs and tree branches and leaves to keep their fire burning. In addition to the remains of the hearth, archaeologists have found stone tools and wedges that were used by early humans.
"To our knowledge, this is the first definitive evidence of the use of fire," the researchers said in an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This discovery indicates that the use of fire did not occur during the time of Neanderthals or modern humans, but rather occurred much earlier in the time of the first humans, such as Homo erectus - Homo erectus. science and technology
The first human used fire for cooking a million years ago until recently, scientists believed that the first human used fire to cook food 700,000 years ago, but after discovering traces of fire in a cave in South Africa, scientists believe that human use of fire was three hundred thousand years before this date.
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Our first ancestors used fire a million years ago, which is three hundred thousand years earlier than the prevailing belief so far. Archaeologists base their new theory on the remains of charred bones and plants found in a cave in South Africa. The people who lived there did not use wood as firewood, but rather used dry herbs and tree branches and leaves to keep their fire burning. In addition to the remains of the hearth, archaeologists have found stone tools and wedges that were used by early humansFire is a human advantage of the
extinct Neanderthals
, said lead researcher Michael Chazan, from the University of Toronto, Canada: "The human control of fire was a turning point in the evolution of humanity, because this step touched all elements of human society." According to his opinion, "the gathering of a group of people around the fire and their sharing of food is an important part, which distinguishes man from other creatures and makes us human."
So far, there is no consensus among anthropologists and archaeologists as to the date when humans began using fire on a regular basis. There is confirmed evidence dating back to Neanderthals or Homo sapiens 400,000 years ago, and there are remnants of fire found by Israeli scientists dating back 700,000 years, but it is disputed because the effects of fire are found in the open and not in a cave, and therefore could be caused by Its a normal fire and not man-made. Chazan believes that the new discovery in South Africa "makes the first use of fire 300,000 years ago one of the oldest finds so far". This means that the first human, Homo erectus, succeeded in controlling fire. Traces of fire amid stone tools
Scientists have found the remains of fire in the Wonderwerk cave in the Cape Province in South Africa.
They found the stove at a depth of 30 meters from the door of the cave. Two meters underground, they found wedges and stone tools, including charred bones and plants. Scientists estimate the age of these monuments to one million years. According to them, the fire inside the cave was lit by an action, not by lightning or a forest fire.
Examination of the archaeological samples with a special microscope using the microscopic spectroscopy technique showed that the bones were exposed to a temperature of 500 degrees Celsius. Archaeologists conclude from this that the first humans did not use wood as firewood, but rather leaves, branches and dry grass, because the temperatures generated by the use of wood are much higher than 500 degrees Celsius. By coincidence, as a result of the ignition of some trees from the effects of lightning, or due to the high heat of the sun and its effect on some dry leaves and plants, while others believe that the ancient man discovered it by rubbing wood with each other, and this discovery was for the ancient man like the discovery of electricity in our time. The present, but this discovery developed greatly when matches were invented, and this fire has many uses such as: And the Amazigh man, like other peoples of the world, as soon as the ancient man learned the ways of lighting and controlling fire, began to benefit from it in many things more than using it for heating and cooking food. In the woods so that it is easy to hunt. With the learning of farming methods during the Neolithic period, about 7000 BC, and the tendency of man to rely on them to secure food, it was necessary to get rid of trees and herbs on large areas to become suitable for agriculture, so fire was the best way to do so, in addition to obtaining natural fertilizer as a result of burning those herbs. And the use of fire was not limited to those fields, but rather humans used it in lighting, cooking, making pottery, and using it in dealing with some types of metals such as iron. Since the discovery of fire by man, it has constituted an important source of light and heat to be gradually exploited in various fields. It was the basis for the development of life to reach what we are, until many civilizations, such as the Greek civilization during the fifth century BC, considered it one of the constant elements of nature constituting everything that is material besides water, air and land; While the ancient Chinese civilization considered fire as one of the five basic elements, which are water, earth, metal and wood, in addition to fire, it is worth noting that the concept of basic elements was interpreted by the scientist Robert Boyle during the seventeenth century as non-degradable materials into simpler materials.
Even the religions and beliefs that man knew had an opinion of fire. Candles and oil lamps were used in places of worship by many sects and religions, especially during the practice of some rituals, where man considered fire as evidence of good and his struggle with evil represented by darkness; The Hindu religion considers fire as one of the sacred elements and a religious symbol during the celebrations. The followers of Zoroaster consider the fire as a symbol of the existence of God, as their places of worship are called the Temple of Fire and it remains burning permanently, and even the Jews see it as something sacred and ignite it during most of their rituals, and Christianity also They see it as a symbol of the Holy Spirit, but, like Islam, they threaten sinners with fire as an instrument of punishment.
As a general conclusion..for the Berbers, fire is not a source of anxiety or misery, but rather it is in their view the source of mercy and happiness, but on the other hand, sometimes it is not a source of jinx, as the inherited Amazigh folk proverb says
.. Taznakht model
-, The Discovery of Fire, from the website: www.thoughtco.com, accessed on 9-18-2019
- 2, Fire, from the website: www.britannica.com, accessed on 9-18-2019
- 3 Neanderthals Could Make Fire, New Study Suggests, from: www.haaretz.com, accessed on 9-18-2019
, 4, Fire, from: www.newworldencyclopedia.org, accessed on 9-18
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