STONE-AGE Europeans may have used fire to increase their supply of acorns,
says a British archaeobotanist.
Sarah Mason of University College London says there is evidence that acorns
were a favoured food among hunter-gatherer communities in the Mesolithic era.
And ecological studies in California have shown that oaks thrive and produce
more acorns in ecosystems where burning occurs.
She speculates that fire was used to manage and regenerate oak forests for
their nuts (Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, vol 164,
p 139).
“The use of fire could have been much more subtle than the kind of fires most
people are looking…
