8 | New Scientist | 27 July 2019AN ANALYSIS of spending has
revealed that the UK gave
£4.6 billion to overseas fossil fuel
projects between 2010 and 2017.
More than half of the support for
energy projects abroad – provided
in the form of overseas aid and lines
of credit via the UK’s credit export
agency – went on fossil fuels during
the period. Just 17 per cent wasspent on renewables, found the
analysis by Catholic charity CAFOD
and the Overseas Development
Institute think tank.
“It’s a bit of a no-brainer: if we
want to get to net zero and keep
below 1.5°C, we shouldn’t be using
public money for fossil fuels,” says
Sarah Wykes of CAFOD.
Despite the UK signing up to
the 2015 Paris climate change
agreement and committing to
the UN’s sustainable development
goals in 2016, there is no clear
downward trend in the funding.“It’s inconsistent to have fossil fuel
funding when you have the climate
goals and poverty reduction goals
the UK has,” says Wykes.
The top recipient of the support
was Brazil with £2.3 billion over
the period, followed by Ghana and
Russia. Former UN secretary general
Ban Ki-moon has been calling for an
end to this kind of support for years.
Attitudes in government may bechanging. As international
development secretary, Rory
Stewart said earlier this month
that he felt “very strongly” that his
department shouldn’t be spending
on fossil fuels. However, Stewart
confirmed on Tuesday, after Boris
Johnson was named the UK’s next
prime minister, that he would resign.
A government spokesperson said:
“As the prime minister [Theresa
May] announced at the G20 last
month, in future we will look for the
greenest way to deliver UK aid.” ❚
Adam VaughanHuman evolutionDID cooking make us human?
Evidence from Kenya suggests
early hominins were roasting
meat over fires 1.5 million years
ago. The discovery pushes back
evidence of fire use by hundreds
of thousands of years, and lends
weight to the idea that cooked
food helped trigger the evolution
of big-brained humans.
“It’s very exciting,” says Sarah
Hlubik at Rutgers University in
New Jersey. “This is the oldest site
to date with evidence of human
ancestors using fire.”
Hlubik and her colleagues
collected thousands of
archaeological items from a digin Kenya’s Koobi Fora region. The
site contains patches of reddened
dirt surrounded by relatively
dense clusters of stone artefacts
and burned bone, as might be
expected if hominins were sitting
around a fire to eat cooked meat
and prepare stone tools (Journal of
Human Evolution, doi.org/c8nc).
A handful of the collected
fragments from stone tools have
a distinct curved appearance.
The team found that this unusual
curving occurs only when a stone
tool is being made near a fire
(Journal of Archaeological Science,
doi.org/c8nd). Chipping away at a
stone to turn it into a tool seems tointroduce physical stress lines in
the fragments that ping off, says
Hlubik. If those fragments happen
to fall into a hot fire, they then
crack and curl along the stress
lines, she says.
The researchers say that their
findings don’t prove hominins
were using and controlling fire
1.5 million years ago, but they say
the evidence they have collected
does support such an idea.
Clear signs of controlled fire
appear in the archaeological
record only about 400,000 years
ago. But we shouldn’t be surprised
if the practice began much earlier,
says Wil Roebroeks at Leiden
University in the Netherlands.
The bigger question, says
Hlubik, is how often hominins
used fire to cook food 1.5 million
years ago. Some researchers argue
that cooking became such a
common practice between 1.5 and
2 million years ago that it shifted
the course of hominin evolution.
Cooked food is easier to digest,
the idea goes, so hominins could
“afford” to simplify their digestive
tract and divert energy to brain
growth instead. Homo erectus,
arguably the first hominin
with a larger brain, appearedabout 1.9 million years ago.
Under this scenario, we should
find evidence of fire use at many
ancient sites across the landscape.
“That’s what we’re working on
now,” says Hlubik. The Koobi Fora
region covers thousands of square
kilometres and contains many
sites of hominin occupation
dating back 1.5 million years or
more. Hlubik and her colleagues
hope that they can find more
evidence of possible fire use in
some of these other places. ❚These stones, excavated at
Koobi Fora (left), are made of the
same material, but the bottom
one has been exposed to heatColin BarrasNews
A Stone Age barbecue
Evidence of cooking 1.5 million years ago could explain how we came to be human
SA
RAH^ HLU
BIK“ If we want to get to net
zero, we shouldn’t be using
public money for fossil fuels”EnergyUK spends billions
on fossil fuel
projects abroadWhat can we learn from ancient technology?
Find out from Chloe Duckworth at New Scientist Live
newscientistlive.com/ancient-techSA
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BIK