Burnt flints recently found in an old cave in Israel are the earliest pieces of evidence we have of our ancestors regularly using fire - one of the most important developments in human prehistory.

Archaeologists from the University of Haifa found flint fragments in a cave in the limestone cliffs of Mount Carmel, close to Haifa on the Mediterranean coast of northern Israel, reported Mail Online. It was determined that these fragments were exposed to fire because they show discoloration, cracking and small round depressions. 

The flints were likely from a manmade fire, rather than a wildfire, because they were found inside caves. Caves rarely become part of a wildfire because of the lack of vegetation inside.  

This discovery suggests that humans were making their own fires up to 50,000 before other widely accepted evidence found to support the regular human use of fire.

"While we have evidence of fire use going back to almost 1 million years, it only appears irregularly and does not seem to have be a widespread behavior - perhaps just being used by one or two bright sparks," Simon Underdown, an anthropologist at Oxford Brookes University, who was not part of the study, told Mail Online. "Crucially this paper shows that by at least 350,000 years ago fire was being regularly used as a tool by our ancestors." 

He said this is especially significant because "having the ability to make and control fire, along with projectile weapons and stone tools, further cemented our position as an apex predator of the Pleistocene."

The findings of the study were published in the Journal of Human Evolution.