At the very beginning I must admit that it is very hard for me to decide what invention in history of mankind was the most significant. I have at least few options, for example antibiotic, internet, wheel, bridge, fire, electricity. These are all things we cannot imagine living without. Every one, even the smallest invention influenced our lives so much that right now we are dependent not only on ourselves but also on artificial objects and states, which were discovered long before our birth. If Mesopotamian people had not discovered wheel, we could not be able to travel, work and generaly speaking to live our normal lifes. Furthermore, if footbridge had not been invented, we could not been able to travel to the opposite bank of a river and living in such cities like, for instance, Wroclaw would be much more complicated that it is right now. But in my humble opinion none of this things would come into being if there was no fire.
At the beginning of mankind, people were using fire only when it was produced by natural powers (for example thunders or volcanic eruptions).Than, after having realised its profits (like light, warmth) the ancient civilisations learnt how to support it. This noteworthy discovery is dated for approximately 1200 to 600 hundret years ago and the first proven usage of fire had place 300 hundret years ago somewhere in China.
Unfortunately the ability of making fire came into being no sooner than 100 hundret years ago. It is supposed that fire was firstly created accidentally during the tooling of stone. Not numerous communities which can still be found nowadays, kindle the fire mainly by quick rubbing hard timber with soft and dry pieces of wood. This method was made better during the Neolith era by speeding the solid wood with a string what was moved back and forth. .
After using this rather unsofisticated manner, people started using flints (which were the milestone step in discovering matches) then matches and finally lighters.