Ancient lakeside settlement thrived on readily available driftwood fuel

Nearly 800,000 years ago, early humans settled repeatedly beside a lake in what is now northern Israel — not by chance, but drawn by the quiet logic of survival. Microscopic charcoal fragments recovered from Gesher Benot Ya'aqov reveal that these communities understood how to read a landscape, gathering driftwood deposited naturally along the shore to sustain fires for cooking, toolmaking, and communal life. In the ash of eight identified plant species, researchers have found not just evidence of fire, but evidence of foresight — a people who chose their home partly because the lake itself kep