Researchers have discovered the earliest known instance of human-created fire, which took place in the east of England 400,000 years ago.

The new discovery, in the village of Barnham, pushes the origin of human fire-making back by more than 350,000 years, far earlier than previously thought.

The team say they found baked earth together with the earliest Stone Age lighter – consisting of a flint that was bashed against a rock called pyrite, also known as fool’s gold, to create a spark.

From the journal Nature