Hi EP

I think the current evidence on fire puts early use c. 1.8 mya, at least according to Bernard Wood and colleagues. The real solid evidence for controlled fire is ~ 1 myr younger, but ash levels are known from H. habilis/ergaster sites. With Wood and co. I think it was used in food processing and that allowed the leap from habilis to ergaster/erectus.

Clothes are probably quite a bit later, who knows? Abrasion marks on the tools might tell us something.

Intelligence in humans certainly took anything but a direct path developing, with several distinct plateaus that seemed stable for kiloyears. An example, Modern humans took ~ 70 kyr to harvest grass grains and maybe ~ 20 kyr to turn that into early agriculture, which then remained "stuck" in certain regions for ~ 5 kyr. I wonder how different our world would be if those steps were taken earlier than the last glacial maximum. Would Neanderthals and Erects have persisted into civilised times then? The last glacial maximum seems like a logical time for both to have collapsed in Europe and Java respectively - it was a damn tough time.

Adam