BBC Countryfile Magazine

Ellie Harrison

Put a lone human in front of the ocean, the sky or a fire and under they go, into a primal hypnosis. Some kind of brain-calm descends on the observer, a retina flash to a distant time.

For most of two million years, we have used fire, delivering better nutrition and energy, allowing our brains to gradually get bigger. Otzi, the 5,000-year-old Iceman discovered in

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