For clearly know about the Formation of the Lantern Festival, at first we must talk about the discovery of the Fire in the old stone age.
The retaining and utilization of fire
Paleolithic-Neolithic ages (about 2.5 million years~4000 years ago)
Fire was the totem of human ancestors.
In the history of human development, the fire brought human being into a civilized age.
Mankind experienced following stages concerning the use of fire:
First, man used natural fire and kept it;
Second, man drilled wood to make fire and kept the fire live cinder and started a new pile of fire.
Third, man stroke flint, tinder and flint steel to make fire.
In the recorded history of the development of mankind anthropoid ape could walk erectly, chisel and use simple implements and make use of fire. Fire light brought human beings into a society of fruit-gathering, animal-hunting and primitive agriculture, shedding light on the incipient civilizations of human beings.
The invention of man-made ways of making fire and the use of fire were epoch-making events in the economic activities of human beings. The use of fire was not only an essential means by which human beings could live, but an indispensable weapon with which humans unmasked the secret of mysterious material world. All the cultural relics, gathered after the discovery of the fossils of the apemen "Yuanmou Men" which were unearthed at Yuanmou County of Yuanan Province and known as the earliest primitive human species of far, testfied that ancestors of the Chinese nation had a 1.7 million-year history of using fire, which was the earliest trace of using fire in the world as well as in my country. Since then, fire with its splendid glory entered all kinds of cultures of human beings.
