Most people in the US are vaguely aware of the myth of Prometheus, that he gave fire to mankind. Fewer are aware that he is said to have stolen it from the Olympian gods, and that is probably a later addition to the myth; as a titan himself it’s not clear why he would need to steal it.
Consider this with regard to Prometheus: The two major milestones usually cited in pre-human pre-history are of course the first making of (edged) tools millions of years ago, which gave rise to regular hunting, and later the first control of fire, the ability to make fire as needed, which gave rise to cooking.
For the first, I guess it’s possible that the edged tools were just carried everywhere in-hands… but it seems very damned awkward to have lasted for millions of years. Carrying tools very far, especially very sharp tools, requires some way to attach them to your body, which takes forethought. For the means to create fire, we have a whole new level of complexity- almost universally around the world, a large part of the art of fire-making was/is using products of the previous fire to facilitate creating the next one, so… ash, char, the actual tools of ignition whether friction or spark, the various special tinders that need to be collected, all of which needs to be done long before the immediate need for fire, and then the actual act of carrying all this stuff and keeping it dry, which necessitates at least a pouch, a container of some kind and cordage to attach it to the body… we’re suddenly a LONG way from the caricature of a mostly-ape caveman. There are birds and chimpanzees and such that make very simple tools for specialized tasks, but they make them on-site as they are needed and simply drop them the instant they are through.. though it’s not really too hard to see a survival/evolutionary advantage for those who could KEEP the termite mound (or whatever) in mind long enough to go some distance to get the materials to make the tools and succeed in returning with them, perhaps that’s how the ability to anticipate future need arose gradually.
The edged tools may have required foresight to be made ahead of time and carried before they were actually needed, but fire took that to a whole new level.
Also consider, then, that the name “Prometheus” literally means “foresight”. His brother’s name, ”Epimetheus”, means something like “hindsight“, and the myth is that Prometheus thought only of the future and anticipating things to come, and his brother thought only of the past and what can be learned from it. Because of that, the concept of Prometheus giving fire to mankind is explicitly saying, on a different level, that mastery of fire became possible because of foresight… that fire was given to us by foresight. I suspect that it was one of those positive-reinforcement cycles, foresight enabled our use of fire, and forever after that the dependence on fire taught us to use more and more foresight.
In that light, it’s really a shame that we don’t routinely need or teach it anymore.
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– Robert the Wombat