Evidence suggests regular fire use by hominins at least a million years ago.

“there's a wonderful cave in South Africa where they can find over and over evidence of burnt material and it's just layered repeatedly in the sediment all in the same cave where of course caves don't catch on fire and so you know they're bringing fire in you know that they're using it regularly does it guarantee they're controlling it well they have to control it for a while or it would it would have gone out you know they're feeding it they understand how it works so that's at least a million years ago”