v7.0 Major Update: Added Table 1 with 10-site chronological falsification of agricultural model showing 0% cultivation across 990-410 ka. Added Figure 1 showing 400-ka hiatus between fire-based sedentism and agriculture. Added Figure 2 with GIS viewshed analysis of smoke-beacon network Qesem-Hayonim-Tabun. Added Falsifiability section with 3 risky predictions. Argument refined: "The hearth unified. Grain scaled." Abstract: The Neolithic Revolution model posits that cereal domestication ~10 ka enabled sedentism. This model faces a 400-ka chronological hiatus. We propose the Multifunctional Hearth Model: pyrocognitive aggregation via voluntary fire appropriation created Sedentism 1.0 at 420 ka. The hearth functioned as the first multifunctional urban platform—ritual, cremation, thermoregulation, tool-making, defense, pest-control, social cooking, communication, and smoke-beacon geospatial networks. Agriculture emerged 400 ka later as a demographic solution to fire-based aggregation, not its cause.
Sebastián Alamilla Méndez (Thu,) studied this question.