When humans learned to control fire is controversial in archaeology. It is an important question because, according to many researchers, fire control defines the beginning of human behavior and culture. The oldest archaeological evidence of fire comes from Africa and dates to the early Stone Age. The problem with these fire findings is that they are ambiguous in terms of their correlation with archaeological material and therefore whether the fire evidence is actually caused by the great apes living at that time. Over the past decade, the relationship of Neanderthal man to fire has been debated. What has caused this debate is mainly the lack of fire-making tools from Neanderthal settlements and the fact that several sites lack traces of fire. Thus, some researchers have argued that Neanderthals were not able to make fire themselves, but collected and used it when it was available through natural fires (the opportunistic fire use hypothesis). In this research project, the hypotheses regarding Neanderthals' relationship with fire (routine or opportunistic users) are evaluated on a large source material from Western Europe. The research project documents the presence and absence of fire traces from Neanderthal settlements and compares them statistically with fire traces from early modern human settlements. This comparison is intended to provide a framework for evaluating the hypotheses of routine versus opportunistic fire use, as it is recognized that modern humans used and produced fire routinely.