Primitive man was more concerned with fire as a source of warmth and as a means of making food than as a source of light. Before he discovered less labourious ways of making fire, he had to preserve it, and whenever he went on a journey he carried a firebrand with him.
His discovery that the firebrand from which the torch may well have developed could be used for illumination was probably incidental purpose of preserving a flame.
Lamps too probably developed by accident. Early man may have had his first conception of a lamp while watching a twig of fibre burning in the molten fat dropped from roasting carcas. All he had to do was to fashion a vessel to contain fat and float a lighted reed in it.
Such lamps, which were made of hollowed stones or seashells, have persisted in identical form up to quite recent times.