Wildfire impacts ecosystems, climate, carbon cycling, societies, and human health. Quantification of these impacts relies upon climate and fire models, which are constrained by historical observations that are limited to the past 30 years. But in regions where records are sparse, like Equatorial Asia (EQAS), fire activities are assumed to be insignificant before the 1960s. We present a 200-year charcoal record from Lake Lading, Indonesia, which shows substantial fire variability since the 19th century. We identify a significant role of humans in controlling fire activity in Java, which could potentially extend to other parts of EQAS. These results contradict assumptions made in current fire emissions estimates and suggest an oversimplification of the spatiotemporal complexity of fire in EQAS before the 1960s. Our study highlights the need for more high-resolution charcoal records in the tropics to improve fire models and emissions estimates.

野火影响生态系统，气候，碳循环，社会和人类健康。对这些影响的量化依赖于气候和火灾模型，这些模型受限于过去30年的历史观察的约束。但是在赤道记录稀少的地区，例如赤道亚洲（EQAS），人们认为1960年代之前的火灾活动微不足道。我们提供了来自印度尼西亚拉德湖的200年木炭记录，该记录显示了自19世纪以来的重大火灾变化。我们确定了人类在控制Java中的火灾活动中的重要作用，这有可能扩展到EQAS的其他部分。这些结果与当前火灾排放估算中的假设相矛盾，并暗示了EQAS中火灾时空复杂性的过分简化。