Example of a long-tailed macaque utilizing a stone tool to gain access to food. Credit: Lydia V. Luncz
Macaques unintentionally developed stone pieces that bear a resemblance to some of the earliest stone artifacts crafted by early hominins.
The research study concentrates on fresh analyses of stone tools used by long-tailed macaques in Thailands Phang Nga National Park. These primates make use of stone tools to open tough-shelled nuts, often triggering their hammerstones and anvils to break in the procedure.
The collection of fragmented stones that arises from this process is both significant in size and thoroughly distributed throughout the terrain. Various artifacts exhibit the same traits normally associated with purposefully crafted stone tools discovered at some of the earliest archaeological sites in East Africa.
” The capability to deliberately make sharp stone flakes is viewed as a critical point in the advancement of hominins, and understanding how and when this happened is a substantial question that is typically examined through the study of past artifacts and fossils. Our research study shows that stone tool production is not special to humans and our forefathers,” says lead author Tomos Proffitt, a scientist at limit Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
” The reality that these macaques use stone tools to process nuts is not unexpected, as they likewise use tools to get to different shellfish too. What is fascinating is that, in doing so they inadvertently produce a significant historical record of their own that is partially identical from some hominin artifacts.”
Examples of sharp-edged flakes produced inadvertently by long-tailed macaques. Credit: Proffitt et al, 2023
New insights into the development of stone tool technology
By comparing the unintentionally produced stone fragments made by the macaques with those from a few of the earliest historical sites, the researchers were able to show that numerous of the artifacts produced by monkeys fall within the variety of those frequently related to early hominins.
Co-lead author Jonathan Reeves highlights: “The fact that these artifacts can be produced through nut splitting has ramifications for the series of behaviors we relate to sharp-edged flakes in the archaeological record.”.
The freshly discovered macaque stone tools use new insights into how the first innovation might have started in our earliest forefathers and that its origin might have been connected to similar nut cracking habits which might be substantially older than the existing earliest archaeological record.
” Cracking nuts utilizing stone hammers and anvils, similar to what some primates do today, has been recommended by some as a possible precursor to deliberate stone tool production. This research study, in addition to previous ones released by our group, unlocks to being able to identify such a historical signature in the future,” states Lydia Luncz, senior author of the study and head of the Technological Primates Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
” This discovery demonstrates how living primates can help scientists investigate the origin and advancement of tool usage in our own family tree”.
Reference: “Wild macaques challenge the origin of deliberate tool production” by Tomos Proffitt, Jonathan S. Reeves, David R. Braun, Suchinda Malaivijitnond and Lydia V. Luncz, 10 March 2023, Science Advances.DOI: 10.1126/ sciadv.ade8159.