Modern monkey handiwork may be putting human evolution knowledge into question
CTV
New research from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology describes stone-tool resembling artifacts made by monkeys in Thailand that may indicate that the first human use of stone tools was accidental.
Monkeys in Thailand may be challenging the history of human evolution through their nut-cracking abilities.
New research from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany describes stone-tool resembling artifacts made by monkeys in Thailand that may suggest the first human use of stone tools was not intentional.
The researchers studied long-tailed macaques in Phang Nga National Park in Thailand that were found to be cracking open hard-shelled nuts using stone tools..
The monkeys were often observed to break hammerstones and anvils to get to the nuts, which would result in broken stones scattered all around the landscape.
Through comparison to the earliest record of stone tools, many of these “accidental” broken stones appeared to have similar characteristics of stone tools often found in some of the earliest archaeological sites in East Africa.
"The fact that these macaques use stone tools to process nuts is not surprising, as they also use tools to gain access to various shellfish as well,” said lead author Tomos Proffitt, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute, in a press release. “What is interesting is that in doing so they accidently produce a substantial archaeological record of their own that is partly indistinguishable from some hominin artifacts.
Prior to this discovery, sharp-edged tools were believed to be the first stone tools intentionally made by humans, but this research challenges that, as well as the understanding of an aspect of human evolution.