Pre-Columbian monkey tools

Current BiologyVolume 26, Issue 13, 11 July 2016, Pages R521-R522

(Letter)

• Haslam, M.aEmail Author,
 
• Luncz, L.V.a,
 
• Staff, R.A.a,
 
• Bradshaw, F.a,
 
• Ottoni, E.B.b,
 
• Falótico, T.ab
 
• View Correspondence (jump link)

• aResearch Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
• bInstitute of Psychology, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract View references (10)

Stone tools reveal worldwide innovations in human behaviour over the past three million years [1]. However, the only archaeological report of pre-modern non-human animal tool use comes from three Western chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) sites in Côte d'Ivoire, aged between 4.3 and 1.3 thousand years ago (kya) [2]. This anthropocentrism limits our comparative insight into the emergence and development of technology, weakening our evolutionary models [3]. Here, we apply archaeological techniques to a distinctive stone tool assemblage created by a non-human animal in the New World, the Brazilian bearded capuchin monkey (Sapajus libidinosus). Wild capuchins at Serra da Capivara National Park (SCNP) use stones to pound open defended food, including locally indigenous cashew nuts [4], and we demonstrate that this activity dates back at least 600 to 700 years. Capuchin stone hammers and anvils are therefore the oldest non-human tools known outside of Africa, opening up to scientific scrutiny questions on the origins and spread of tool use in New World monkeys, and the mechanisms — social, ecological and cognitive — that support primate technological evolution. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd

• ISSN: 09609822
• CODEN: CUBLE
• Source Type: Journal
• Original language: English

• DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.05.046
• Document Type: Letter
• Publisher: Cell Press

• References (10)

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  Haslam, M.; Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; email:michael.haslam@rlaha.ox.ac.uk 
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