Uncovering the "Chimpanzee Stone Age"
Summary:
An adult chimpanzee in Bossou, Guinea uses hammer and anvil stones to crack nuts as younger individuals look on. From Haslam et al., 2009.
Before 1859 the idea that humans lived alongside the mammoths, ground sloths, and saber-toothed cats of the not-too-distant past was almost heretical. Not only was there no irrefutable evidence that our species stretched so far back in time, but the very notion that we could have survived alongside such imposing Pleistocene mammals strained credulity. Contrary to what might be immediately expected, however, it was not Darwin's famous abstract On the Origin of Species that changed appraisals of human prehistory. Instead it was a collection of stone tools found mingled among the bones of extinct mammals found in deposits on either side of the English Channel.
The discovery of stone tools from places like Brixham Cave in England and France's Somme Valley confirmed that industry was a very old human enterprise, and so some scholars naturally felt quite comfortable in giving out species the honorary title of "Man the Toolmaker." The ability of our species to make and use tools clearly separated us from all other organisms, at least until it was discovered that chimpanzees, too, made and used tools. More than that, studies since the 1960's have confirmed that different populations of chimpanzees have distinctive tool cultures affected by the contingencies of their surroundings, and a recent study published two years ago in PNAS illustrates that these cultures of tool use among non-human primates stretch back at least 4,300 years. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
Content analysis:
Stratigraphic context:
| Recognized stratigraphic terms [n]: refresh | Pleistocene [1]
|
|---|
| Agenames chronostratigraphy [rating]: | Pleistocene [0.1]
Quaternary [0.1]
Cenozoic [0.1]
Phanerozoic [0.1]
|
|---|
Geographic context:
| Location | Country | Latitude | Longitude |
|---|
| Bossou | GV | 7.645 | -8.50972 |
| England | UK | 52 | 0 |
| France | FR | 46 | 2 |
| Guinea | GV | 11 | -10 |
| Somme | FR | 47.1167 | 2.21667 |
Keywords:
cave in england, chimpanzee, chimpanzees, contingencies, credulity, extinct mammals, ground sloths, hammer and anvil, honorary title, human enterprise, human prehistory, human primates, irrefutable evidence, mammoths, origin of species, pleistocene mammals, saber toothed cats, stone age, stone tools, toolmaker
