Monkey Business

Monkeys in Brazil were observed pounding rocks together and creating almost identical to the one of the earliest forms of tools used by humans.

17:26 20 October 2016

A stone split to form a razor-sharp cutting edge is recognised to be one of the earliest forms of tools used by the ancestors of modern humans.

 

Monkeys that were observed in the wild of Brazil were observed to be creating almost identical stone blades.

 

The researchers who made the discovery said that their findings challenge scientists’ understanding of our past saying that such activity was limited to humans and their ancestors.

 

Lead author Dr Tomos Proffitt, an Oxford University archaeologist, said: “This does not mean that the earliest archaeological material in East Africa was not made by hominins.

 

“It does, however, raise interesting questions about the possible ways this stone tool technology developed before the earliest examples in the archaeological record appeared.

 

“It also tells us what this stone tool technology might look like. There are important questions too about the uniqueness of early hominin behaviour.”

 

His co-author, Dr Michael Haslam, leader of the Primate Archaeology at Oxford, added: “The emergence of sharp-edged stone tools that were fashioned and hammered to create a cutting tool was a big part of that story,” he said.

 

“The fact that we have discovered monkeys can produce the same result does throw a bit of a spanner in the works in our thinking on evolutionary behaviour and how we attribute such artefacts.”

 

But he added that even though making the flakes might not be “unique” to humans “the manner in which they used them is still very different to what the monkeys seem capable of”.