![]() named ‘ education by master-apprenticeship’. Long-term primatological field observations have enabled the study of nut cracking in wild chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes), an activity that infant individuals (of about 3.5 years old) begin to learn by observing their mothers and other members of the community in a process that Matsuzawa et al. The results can be directly compared with findings from other studies on modern humans and wild chimpanzees, and contribute to the creation of a larger dataset with which to better understand the role of percussive activities in human evolution. We used techno-typological descriptions and low magnification microscopic and use-wear spatial distribution analyses of captive chimpanzee experimental artefacts (see below). We collected raw materials at Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania) and conducted a series of experiments with captive chimpanzees at the Kumamoto Sanctuary (Japan). This study provided a unique opportunity to develop a comparative approach, as it combined primatological behavioural observations and analysis of stone tools used by captive chimpanzees. As the archaeological record also contains pounding tools that can be compared with battered artefacts produced by modern primates, it is possible to develop cross-disciplinary comparative frameworks. However, the models generated have limitations, as they directly compare flaked archaeological tools with pounding tools used in chimpanzee nut cracking activities. ![]() Research in recent decades has focused on the use of chimpanzees as a reference to model hominin behaviour and the emergence of stone knapping. Pounding activities could have played an important role in hominin behaviour and probably contributed to the emergence of stone tool knapping the latter is a major research topic in the archaeology of human evolution and the subject of much debate. The use of pounding tools is a common behaviour recognized in both living non-human primates and the archaeological record. It has been suggested that prior to the appearance of stone tool knapping, hominins probably used various organic tools that are archaeologically invisible. Thus, comparison of hominin and chimpanzee products of behaviour are apt, and the use of living non-human primates as an analogy on which to model and understand earlier stages of human evolution, has become more relevant than ever. At 3.3 Mya, the only hominins known (and therefore the likely makers of the Lomekwian tools) had brains no bigger than living African apes. Therefore, stone flaking might not be associated exclusively with the genus Homo, but may have occurred in other taxa. The Lomekwi assemblage shows that hominins were intentionally flaking stone tools, and suggests the emergence of stone tool knapping during a period close to the divergence of panin and hominin lineages. This has important evolutionary implications, especially following the recent discovery of the earliest stone tools (Lomekwian) at Lomekwi 3 (West Turkana, Kenya), which has pushed back the dawn of stone flaking to 3.3 Mya. This study represents the first direct comparison of chimpanzee pounding tools and archaeological material, and thus may contribute to a better understanding of hominin percussive activities.īetween 6 and 8 million years ago, the extinct relatives of chimpanzees ( Pan) and hominins shared a common ancestor who probably used unmodified stones as tools. The approach used in this study may help to stablish a framework with which to interpret archaeological assemblages and improve understanding of use-wear formation processes on pounding tools used by chimpanzees. Our results show specific patterns of use-wear distribution across the active surfaces of pounding tools, which reveal some similarities with traces on archaeological percussive objects from the Early Stone Age, and are consistent with traces on other experimental pounding tools used by modern humans. We examined captive chimpanzee pounding tools using a combination of technological analysis, use-wear distribution, and micro-wear analysis. We present the results of a series of experiments at the Kumamoto Sanctuary in Japan, in which captive chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes) performed several nut cracking sessions using raw materials from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.
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