quote: The chimpanzees of Ivory Coast's Taï National Park in western Africa are quite handy with a hammer stone. They use the large stones to expertly smash panda nuts and other food sources, chipping and flaking them in the process—a feat humans would be hard-pressed to mimic. After all, the stones are much larger than can easily be grasped by a human hand and require much more strength than the human arm can generate. Now archaeologist Julio Mercader of the University of Calgary and his team have found worn hammers and stone fragments over 4,000 years old that apparently were used by chimps.
posted
Hardly surprising, is it? Humans and our ancestors used stone tools for literally millions of years, certainly a much longer period than anything approaching anatomically modern humans has existed. The real surprise would be if stone tools were a recent development for the chimps. In fact, come to think of it, stone use goes back so far it's probably older than the chimp-human common ancestor. So, um, duh.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
I tend to agree with your assumptions in regard to chimp tool use, but as the article indicates, there have been competing theories out there suggesting that chimps picked some of their skills up from observing humans. I think that's an unnecessarily complicated theory, myself.
To be honest, I mostly posted this because I really wanted write the title for this thread. Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:No wonder the poor pandas have such a difficult time breeding.
Indeed. When you factor in the probably reaction of the panda, it suggests that this could be one more factor in the declining populations of both species.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:They use the large stones to expertly smash panda nuts...chipping and flaking them in the process...the stones are much larger than can easily be grasped by a human hand and require much more strength than the human arm can generate.
Wow, those must be some seriously large nuts! I can't even imagine...
Posts: 1256 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, that's really !exciting! archeological news. Since there is evidence that apes cracked nuts ~4000years ago, and there is no possibility that they learned by observing and imitating humans: We know for sure that Adam and Eve didn't get kicked out of the Garden of Eden until ~2000BC or so. Quite an improvement over the 4004BC Expulsion in BishopUssher's chronology.
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[ROFL]](graemlins/rofl.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
