Technological Origins: Primate Perspectives and Early Hominin Tool Use in Africa

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susana Carvalho ◽  
Megan Beardmore-Herd
Keyword(s):  
Tool Use ◽  
Brain Size ◽  
Lithic Technology ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Linear Process ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Last Common Ancestor ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Tool Manufacture ◽  
Early 21St Century

The origin of technology is believed to have marked a major adaptive shift in human evolution. Understanding the evolutionary process(es) underlying the first human adaptation to tool use, and the subsequent process(es) that led Homo sapiens to become the only extant primate fully dependent on technology, is one of the most stimulating topics of research of present-day archaeology. New fields of research have been founded (e.g. primate archaeology, Pliocene archaeology) during the quest to find out how old technology is, where it originated, and who were the first tool users. Historically, the vast majority of the information on this topic comes from the study of lithic (stone) tools, tools whose manufacture was generally believed to be a uniquely human characteristic until well into the 1960s. The production of lithic technology was linked first to the origin of the earliest hominins (the taxonomic group comprising modern humans, extinct human species, and all immediate human ancestors), being thought to have co-evolved with traits such as bipedalism or hunting/scavenging, and later to the evolution of the genus Homo and accompanying increases in brain size. As a result of breakthroughs in the field of primatology, and greater interdisciplinary work between archaeologists and primatologists, a paradigm shift in beliefs surrounding the uniqueness of human technology is underway. Following discoveries from the second half of the 20th century and the early 21st century, habitual tool use, tool manufacture, and the production of flakes are now known to occur in extant non-human species, firmly decoupling brain size expansion, bipedalism, and the origins of technology. Knapped stone tools and cut-marked bones have been discovered dating to ca. half a million years before the earliest evidence of Homo, giving rise to the possibility that earlier, previously unconsidered hominins, or even other extinct non-human primates, could have been responsible for the inception of tool use and manufacture. Following these advances, it is reasonable to hypothesize that the origins of technology may lie much further back in time than the earliest discovered modified stone tools—perhaps as far back as the late Miocene with the last common ancestor of Homo and Pan. Moreover, discoveries of lithic technology in more distantly related species, where convergent evolution is the most parsimonious explanation, strongly suggest the existence of multiple evolutionary pathways for technological emergence. While there is still much to unearth, the extension of the antiquity of modified stone tools, combined with the increased focus on interdisciplinary studies between archaeologists, primatologists, and paleoanthropologists, has gone a long way in overturning outdated beliefs by demonstrating that the development of technology is unlikely to have been a simple, linear process resulting from a single event or factor in the evolutionary history of humans.

scholarly journals Habitual Stone-Tool Aided Extractive Foraging in White-Faced Capuchins, Cebus Capucinus

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brendan J Barrett ◽  
Claudio M Monteza-moreno ◽  
Tamara DOGANDŽIĆ ◽  
Nicolas Zwyns ◽  
Alicia IBÁÑEZ ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tool Use ◽  
National Park ◽  
Resource Limitation ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Cebus Capucinus ◽  
Hermit Crabs ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
Extractive Foraging ◽  
First Case ◽  
One Year

ABSTRACTHabitual reliance on tool use is a marked behavioral difference between wild robust (genus Sapajus) and gracile (genus Cebus) capuchin monkeys. Despite being well studied and having a rich repertoire of social and extractive foraging traditions, Cebus sp have rarely been observed engaging in tool use and have never been reported to use stone tools. In contrast, habitual tool use and stone-tool use by Sapajus is widespread. We discuss factors which might explain these differences in patterns of tool use between Cebus and Sapajus. We then report the first case of habitual stone-tool use in a gracile capuchin: a population of white-faced capuchins (Cebus capucinus imitator) in Coiba National Park, Panama who habitually rely on hammerstone and anvil tool use to access structurally protected food items in coastal areas including Terminalia catappa seeds, hermit crabs, marine snails, terrestrial crabs, and other items. This behavior has persisted on one island in Coiba National Park since at least 2004. From one year of camera trapping, we found that stone tool use is strongly male-biased. Of the 205 unique camera-trap-days where tool use was recorded, adult females were never observed to use stone-tools, although they were frequently recorded at the sites and engaged in scrounging behavior. Stone-tool use occurs year-round in this population, and over half of all identifiable individuals were observed participating. At the most active tool use site, 83.2% of days where capuchins were sighted corresponded with tool use. Capuchins inhabiting the Coiba archipelago are highly terrestrial, under decreased predation pressure and potentially experience resource limitation compared to mainland populations– three conditions considered important for the evolution of stone tool use. White-faced capuchin tool use in Coiba National Park thus offers unique opportunities to explore the ecological drivers and evolutionary underpinnings of stone tool use in a comparative within- and between-species context.

scholarly journals Reconstruction of Two Mother-Infant Dyads and Obstetrical Consequences of the Mesolithic-Neolithic Transition: A Case Study from Lepenski Vir and Vlasac (Serbia)

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 60-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Jovanović ◽  
P. Frémondière ◽  
S. Stefanović
Keyword(s):  
Brain Size ◽  
Small Sample Size ◽  
Small Sample ◽  
World Population ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Pelvic Morphology ◽  
Neonatal Birth Weight ◽  
Delivery Outcomes ◽  
Lower Protein

The current world population of approximately seven billion people shows that despite the complexities of human birthing, the human species is thriving. Changes in human pelvic morphology resulting from bipedalism and encephalisation, often described as the “obstetric dilemma”, have made the birthing process extremely difficult and risky for both mothers and neonates. The major Mesolithic- Neolithic shift in lifestyle could have had important obstetric consequences. It is often hypothesised that the shift to an agricultural diet, with a lower protein content and higher glycaemic loading than the hunter-gatherer diet, could have led to a decrease in maternal height and an increase in neonatal birth weight, brain size and foetal-pelvic strain, which may have exacerbated the obstetric dilemma. The Mesolithic-Neolithic osteological collection from the Danube Gorges (7400-5500 cal BC, Balkans) provides material (2 pelvises and a neonate skull) to test this hypothesis by virtually reconstructing the fossil dyads and their foetal-pelvic relationship.We compared these dyads with a large obstetrical sample of mother-child dyads with a known birthing history, conducting a lineardiscriminant analysis in order to predict the most probable delivery outcomes for the prehistoric dyads. The results suggest that delivery was dystocic for the Mesolithic motherchild dyad and eutocic for the Neolithic mother-child dyad; obstetrically, the former is notably more efficient. However, due to the small sample size, further research is required with a larger series in order to determine whether the development of obstetrically efficient pelvic bones in the Neolithic was widespread and whether it had an impact on the birthing process and thus potentially contributed to the increasing size of the population.

Paleolithic Personal Ornaments from Xiaogushan Cave: The Formation of Early Symbolism and Its Regional Features in Northeast China

2022 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 15-23
Author(s):  
A. P. Zabiyako ◽  
Junzheng Wang
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Northeast China ◽  
Lithic Technology ◽  
Northern China ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
Upper Paleolithic ◽  
Regional Context ◽  
Regional Features ◽  
Important Marker

This article presents the results of a comparative study of personal ornaments from Xiaogushan Cave in the interregional and regional context of the formation of modern behavior. Xiaogushan is a Paleolithic and Neolithic site in Northeast China. In the Upper Paleolithic layers of the site, apart from tools, personal ornaments were found— pendants made from animal teeth, and a decorated bone disc. The date of the site is a matter of debate; ornaments from layers 2 and 3 date to ~30 ka BP. Like other bone artifacts (harpoon, needles, point), and together with types of stone tools and lithic technology, they mirror the local process of Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition. We focus on similarities between the Xiaogushan ornaments and Upper Paleolithic pendants from northern China and Eurasia in general, attesting to modern behavior during the transitional period and being an important marker of the spread of Upper Paleolithic innovations from the centers to the periphery. Xiaogushan is the fi rst Upper Paleolithic industry in Northeast China known to date, and demonstrates skills and symbolic behavior typical of the initial Upper Paleolithic. The Xiaogushan pendants follow the general tendencies, while being specifi c markers of the evolution of symbolic behavior in Eastern Eurasia.

Cradle Under the Canopy The Forest Origins of our Ape and Hominin Ancestors and the Tropical Forest Forays of the Genus Homo

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Tool Use ◽  
Pan Paniscus ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
Last Common Ancestor ◽  
Great Ape ◽  
Tropical Environments ◽  
Genus Homo ◽  
In Captivity ◽  
Game Hunting ◽  
The Tropics

The evolutionary proximity of the non-human great apes to us is often stressed in studies of animals, such as Kanzi, a bonobo (Pan paniscus) bred in captivity, that demonstrate their capacity to undertake tool-use and even utilize and comprehend language (Toth et al., 1993; Savage-Rumbaugh and Lewin, 1996; Schick et al., 1999). Likewise, studies of chimpanzees (Pan spp.) have highlighted the similarity of their emotional and empathetic capacities to those of humans (Parr et al., 2005; Campbell and de Waal, 2014). However, as noted by Savage- Rumbaugh and Lewin (1996), in palaeoanthropology and archaeology more broadly, the emergence of the hominin clade and, later, our species, is referenced in terms of the ‘chasm’ between ourselves and other extant great apes. Indeed, despite our genetic and behavioural proximity, extant non-human great ape taxa are often popularly characterized as living fossils of how we used to be. They are used as analogues for the subsistence and behaviour of the Last Common Ancestor (LCA) of humans and non-human great apes (Clutton-Brock and Harvey, 1977; Goodall, 1986; Foley and Lewin, 2004) and it is almost as if the fact that they still occupy the tropical environments in which these hominoids likely evolved (though see Elton, 2008) allows them to be treated as static comparisons (Figure 3.1). Since Darwin wrote the Descent of Man in 1871, the forests of the tropics, and their modern non-human great ape inhabitants, have tended to be perceived as being left behind as the hominin clade gained increasingly ‘human’ traits of tool-use, medium to large game hunting, and upright locomotion on open ‘savanna’ landscapes (Dart, 1925; Potts, 1998; Klein, 1999). From this perspective it is perhaps unsurprising that tropical forests are seen as alien to the genus Homo and its closest hominin ancestors.

scholarly journals Habitual stone-tool-aided extractive foraging in white-faced capuchins, Cebus capucinus

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (8) ◽  
pp. 181002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brendan J. Barrett ◽  
Claudio M. Monteza-Moreno ◽  
Tamara Dogandžić ◽  
Nicolas Zwyns ◽  
Alicia Ibáñez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tool Use ◽  
National Park ◽  
Resource Limitation ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Cebus Capucinus ◽  
Hermit Crabs ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
Extractive Foraging ◽  
Marine Snails ◽  
First Case

Habitual reliance on tool use is a marked behavioural difference between wild robust (genus Sapajus ) and gracile (genus Cebus ) capuchin monkeys. Despite being well studied and having a rich repertoire of social and extractive foraging traditions, Cebus sp. rarely use tools and have never been observed using stone tools. By contrast, habitual tool use by Sapajus is widespread. We review theory and discuss factors which might explain these differences in patterns of tool use between Cebus and Sapajus . We then report the first case of habitual stone tool use in a gracile capuchin: a population of white-faced capuchins ( Cebus capucinus imitator ) in Coiba National Park, Panama who habitually rely on hammerstone and anvil tool use to access structurally protected food items in coastal areas including Terminalia catappa seeds, hermit crabs, marine snails, terrestrial crabs and other items. This behaviour has persisted on one island in Coiba National Park since at least 2004. From 1 year of camera trapping, we found that stone tool use is strongly male-biased. Of the 205 camera trap days where tool use was recorded, adult females were never observed to use stone tools, although they were frequently recorded at the sites and engaged in scrounging behaviour. Stone tool use occurs year-round in this population; over half of all identifiable individuals were observed participating. At the most active tool use site, 83.2% of days where capuchins were sighted corresponded with tool use. Capuchins inhabiting the Coiba archipelago are highly terrestrial, under decreased predation pressure and potentially experience resource limitation compared to mainland populations—three conditions considered important for the evolution of stone tool use. White-faced capuchin tool use in Coiba National Park thus offers unique opportunities to explore the ecological drivers and evolutionary underpinnings of stone tool use in a comparative within- and between-species context.

TOOLS AND BRAINS IN BIRDS

Behaviour ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 139 (7) ◽  
pp. 939-973 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis Boire ◽  
Nektaria Nicolakakis ◽  
Louis Lefebvre
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Tool Use ◽  
Brain Size ◽  
Short Note ◽  
Relative Size ◽  
The Body ◽  
Whole Brain ◽  
Strong Concentration ◽  
The World ◽  
Innovation Rate

AbstractTools are traditionally defined as objects that are used as an extension of the body and held directly in the hand or mouth. By these standards, a vulture breaking an egg by hitting it with a stone uses a tool, but a gull dropping an egg on a rock does not. This distinction between true and borderline (or proto-tool) cases has been criticized for its arbitrariness and anthropocentrism. We show here that relative size of the neostriatum and whole brain distinguish the true and borderline categories in birds using tools to obtain food or water. From two sources, the specialized literature on tools and an innovation data base gathered in the short note sections of 68 journals in 7 areas of the world, we collected 39 true (e.g. use of probes, hammers, sponges, scoops) and 86 borderline (e.g. bait fishing, battering and dropping on anvils, holding with wedges and skewers) cases of tool use in 104 species from 15 parvorders. True tool users have a larger mean residual brain size (regressed against body weight) than do users of borderline tools, confirming the distinction in the literature. In multiple regressions, residual brain size and residual size of the neostriatum (one of the areas in the avian telencephalon thought to be equivalent to the mammalian neocortex) are the best predictors of true tool use reports per taxon. Innovation rate is the best predictor of borderline tool use distribution. Despite the strong concentration of true tool use cases in Corvida and Passerida, independent constrasts suggest that common ancestry is not responsible for the association between tool use and size of the neostriatum and whole brain. Our results demonstrate that birds are more frequent tool users than usually thought and that the complex cognitive processes involved in tool use may have repeatedly co-evolved with large brains in several orders of birds.

Levallois

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Chazan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
General Level ◽  
Significant Component ◽  
Tool Manufacture ◽  
Core Technology ◽  
Artifact Analysis ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The 19Th Century

Levallois refers to a way of making stone tools that is a significant component of the technological adaptations of both Neanderthals and early modern humans. Although distinctive Levallois artifacts were identified already in the 19th century, a consensus on the definition of the Levallois and clear criteria for distinguishing Levallois from non-Levallois artifacts remain elusive. At a general level, Levallois is one variant on prepared core technology. In a prepared core approach to stone tool manufacture, the worked material (the core) is configured and maintained to allow for the production of detached pieces (flakes) whose morphology is constrained by the production process. The difficulty for archaeologists is that Levallois refers to a particular process of manufacture rather than a discrete finality. The study of Levallois exposes limitations of typological approaches to artifact analysis and forces a consideration of the challenges in creating a solid empirical basis for characterizing technological processes.

scholarly journals Fossil hominin shoulders support an African ape-like last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees

2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (38) ◽  
pp. 11829-11834 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan M. Young ◽  
Terence D. Capellini ◽  
Neil T. Roach ◽  
Zeresenay Alemseged
Keyword(s):  
Tool Use ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Common Ancestor ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Last Common Ancestor ◽  
Ancestral State ◽  
Evolutionary Trajectories ◽  
Parsimonious Model ◽  
And Function ◽  
Fossil Hominin

Reconstructing the behavioral shifts that drove hominin evolution requires knowledge of the timing, magnitude, and direction of anatomical changes over the past ∼6–7 million years. These reconstructions depend on assumptions regarding the morphotype of the Homo–Pan last common ancestor (LCA). However, there is little consensus for the LCA, with proposed models ranging from African ape to orangutan or generalized Miocene ape-like. The ancestral state of the shoulder is of particular interest because it is functionally associated with important behavioral shifts in hominins, such as reduced arboreality, high-speed throwing, and tool use. However, previous morphometric analyses of both living and fossil taxa have yielded contradictory results. Here, we generated a 3D morphospace of ape and human scapular shape to plot evolutionary trajectories, predict ancestral morphologies, and directly test alternative evolutionary hypotheses using the hominin fossil evidence. We show that the most parsimonious model for the evolution of hominin shoulder shape starts with an African ape-like ancestral state. We propose that the shoulder evolved gradually along a single morphocline, achieving modern human-like configuration and function within the genus Homo. These data are consistent with a slow, progressive loss of arboreality and increased tool use throughout human evolution.

scholarly journals Stone Tools and the Linguistic Capabilities of Earlier Hominids

1995 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Steele ◽  
Angus Quinlan ◽  
Francis Wenban-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Motor Control ◽  
Brain Size ◽  
Brain Evolution ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Speech Motor Control ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Single Dimension ◽  
Evolution Of Speech ◽  
Speech Motor

The evolution of human manipulative abilities may be clearly linked to the evolution of speech motor control Both creativity and complexity in vocal and manipulative gestures may be closely linked to a single dimension of brain evolution — the evolution of absolute brain size. Inferring the linguistic capabilities of earlier hominids from their lithic artefacts, however, required us to take account of domain-specific constraints on manipulative skill In this article we report on a pilot flint-knapping experiment designed to identify such constraints ‘in action’.

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