At The Hill:
A new study published on Friday in Science Advances suggests the possibility that a critical hallmark of human tool use happened by accident — potentially blurring the line between tool use by early humans and our primate relatives.
The Thai monkeys produced stone artifacts “indistinguishable from what we see at the beginning of the [human] archeological record — what we see as the onset of being human,” said Lydia Luncz of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, a co-author on the study.
The monkeys — long-tailed macaques — seem to have made their artifacts by accident, not by design. But in many ways, that only makes the finding more disruptive. – Saul Elbein (March 10, 2023)
That implies that some of the very old “tools” identified may not in fact be evidence of human behavior. Pseudo-tools? Stay tuned.
The paper is open access.
You may also wish to read: At VICE: Our view of intelligent [human] life upended by tools find? So it’s sort of like your great-uncle and aunt made the tools, not your great-grandparents. And that’s supposed to make all the difference? Meanwhile, another “subhuman” candidate to scratch off the list.