Archaeologists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have announced their discovery of stone fragments that closely resemble ancient stone tools made by prehistoric humans. What is notable is that these apparently worked stone objects were actually made unintentionally by old world monkeys living in the forests of Thailand. Does this have implications for stone flakes taken to be tools at ancient hominin sites?
These industrious monkeys were not trying to make cutting or scraping tools. Yet they still produced pieces of rock with sharp edges perfect for cutting and scraping, as a side effect of their use of larger chunks of rocks to crack open hard nuts and shellfish. Impressively sharp flakes are sometimes chipped off during this process, and incredibly enough these rock slices look and feel a lot like some objects that have been identified as ancient stone tools purposely made by ancient humans and by ancient human ancestors.
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Until now, it had been believed that hominins like Homo sapiens (modern humans) and Neanderthals were history’s only toolmakers. But the stunning results of this new study, which has just been published in Science Advances , call into question the identification of at least some ancient stone tools as human cutting or scraping objects.
Read more: Ancient Origins
