Group-specific Archaeological Signatures of Stone Tool Use in Wild Macaques

Overview

Journal Elife

Specialty Biology

Date 2019 Oct 23

PMID 31635691

Citations 5

Authors

Lydia V Luncz

Mike Gill

Tomos Proffitt

Magdalena S Svensson

Lars Kulik

Suchinda Malaivijitnond

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Stone tools in the prehistoric record are the most abundant source of evidence for understanding early hominin technological and cultural variation. The field of primate archaeology is well placed to improve our scientific knowledge by using the tool behaviours of living primates as models to test hypotheses related to the adoption of tools by early stone-age hominins. Previously we have shown that diversity in stone tool behaviour between neighbouring groups of long-tailed macaques () could be explained by ecological and environmental circumstances (Luncz et al., 2017b). Here however, we report archaeological evidence, which shows that the selection and reuse of tools cannot entirely be explained by ecological diversity. These results suggest that tool-use may develop differently within species of old-world monkeys, and that the evidence of material culture can differ within the same timeframe at local geographic scales and in spite of shared environmental and ecological settings.

Citing Articles

Exploring early Acheulian technological decision-making: A controlled experimental approach to raw material selection for percussive artifacts in Melka Wakena, Ethiopia.

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Tool skill impacts the archaeological evidence across technological primates.

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Emergent technological variation in archaeological landscapes: a primate perspective.

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Simulation and social network analysis provide insight into the acquisition of tool behaviour in hybrid macaques.

Reeves J, Tan A, Malaivijitnond S, Luncz L Proc Biol Sci. 2023; 290(1995):20222276.

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Three-dimensional surface morphometry differentiates behaviour on primate percussive stone tools.

Proffitt T, Reeves J, Benito-Calvo A, Sanchez-Romero L, Arroyo A, Malaijivitnond S J R Soc Interface. 2021; 18(184):20210576.

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