Novel field of primate archaeology to shed new light on human evolution
July 16th, 2009 - 5:34 pm ICT by ANIWashington, July 16 (ANI): A team of scientists is advocating for a new inter-disciplinary field of primate archaeology to examine history of tool use in all primate species in order to better understand human evolution.
The scientists are from universities including Cambridge, Rutgers, Kyoto University and schools in Spain, Italy and France.
They argue that recent discoveries of tool use by a wide variety of wild primates and archaeological evidence of chimpanzees using stone tools for thousands of years is forcing experts to re-think the traditional dividing lines between humans and other primate species as well as the belief that tool use is the exclusive domain of the genus Homo.
The researchers advocate for a new inter-disciplinary field of primate archaeology to examine tool use by primates in a long-term, evolutionary context.
“There is a need for systematic collaboration between diverse research programs to understand the broader questions in human evolution and primatology,” said Julio Mercader, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Tropical Archaeology in the U of C’s (University of Calgary’s) Department of Archaeology.
“For example, few archaeologists have seen a wild primate use a tool, while few primatologists have taken part in archaeological excavations,” he explained.
He is the archaeologist who uncovered the first prehistoric evidence of chimpanzee technology in 2007 - a 4,300-year-old nut-cracking site in the rainforests of Cote D’Ivoire, West Africa that provides proof of a long-standing chimpanzee “stone age” that likely emerged independently of influence from humans.
“It’s not clear whether we hominins invented this kind of stone technology, or whether both humans and the great apes inherited it from a common forebear,” said Mercader.
“We used to think that culture and, above anything else, technology was the exclusive domain of humans, but this is not the case. We need comparable methods of data collection among researchers dealing with 2 million year old hominin sites and modern primatological assemblages,” he added. (ANI)
- Like humans, chimps too prefer using their right hands - Oct 29, 2010
- Chimps use tools to cut up their food - Dec 25, 2009
- 'Sophisticated' cavemen 'had more in common with us than we like to think' - Mar 26, 2011
- Aquatic diet of early humans behind evolution of brain - Jun 02, 2010
- Who's an expert nutcracker? Monkeys! - Dec 01, 2010
- Our genome more closely related to orangutans than chimps - Jan 27, 2011
- 'Promiscuous' chimps produce more sperm - Feb 17, 2011
- Why chimps attack humans - Aug 12, 2010
- Flour residues on stone tools suggest early humans ate a balanced diet - Oct 19, 2010
- Humans hunted for meat with stone tools a million years earlier than believed - Aug 12, 2010
- Chimp mums 'mourn their dead infants' - Feb 01, 2011
- New study suggests earliest humans were not very different from us - Feb 15, 2011
- Brain power, innovation and teamwork helped humans rule the world - Feb 28, 2010
- Primates better adapted to environmental changes - Dec 03, 2010
- Human evolution occurred '3mn yrs earlier than previously thought' - Nov 06, 2010
Tags: archaeological excavations, canada research chair, cote d ivoire, cracking site, diverse research, dividing lines, forebear, genus homo, great apes, human evolution, italy and france, julio mercader, kyoto university, novel field, primate species, primatologists, recent discoveries, schools in spain, stone technology, university of calgary