Researchers identify a variety of chimpanzee stone tools used to crack different types of nuts

During fieldwork aimed at documenting the use of stone tools by a group of wild chimpanzees in Taï Forest, Ivory Coast in early 2022, researchers identified, scanned and scanned a variety of stone tools used to crack different types of nuts 3D Their study is now published in Open Science of the Royal Society.

It has long been shown that different groups of chimpanzees possess distinct tool-using cultures with wooden and stone tools; However, only a few groups in West Africa use stone tools to crack nuts. By comparing the 3D models of various stone tools used by chimpanzees in the Taï forest with those of another group in Guinea, the researchers showed that there are notable differences between the two groups in terms of their material culture.

The study shows that this particular group of chimpanzees in Guinea uses stone hammers of different types and sizes, as well as very large stone anvils, sometimes longer than a meter. These durable stone tools are common in the countryside; They preserve varying levels of damage associated with their use and provide a permanent record of chimpanzee behavior.

Stone tools used for nut cracking may differ between chimpanzee groups

This study underscores the fact that although several groups of chimpanzees practice nut-cracking, the tools they use can differ significantly from one another, potentially resulting in group-specific material signatures. These differences are caused by a combination of stone selection, stone availability, and the type of nut consumed.

Previous research has shown that through the use of stone tools, some groups of chimpanzees develop their own archaeological records dating back at least 4,300 years. “The ability to identify regional differences in the material culture of stone tools in primates opens a number of possibilities for future studies of primate archaeology,” says Tomos Proffitt of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, who led the research.

It has been hypothesized that a simple technology like nut-cracking was a precursor to more complex stone technologies in the early stages of our own evolution more than three million years ago. Proffitt continues, “By understanding what this simple stone tool technology looks like and how it varies between groups, we can begin to understand how to better identify this signature in the earliest hominin archaeological record.”