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Chimpanzee accumulative stone throwing
- Source :
- Scientific Reports
- Publisher :
- NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
-
Abstract
- The authors would like to thank the Max Planck Society and Krekeler Foundation for generous funding of the Pan African Programme. The study of the archaeological remains of fossil hominins must rely on reconstructions to elucidate the behaviour that may have resulted in particular stone tools and their accumulation. Comparatively, stone tool use among living primates has illuminated behaviours that are also amenable to archaeological examination, permitting direct observations of the behaviour leading to artefacts and their assemblages to be incorporated. Here, we describe newly discovered stone tool-use behaviour and stone accumulation sites in wild chimpanzees reminiscent of human cairns. In addition to data from 17 mid- to long-term chimpanzee research sites, we sampled a further 34 Pan troglodytes communities. We found four populations in West Africa where chimpanzees habitually bang and throw rocks against trees, or toss them into tree cavities, resulting in conspicuous stone accumulations at these sites. This represents the first record of repeated observations of individual chimpanzees exhibiting stone tool use for a purpose other than extractive foraging at what appear to be targeted trees. The ritualized behavioural display and collection of artefacts at particular locations observed in chimpanzee accumulative stone throwing may have implications for the inferences that can be drawn from archaeological stone assemblages and the origins of ritual sites. Publisher PDF
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
BF Psychology
Pan troglodytes
Foraging
NDAS
BF
Troglodytes
engineering.material
010603 evolutionary biology
01 natural sciences
Article
West africa
Animals
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
050102 behavioral science & comparative psychology
Stone tool
QL
Multidisciplinary
biology
Behavior, Animal
Geography
05 social sciences
QL Zoology
biology.organism_classification
Archaeology
Africa, Western
GN
engineering
Throwing
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 20452322
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Scientific Reports
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....6a2e57e81049b0225a0c2a189e720654