[language] [Fwd: [evol-psych] Report: chimps used simple tools 5 million years ago]

[H.M. Hubey]

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Report: chimps used simple tools 5 million years ago

May 23, 2002 Posted: 2:13 PM EDT (1813 GMT)


By Peter Dykstra
CNN Sci-Tech

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An archaeological dig in West Africa has revealed
evidence that chimpanzees used primitive tools as long as five million
years ago, according to an international team of scientists.

The evidence is in the form of 479 fragments of rudimentary stone
hammers that the chimps used to crack open nuts at the close of what is
known as the Miocene era, when Ice Age conditions cooled the planet,
according to their report in this week's journal Science.

The fragments -- found at a site in Tai National Park in the Ivory Coast
-- closely resemble similar tools used by hominid (pre-human) species
about the same time, offering opportunities to learn more about the
history of human tools as well as providing a rare look into how other
primate species developed, the researchers said.

"This introduces the possibility of tracing the development of at least
one aspect of ape culture through time," said Julio Mercader, an
archaeologist at the George Washington University In Washington, D.C.

Mercader and GWU colleagues conducted the investigation with researchers
from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig,
Germany.

Full text

http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/05/23/chimps.tools/index.html

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