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Report: chimps used simple tools 5 million years ago</h1>
<div class="Small">May 23, 2002 Posted: 2:13 PM EDT (1813 GMT)</div>
<div class="Small"></div>
<p>By Peter Dykstra
<br>CNN Sci-Tech
<p><b>WASHINGTON (CNN) --</b> <b>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.</b>
<p>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.
<p>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.
<p>"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.
<p>Mercader and GWU colleagues conducted the investigation with researchers
from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig,
Germany.
<p>Full text
<p><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/05/23/chimps.tools/index.html">http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/05/23/chimps.tools/index.html</a>
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