According to a study published last year, we now know that modern humanity is no longer the only species on earth to have entered the Stone Age. Various other primates, including chimpanzees, capuchins, and macaques have been using stone tools to make some of their daily activities a little easier.
But as the BBC reports, a species of primate in Brazil called the capuchin has been utilizing tools for at least 700 years. The capuchins are so industrious, you can often hear the sound of them working away “echoing through the canyons long before you see them.”
From the BBC:
They collect and modify sticks to get food out of cracks and crevices; they use rocks as hammer and anvil to crack open seeds; and they use different shaped stones to dig for roots in the hard soil. They use rocks to throw at predators or even to attract the attention of a mate!
“Until now, the only archaeological record of pre-modern, non-human animal tool use comes from a study of three chimpanzee sites in Cote d’Ivoire in Africa, where tools were dated to between 4,300 and 1,300 years old,” Michael Haslam, the lead author of the study said in a statement. “Here, we have new evidence that suggests monkeys and other primates out of Africa were also using tools for hundreds, possibly thousands of years.”
Researchers say that this is the earliest archaeological example of monkeys using tools outside of Africa.
Watch a video on the research uploaded to YouTube by Oxford University:
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