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Edited by Ofer Bar-Yosef, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and approved December 7, 2006 (received for review September 8, 2006)
Abstract
Archaeological research in the African rainforest reveals unexpected results in the search for the origins of hominoid technology. The ancient Panin sites from Côte d'Ivoire constitute the only evidence of prehistoric ape behavior known to date anywhere in the world. Recent archaeological work has yielded behaviorally modified stones, dated by chronometric means to 4,300 years of age, lodging starch residue suggestive of prehistoric dietary practices by ancient chimpanzees. The “Chimpanzee Stone Age” pre-dates the advent of settled farming villages in this part of the African rainforest and suggests that percussive material culture could have been inherited from an common human–chimpanzee clade, rather than invented by hominins, or have arisen by imitation, or resulted from independent technological convergence.
Footnotes
- ↵†To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mercader{at}ucalgary.ca
-
Author contributions: J.M. and C.B. designed research; J.M. and C.B. performed research; J.M., H.B., J.G., J.H., S.K., R.T., and C.B. analyzed data; J.M. and C.B. wrote the paper; H.B. and R.T. were part of blind test (starch); J.G. contributed placebo sample for blind test (stone); and J.H. and S.K. were part of blind test (stone).
-
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
-
This article is a PNAS direct submission.
-
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0607909104/DC1.
- Received September 8, 2006.
- © 2007 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA
- Julio Mercader*,†,
- Huw Barton‡,
- Jason Gillespie§,
- Jack Harris¶,
- Steven Kuhn‖,
- Robert Tyler**, and
- Christophe Boesch††
- *Department of Archaeology, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada T2N 1N4;
- ‡Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, United Kingdom;
- ¶Department of Anthropology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ 08901;
- ‖Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721;
- **Department of Applied Microbiology and Food Science, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada S7N 5A8;
- ††Department of Primatology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany; and
- §Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2H4
-
Edited by Ofer Bar-Yosef, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and approved December 7, 2006 (received for review September 8, 2006)
Abstract
Archaeological research in the African rainforest reveals unexpected results in the search for the origins of hominoid technology. The ancient Panin sites from Côte d'Ivoire constitute the only evidence of prehistoric ape behavior known to date anywhere in the world. Recent archaeological work has yielded behaviorally modified stones, dated by chronometric means to 4,300 years of age, lodging starch residue suggestive of prehistoric dietary practices by ancient chimpanzees. The “Chimpanzee Stone Age” pre-dates the advent of settled farming villages in this part of the African rainforest and suggests that percussive material culture could have been inherited from an common human–chimpanzee clade, rather than invented by hominins, or have arisen by imitation, or resulted from independent technological convergence.
Footnotes
- ↵†To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mercader{at}ucalgary.ca
-
Author contributions: J.M. and C.B. designed research; J.M. and C.B. performed research; J.M., H.B., J.G., J.H., S.K., R.T., and C.B. analyzed data; J.M. and C.B. wrote the paper; H.B. and R.T. were part of blind test (starch); J.G. contributed placebo sample for blind test (stone); and J.H. and S.K. were part of blind test (stone).
-
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
-
This article is a PNAS direct submission.
-
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0607909104/DC1.
- Received September 8, 2006.
- © 2007 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA
4,300-Year-old chimpanzee sites and the origins of percussive stone technology
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- Abstract
- The Archaeological Horizon: Age and Composition
- Fluvial Geofact versus Behavioral Accumulation
- Discriminating Systematic Flaking from Thrusting Percussion Products
- Identifying and Classifying the Products of Thrusting Percussion
- Starch Residues as Direct Evidence for Nut-Cracking
- Discussion and Implications
- Materials and Methods
- Acknowledgments
- Footnotes
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