Thai Buddhist monkeys MAKING stone tools

Yale Prof. Jessica Thompson; Shots: Health News: Nell Greenfieldboyce, All Things Considered, NPR.org, March 10, 2023; CC Liu, Sheldon S., Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Make us some tools, Georgie. - Nutcrackers, Mabel? - Whatever, just make something.

Would sliced bananas taste better?

Do these monkeys MAKE stone tools or USE stone tools? Both. They're using rocks that come to hand as hammers and anvils, but in doing so they are creating blades (sharp stone flakes). They are not YET using these blades, we are told, but it won't be long. They've made them, so they'll sooner or later find a use for them. And who says they're "Buddhist"? Well, animals can't be one human religion or another, but practically the whole country is Theravada Buddhist and what with rebirth being what it is, it's a safe bet that if they're anything -- and they're probably not anything but instinctual beasts pulled by their karma -- they're Buddhists. My dad says our family [pet] is [our traditional Abrahamic religion] because we made [it] so by [a ritual ceremony]. And why not? What does [it] care? It gets food thanks to our kindness, which is thanks to our [religion]. If the people are, the animals will be.

Stone flakes made by modern monkeys trigger big questions about early humans

Okay, everyone be careful. Don't get your heads wet or you might get sick. And stay in line!

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When monkeys in [devoutly Theravada Buddhist] Thailand use stones as hammers and anvils to help them crack open nuts, they often accidentally create sharp flakes of rock that look like the stone cutting tools made by early humans.

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  Homo habilis, half-monkey/half-human?
  

  [One smart monkey has not yet been spotted cutting anything with one of these stone knives, but when one is, what then? So much for human supremacy. Due to the phenomenon known as the hundredth monkey effect, as soon as one does, another will see it and copy it, then another, then when 100 do, all of them will without having seen any other monkey do it. They'll be making and using them thus hastening their evolution through a process described in anthropology as punctuated equilibrium (socially). These monkeys are already at the "human" stage of Homo habilis (shown here).]

Macaques use stones as hammers to smash open food like nuts and shellfish (Lydia V. Luncz).

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This surprising discovery, described in the journal Science Advances, has archeologists wondering if they need to rethink their assumptions about some of the stone artifacts produced by early human ancestors over a million years ago.

Yale Prof. J. Thompson studies evolution

"You have a bunch of nonhuman [subhuman] primates that are creating objects that look a lot like the kinds of things that we have wanted to exclusively assign to the behavior of humans and human ancestors," says [Professor] Jessica Thompson.

[She's] a paleoanthropologist with Yale University who wasn't on the team that did this new research [but who studies these sorts of things and human evolution].

This monkey took this selfie using a hi-tech tool.

She notes that the manufacture of sharp cutting tools made of stone, which could date as far back to 3.3 million years ago, has long been seen as a key technological innovation in human history.

[It's] one that's wrapped up in a host of assumptions about the evolution of unique human traits.

But now, says Prof. Thompson, archeologists will have to grapple with the problem of trying to figure out whether sharp stone flakes were made intentionally or accidentally. More + VIDEO

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