Although the function(s) of these early bone tools remains contentious, most studies agree that they were probably used at least occasionally for digging activities that were likely related to foraging (Brain and Shipman 1993 Backwell and d’Errico 2001, 2005 Lesnik 2011). Bone tools have been attributed to early African hominins from the genera Paranthropus and Homo. 2018), and Olduvai Gorge, in Tanzania (Leakey 1971 Shipman 1989 Backwell and d’Errico 2004 Pante et al. Such artefacts have been found in Early Pleistocene archaeological sites across the Old World (Backwell and d’Errico 2014) including Swartkrans, Drimolen, Sterkfontein, and Kromdraai, in South Africa (Robinson 1959 Brain and Sillent 1988 Backwell et al. Bone tools are often derived from ungulate bone fragments whose shape and surface texture have been anthropogenically modified. basalt, flint, obsidian) and bone (reviewed by Toth and Schick 2015). Furthermore, our results raise interesting questions regarding the role that bone characteristics, as well as previous tool-assisted excavating experience with other raw materials, might have in the expression of bone tool-assisted excavation.Įarly hominin technological artefacts found in the archaeological record include tools made from different raw materials, such as multiple rock types (e.g. Our findings serve as a proof-of-concept that chimpanzees can be used to investigate spontaneous bone tool behaviours such as bone-assisted excavation. These chimpanzees also performed non-excavating bone behaviours such as percussion and tool-assisted extraction of organic material from the medullary cavity. In contrast, none of the individuals from the experienced group used bones as excavating tools, but instead continued using plant tools. We found that several individuals from the inexperienced group used the provided bones as tools during the task. Each chimpanzee group was provided with bone specimens with different characteristics, and the two groups differed in their respective experience levels with excavating plant tools. We conducted two different experiments to investigate the behavioural responses of two groups of captive chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes n = 33 and n = 9) to disarticulated, defleshed, ungulate bones while participating in a foraging task aimed at eliciting excavating behaviour. Observations of extant primates constitute a unique source of behavioural data with which to construct hypotheses about the technological forms and repertoires exhibited by our hominin ancestors. That said, they are still relatively scarce, which limits our understanding of the behaviours that led to their production and use. After stone tools, bone tools are the most abundant artefact type in the Early Pleistocene archaeological record.
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