ORCID Profile
0000-0003-1288-8345
Current Organisation
Universidade de São Paulo
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Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 24-06-2019
DOI: 10.1038/S41559-019-0904-4
Abstract: The human archaeological record changes over time. Finding such change in other animals requires similar evidence, namely, a long-term sequence of material culture. Here, we apply archaeological excavation, dating and analytical techniques to a wild capuchin monkey (Sapajus libidinosus) site in Serra da Capivara National Park, Brazil. We identify monkey stone tools between 2,400 and 3,000 years old and, on the basis of metric and damage patterns, demonstrate that capuchin food processing changed between ~2,400 and 300 years ago, and between ~100 years ago and the present day. We present the first ex le of long-term tool-use variation outside of the human lineage, and discuss possible mechanisms of extended behavioural change.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 19-10-2016
DOI: 10.1038/NATURE20112
Abstract: Our understanding of the emergence of technology shapes how we view the origins of humanity. Sharp-edged stone flakes, struck from larger cores, are the primary evidence for the earliest stone technology. Here we show that wild bearded capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus) in Brazil deliberately break stones, unintentionally producing recurrent, conchoidally fractured, sharp-edged flakes and cores that have the characteristics and morphology of intentionally produced hominin tools. The production of archaeologically visible cores and flakes is therefore no longer unique to the human lineage, providing a comparative perspective on the emergence of lithic technology. This discovery adds an additional dimension to interpretations of the human Palaeolithic record, the possible function of early stone tools, and the cognitive requirements for the emergence of stone flaking.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 21-09-2017
DOI: 10.1038/S41559-017-0286-4
Abstract: Since its inception, archaeology has traditionally focused exclusively on humans and our direct ancestors. However, recent years have seen archaeological techniques applied to material evidence left behind by non-human animals. Here, we review advances made by the most prominent field investigating past non-human tool use: primate archaeology. This field combines survey of wild primate activity areas with ethological observations, excavations and analyses that allow the reconstruction of past primate behaviour. Because the order Primates includes humans, new insights into the behavioural evolution of apes and monkeys also can be used to better interrogate the record of early tool use in our own, hominin, lineage. This work has recently doubled the set of primate lineages with an excavated archaeological record, adding Old World macaques and New World capuchin monkeys to chimpanzees and humans, and it has shown that tool selection and transport, and discrete site formation, are universal among wild stone-tool-using primates. It has also revealed that wild capuchins regularly break stone tools in a way that can make them difficult to distinguish from simple early hominin tools. Ultimately, this research opens up opportunities for the development of a broader animal archaeology, marking the end of archaeology's anthropocentric era.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-2016
DOI: 10.1016/J.CUB.2016.05.046
Abstract: Stone tools reveal worldwide innovations in human behaviour over the past three million years [1]. However, the only archaeological report of pre-modern non-human animal tool use comes from three Western chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) sites in Côte d'Ivoire, aged between 4.3 and 1.3 thousand years ago (kya) [2]. This anthropocentrism limits our comparative insight into the emergence and development of technology, weakening our evolutionary models [3]. Here, we apply archaeological techniques to a distinctive stone tool assemblage created by a non-human animal in the New World, the Brazilian bearded capuchin monkey (Sapajus libidinosus). Wild capuchins at Serra da Capivara National Park (SCNP) use stones to pound open defended food, including locally indigenous cashew nuts [4], and we demonstrate that this activity dates back at least 600 to 700 years. Capuchin stone hammers and anvils are therefore the oldest non-human tools known outside of Africa, opening up to scientific scrutiny questions on the origins and spread of tool use in New World monkeys, and the mechanisms - social, ecological and cognitive - that support primate technological evolution.
No related grants have been discovered for Eduardo Ottoni.