Primate Models for Behavioural Evolution Lab, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
Mike Gill
Primate Models for Behavioural Evolution Lab, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
Tomos Proffitt
The Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
Magdalena S Svensson
Department of Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, United Kingdom
Lars Kulik
Department of Primatology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
Suchinda Malaivijitnond
Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand; National Primate Research Centre of Thailand, Chulalongkorn University, Saraburi, Thailand
Stone tools in the prehistoric record are the most abundant source of evidence for understanding early hominin technological and cultural variation. The field of primate archaeology is well placed to improve our scientific knowledge by using the tool behaviours of living primates as models to test hypotheses related to the adoption of tools by early stone-age hominins. Previously we have shown that diversity in stone tool behaviour between neighbouring groups of long-tailed macaques (Macaca-fascicularis) could be explained by ecological and environmental circumstances (Luncz et al., 2017b). Here however, we report archaeological evidence, which shows that the selection and reuse of tools cannot entirely be explained by ecological diversity. These results suggest that tool-use may develop differently within species of old-world monkeys, and that the evidence of material culture can differ within the same timeframe at local geographic scales and in spite of shared environmental and ecological settings.
