title: 4,300-year-old chimpanzee sites and the origins of percussive stone technology.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Archaeology, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada T2N 1N4. mercader@ucalgary.ca
authors.forename: Julio
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mercader
authors.forename: Huw
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Barton
authors.forename: Jason
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gillespie
authors.forename: Jack
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Harris
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kuhn
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Tyler
authors.forename: Christophe
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Boesch
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000883:Anthropology; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D007560:Cote d'Ivoire; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D005580:Fossils; D002679:Pan troglodytes