Abstract
AbstractThe earliest stone tool types, sharp flakes knapped from stone cores, are assumed to have played a crucial role in human cognitive evolution. Flaked stone tools have been observed to be accidentally produced when wild monkeys use handheld stones as tools. Holding a stone core in hand and hitting it with another in the absence of flaking,free hand hitting,has been considered a requirement for producing sharp stone flakes by hitting stone on stone,free hand percussion. We report on five observations offree hand hittingbehavior in two wild western gorillas, using stone-like objects (pieces of termite mound). Gorillas are therefore the second non-human lineage primate showing free-hand hitting behavior in the wild, and ours is the first report for free hand hitting behavior in wild apes. This study helps to shed light on the morphofunctional and cognitive requirements for the emergence of stone tool production as it shows that a prerequisite for free hand percussion (namely, free hand hitting) is part of the spontaneous behavioral repertoire of one of humans’ closest relatives (gorillas). However, the ability to combine free hand hitting with the force, precision, and accuracy needed to facilitate conchoidal fracture in free hand percussion may still have been a critical watershed for hominin evolution.
Funder
Labex BCDiv
Action transversal du Museum (ATM) Emergence
Unité Eco-anthropologie, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, CNRS, Université Paris Diderot
UMR7179 MECADEV CNRS/MNHN,
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
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