Excavation of a Chimpanzee Stone Tool Site in the African Rainforest
Julio Mercader,1*
Melissa Panger,1
Christophe Boesch2
Chimpanzees from the Taï forest of Côte d'Ivoire
produce unintentional flaked stone assemblages at nut-cracking sites,
leaving behind a record of tool use and plant consumption that is
recoverable with archaeological methods. About 40 kilograms of nutshell
and 4 kilograms of stone were excavated at the Panda 100 site. The data
unearthed show that chimpanzees transported stones from outcrops and
soils to focal points, where they used them as hammers to process
foodstuff. The repeated use of activity areas led to refuse accumulation and site formation. The implications of these data for the
interpretation of the earliest hominin archaeological record are
explored.
1 Department of Anthropology, George
Washington University, 2110 G Street NW, Washington, DC 20052, USA.
2 Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology, Inselstrasse 22, 04103, Leipzig, Germany.
*
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
madrid{at}gwu.edu
