Anthropologists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany have discovered that the stone tools of modern macaques resemble tools created by the ancient ancestors of modern humans. research scientists published at Science Advances.
Typically, tool making is characteristic of great apes and humans, which includes chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons. According to the researchers, macaques are not close relatives of humans and were previously believed not to be inherent in such complex activity.
Crab-eating macaques often use stones to open hard-shelled objects (nuts, crabs, shellfish, etc.). They take one mollusk and put it on a stone and hit it with the second. Stones are often broken.
The authors of the study examined these pieces and compared their shapes with stone scales found at the earliest settlements of ancient humans in East Africa. They are similar in appearance. According to scientists, such stamps may herald deliberate tool making. Anthropologists have concluded that this behavior of primates may help trace human evolution.