Well, the header is a little frivolous, but it has been a long hard slog on the day job today, and I have been beset with domestic ills (e.g., the mice that came in from the cold), so I am only now (11:30pm) sitting down with a glass of wine and some chocolate. The winter storm has arrived and the precipitation, whatever it is (sleet? ice pellets?) sometimes clicks against the windows as it falls, making an indistinct rustling sound unhappily reminiscent of mice cavorting in the cupboards, so I am cranking the music up. OK, now I’m ready to blog.
A Canadian archaeologist has discovered some 4,300-year-old chimpanzee tools in the Ivory Coast in Africa. The stone hammers were used to crack open nuts, and evidently required some sophistication to operate correctly. It’s not clear whether humans first began using stone tools like this and chimps imitated them (for these particular tools, there were no farmers at that place and time so it’s unlikely the chimps could have borrowed the technology), or whether both got the behavior from a common ancestor (or both developed it separately). Frankly I hadn’t even known there was such a thing as chimp archaeology, so I thought this was nifty stuff. You can read all about it in this press release from EurekAlert.
I didn’t see a contact or general inquiries link on your site anywhere, but I thought I’d drop a line. New to your blog, but very interested in all the various topics you cover here. I’d love to read your thoughts on: http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-evpsych12feb12,0,1620329,full.story?coll=la-home-health
How do they know we didn’t imitate the chimps?
Cashew–Thanks for the link! I hope to have time to write more about that story tomorrow. Depression is such a multifaceted thing; it almost seems like it’s in need of some “grand unified theory” that fits all the pieces together. Maybe an evolutionary approach will help that along, in the long run.