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Three thousand years of wild capuchin stone tool use

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 3, pages 1034–1038 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

The human archaeological record changes over time. Finding such change in other animals requires similar evidence, namely, a long-term sequence of material culture. Here, we apply archaeological excavation, dating and analytical techniques to a wild capuchin monkey (Sapajus libidinosus) site in Serra da Capivara National Park, Brazil. We identify monkey stone tools between 2,400 and 3,000 years old and, on the basis of metric and damage patterns, demonstrate that capuchin food processing changed between ~2,400 and 300 years ago, and between ~100 years ago and the present day. We present the first example of long-term tool-use variation outside of the human lineage, and discuss possible mechanisms of extended behavioural change.

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Fig. 1: The Caju BPF2 site, Serra da Capivara National Park, Brazil.
Fig. 2: Examples of hammerstones and anvils from Caju BPF2.

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All data pertaining to the study are included within the text and Supplementary Information. Access to the collections is available upon request.

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Acknowledgements

The study was funded by a European Research Council Starting Investigator Grant (No. 283959) to M.H.; a São Paulo Research Foundation award to T.F. (No. 2013/05219-0) and E.B.O. (No. 2014/04818-0); a CNPq PQ Grant (No. 308746/2017-1) to E.B.O.; a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship (No. ECF-2015-396) awarded to R.A.S.; and a British Academy Fellowship (No. pf170157) awarded to T.P. Support for fieldwork and analysis was provided by N. Guidon and G. Daltrini Felice of FUMDHAM. Fieldwork at SCNP was approved by Brazilian environmental protection agencies (IBAMA/ICMBio Nos. 37609-5 and 37615-5). We thank L. V. Luncz for assistance in identification of primate material and R. F. de Oliveira for assistance in coordinating the excavation team and identification of primate material.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: T. Falótico, T. Proffitt.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Experimental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of São Paulo, Butantã, Brazil

    Tiago Falótico & Eduardo B. Ottoni

  2. Neotropical Primates Research Group, Butantã, Brazil

    Tiago Falótico

  3. Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, UK

    Tomos Proffitt

  4. Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, East Kilbride, UK

    Richard A. Staff

  5. Independent Researcher, London, UK

    Michael Haslam

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  1. Tiago Falótico
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  2. Tomos Proffitt
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  3. Eduardo B. Ottoni
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  4. Richard A. Staff
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  5. Michael Haslam
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Contributions

T.F. and M.H. undertook excavation and initial data collection. T.F., T.P., M.H. and E.B.O. conceived the study. T.P. conducted the technological analysis. R.A.S. conducted radiocarbon dating of samples and produced associated figures and tables. T.P. and T.F. wrote the paper and Supplementary online material, with contributions from M.H., E.B.O. and R.A.S. T.P. generated all figures and graphs.

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Correspondence to Tomos Proffitt.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Analysis, Supplementary Figs. 1–14, Supplementary Tables 1–3 and Supplementary References

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Falótico, T., Proffitt, T., Ottoni, E.B. et al. Three thousand years of wild capuchin stone tool use. Nat Ecol Evol 3, 1034–1038 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0904-4

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