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McGrew, William C.; Ham, Rebecca; White, Lee; Tutin, Caroline E. G.; Fernandez, Michel

doi:10.1023/a:1026382316131

Cited by 94 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Chimpanzee communities, both wild and released (ref. 7 and refs. therein), have been observed to engage in tasks whose by-products are pitted stones.…”

Section: Chimpanzees and Pitted Stonesmentioning

confidence: 94%

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Nuts, nut cracking, and pitted stones at Gesher Benot Ya‘aqov, Israel

Goren‐Inbar

Sharon

Melamed

et al. 2002

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

216

146

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The Acheulian site of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov (Israel) has revealed a unique association of edible nuts with pitted hammers and anvils. Located in the Dead Sea rift, on the boundary between the Arabian and African plates, the site dates to the Early-Middle Pleistocene, oxygen isotope stage 19. In a series of strata, seven species of nuts, most of which can be cracked open only by a hard hammer, were uncovered. Five of the species are extant terrestrial nuts, and two are aquatic nuts now extinct in the Levant. In addition, the site yielded an assemblage of pitted hammers and anvils similar in pit morphology to those used by chimpanzees and contemporary hunter-gatherers. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that a site has offered both paleobotanical and lithic evidence of plant foods eaten by early hominins and technologies used for processing these foods. The evidence also sheds light on the structure of the community: ethnographic analogies suggest that mixedgender groups may have been active on the shores of paleoLake Hula.

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“…Chimpanzee communities, both wild and released (ref. 7 and refs. therein), have been observed to engage in tasks whose by-products are pitted stones.…”

Section: Chimpanzees and Pitted Stonesmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…In the evergreen forests of western Africa (7-9), chimpanzees were seen using hammers and anvils to crack open six species of nuts (ref. 7 and refs. therein).…”

Section: Chimpanzees and Pitted Stonesmentioning

confidence: 94%

Nuts, nut cracking, and pitted stones at Gesher Benot Ya‘aqov, Israel

Goren‐Inbar

Sharon

Melamed

et al. 2002

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

216

146

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“…In short, by means of cultural transmission, apes are able to acquire beneficial abilities that they would otherwise lack, but imperfections in social transmission impose a distinctive variation from optimality. Evidence that large rivers can sometimes constitute barriers to knowledge flow comes from chimpanzee nut-cracking (Boesch et al 1994;McGrew et al 1997) and orang-utan Neesia eating with tools (van Schaik & Knott 2001); across the rivers, the same potential foods are present, but remain unexploited.…”

Section: Culture In Great Apes: Patterns Of Local Ignorancementioning

confidence: 99%

Culture in great apes: using intricate complexity in feeding skills to trace the evolutionary origin of human technical prowess

Byrne

2007

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Geographical cataloguing of traits, as used in human ethnography, has led to the description of 'culture' in some non-human great apes. Culture, in these terms, is detected as a pattern of local ignorance resulting from environmental constraints on knowledge transmission. However, in many cases, the geographical variations may alternatively be explained by ecology. Social transmission of information can reliably be identified in many other animal species, by experiment or distinctive patterns in distribution; but the excitement of detecting culture in great apes derives from the possibility of understanding the evolution of cumulative technological culture in humans. Given this interest, I argue that great ape research should concentrate on technically complex behaviour patterns that are ubiquitous within a local population; in these cases, a wholly non-social ontogeny is highly unlikely. From this perspective, cultural transmission has an important role in the elaborate feeding skills of all species of great ape, in conveying the 'gist' or organization of skills. In contrast, social learning is unlikely to be responsible for local stylistic differences, which are apt to reflect sensitive adaptations to ecology.

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“…Although some researchers have gone to great lengths to establish that the presence of a behavior pattern at one site but not another is not dictated by the availability of raw materials (20,21), skeptics have emphasized that it is not possible to identify all relevant factors (22)(23)(24). Some behaviors of wild chimpanzees, such as termite fishing, have now been recorded over multiple generations (7) (E. Lonsdorf, personal communication).…”

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confidence: 99%

Faithful replication of foraging techniques along cultural transmission chains by chimpanzees and children

Horner

Whiten

Flynn

et al. 2006

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

226

183

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Observational studies of wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) have revealed population-specific differences in behavior, thought to represent cultural variation. Field studies have also reported behaviors indicative of cultural learning, such as close observation of adult skills by infants, and the use of similar foraging techniques within a population over many generations. Although experimental studies have shown that chimpanzees are able to learn complex behaviors by observation, it is unclear how closely these studies simulate the learning environment found in the wild. In the present study we have used a diffusion chain paradigm, whereby a behavior is passed from one individual to the next in a linear sequence in an attempt to simulate intergenerational transmission of a foraging skill. Using a powerful three-group, two-action methodology, we found that alternative methods used to obtain food from a foraging device (''lift door'' versus ''slide door'') were accurately transmitted along two chains of six and five chimpanzees, respectively, such that the last chimpanzee in the chain used the same method as the original trained model. The fidelity of transmission within each chain is remarkable given that several individuals in the no-model control group were able to discover either method by individual exploration. A comparative study with human children revealed similar results. This study is the first to experimentally demonstrate the linear transmission of alternative foraging techniques by non-human primates. Our results show that chimpanzees have a capacity to sustain local traditions across multiple simulated generations.culture ͉ diffusion chain ͉ social learning ͉ tradition L ong-term observational studies of wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) across Africa have revealed a diverse range of behavioral differences between populations, thought to represent local traditions (1-3). The inference that the differences are socially learned is based on (i) patterns of distribution that appear incompatible with genetic or simple environmental explanations; (ii) records of close observation of adults by infants as well as matching of mother-offspring foraging styles (4-7); and (iii) studies of both wild (8-10) and captive chimpanzees (11)(12)(13)(14)(15) showing that social learning from conspecifics can affect the acquisition of tool-use skills. Each wild chimpanzee community exhibits a distinct profile defined by several different kinds of putative traditions that have been described as cultures.

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Cited by 94 publications

References 40 publications

Nuts, nut cracking, and pitted stones at Gesher Benot Ya‘aqov, Israel

Nuts, nut cracking, and pitted stones at Gesher Benot Ya‘aqov, Israel

Culture in great apes: using intricate complexity in feeding skills to trace the evolutionary origin of human technical prowess

Faithful replication of foraging techniques along cultural transmission chains by chimpanzees and children

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