Creationism in Crisis - Monkeys Make Tools and Make Fools of Creationists

Creationism in Crisis

Monkeys Make Tools and Make Fools of Creationists

Examples of sharp edged flakes produced unintentionally by long‑tailed macaques.

© Proffitt et al, 2023

Macaca fascicularis aurea using a stone tool.

Image credit: Haslam M, Gumert MD, Biro D, Carvalho S, Malaivijitnond S (2013)
(CC BY 2.5), via Wikimedia Commons.

Surprising similarities found between stone tools of early humans and old world monkeys | Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have discovered that anthropologists could be wrong about when Early hominins began making stone tools because they have discovered that certain Old World monkeys make stone artifacts which bear what were thought to be characteristics of hominin stone tools.

However, rather than being a problem for evolutionary anthropologists, the discovery is a major problem for Creationists.

The problem is a reverse form of the Palley's Watch argument, which, despite being debunked by Darwin in 1859, is never-the-less regularly trotted out by Creationists who argue that man-made objects must have been intelligently designed (so living organisms must have been too [sic]) and man-made stone tools are 'obviously' designed.

However, the 'stone tools' made by Old World monkeys are not designed; they are created accidentally when the monkeys use stone 'hammers' to crack nuts, using an anvil. This often results in the stone 'hammer' chipping to form a cutting edge that was previously thought to be a sure sign of human design!

Incidentally, this finding give a clue to how early hominins could have discovered how to make stone tools, when they realised the sharp edges produced could be used to cut, and careful chipping could be used to make shapes such as hand-axes, spear points, scrapers, etc.

The research and its consequences for evolutionary anthropology is explained in a news release from Max Planck Gesellschaft:

Accidentally produced stone fragments made by macaques resemble some of the earliest hominin stone artifacts

MARCH 10, 2023
Evolution

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have discovered artefacts produced by old world monkeys in Thailand that resemble stone tools, which historically have been identified as intentionally made by early hominins. Until now, sharp-edged stone tools were thought to represent the onset of intentional stone tool production, one of the defining and unique characteristics of hominin evolution. This new study challenges long held beliefs about the origins of intentional tool production in our own lineage.

Example of a long-tailed macaque using a stone tool to access food.

© Lydia V. Luncz

The ability to intentionally make sharp stone flakes is seen as a crucial point in the evolution of hominins, and understanding how and when this occurred is a huge question that is typically investigated through the study of past artefacts and fossils. Our study shows that stone tool production is not unique to humans and our ancestors. The fact that these macaques use stone tools to process nuts is not surprising, as they also use tools to gain access to various shellfish as well. What is interesting is that, in doing so they accidently produce a substantial archaeological record of their own that is partly indistinguishable from some hominin artefacts.

Tomos Proffitt, co-lead author
Technological Primates Research Group
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.

The research is based on new analyses of stone tools used by long-tailed macaques in the Phang Nga National Park in Thailand. These monkeys use stone tools to crack open hard-shelled nuts. In that process, the monkeys often break their hammerstones and anvils. The resulting assemblage of broken stones is substantial and widespread across the landscape. Moreover, many of these artefacts bear all of the same characteristics that are commonly used to identify intentionally made stone tools in some of the earliest archaeological sites in East Africa.

New insights into the evolution of stone tool technology

By comparing the accidentally produced stone fragments made by the macaques with those from some of the earliest archaeological sites, the researchers were able to show that many of the artefacts produced by monkeys fall within the range of those commonly associated with early hominins.

The fact that these artifacts can be produced through nut cracking has implications for the range of behaviours we associate with sharp edged flakes in the archaeological record.

Jonathan Reeves, co-lead author
Technological Primates Research Group
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.

Cracking nuts using stone hammers and anvils, similar to what some primates do today, has been suggested by some as a possible precursor to intentional stone tool production. This study, along with previous ones published by our group, opens the door to being able to identify such an archaeological signature in the future. This discovery shows how living primates can help researchers investigate the origin and evolution of tool use in our own lineage.

Lydia Luncz, senior author
Technological Primates Research Group
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.

The newly discovered macaque stone tools offer new insights into how the first technology might have started in our earliest ancestors and that its origin may have been linked to similar nut cracking behaviour which could be substantially older than the current earliest archaeological record.

Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by [American Association for the Advancement of Science, Open access. (CC BY-NC 4.0).

The teams findings are published, open access, in Science Advances:

Abstract

Intentionally produced sharp-edged stone flakes and flaked pieces are our primary evidence for the emergence of technology in our lineage. This evidence is used to decipher the earliest hominin behavior, cognition, and subsistence strategies. Here, we report on the largest lithic assemblage associated with a primate foraging behavior undertaken by long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis). This behavior results in a landscape-wide record of flaked stone material, almost indistinguishable from early hominin flaked pieces and flakes. It is now clear that the production of unintentional conchoidal sharp-edged flakes can result from tool-assisted foraging in nonhominin primates. Comparisons with Plio-Pleistocene lithic assemblages, dating from 3.3 to 1.56 million years ago, show that flakes produced by macaques fall within the technological range of artifacts made by early hominins. In the absence of behavioral observations, the assemblage produced by monkeys would likely be identified as anthropogenic in origin and interpreted as evidence of intentional tool production.

Proffitt, Tomos; Reeves, Jonathan S.; Braun, David R.; Malaivijitnond, Suchinda; Luncz, Lydia V.
Wild macaques challenge the origin of intentional tool production
Science Advances; 9(10) eade8159. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ade8159

Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by [American Association for the Advancement of Science, Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0).

In other words, what looks exactly like a designed tool, is in fact an accidental occurrence with no plan or design! Just as in living organisms, a natural process with no plan and no objective, can produce the appearance of design and the appearance of design is no guarantee of a designer.

Once again, of course, this research refutes creationism quite incidentally simply by revealing the truth. This is a consequence not of any intention on the part of the researchers, but of the fact that Creationism is at odds with the real-world evidence.

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