Читать книгу Introducing Anthropology - Laura Pountney - Страница 37

Tool-use was once thought to be one of the characteristics that set humans apart from other primates, and, indeed, if you look at the variety and complexity of the tools employed by humans, this would seem to be true. However, tool-use has been seen in a number of primate and nonprimate species, both in captivity and in the wild. The study of tool-use provides important information concerning the evolution of human abilities.

A tool can be defined as any object manipulated by an animal in order to perform a specific task. This tool usually has some beneficial effect, such as making a task easier. Therefore, a tool can be very simple, such as a stick to scratch the animal’s back. This sort of tool, which requires no alteration to be functional, is sometimes described as a ‘naturefact’. Tools used by nonhuman primates include stones, which might be used to cut, grind or scrape.

Chimpanzees, for example, often make use of tools. They will adapt sticks, rocks, grass and leaves and use them when foraging for honey, termites, ants, nuts and water. Despite the lack of complexity, there does seem to be planning and skill involved in using these tools. For example, when foraging, chimps will employ modified short sticks to scoop honey out of a hive – that is, if the bees are harmless. With the hives of the dangerous African honeybee, they use longer and thinner sticks to extract the honey. Modification of leaves and branches, and their use as simple tools, has also been observed in elephants, crows and dolphins. However, none of those species created or used more sophisticated tools, such as the stone tools that earlier hominins started to produce more than 2 million years ago. Human tools of course became much more complex and diverse: hunting tools, tools to create and control fire, and much more.