John Orna-Ornstein is a Curator of Roman Coins at the British Museum Return to Table of Contents Return to the CBA homepage Apes and monkeys provide models for hominid behaviour. Simon Denison reports From modern apes to human origins Picture an ape which has been taught to manufacture and use stone tools. Most people would say they still see an ape. But, for years, apes and monkeys have been used for modelling early hominid society and intelligence, and over recent months a number of intriguing new ideas have been generated about early humans as a result of this type of research. Australopithecus ramidus , for instance, the oldest known hominid discovered last year and dating from about 4.4 million years ago, had teeth and an overall skeleton that closely resembles that of the modern pygmy chimpanzee.
Primate research offers evidence of three main types.
Second, primate society provides possible models for hominid society and behaviour. Some apes have also been taught to make stone tools in laboratory experiments. These were made some 2.5 million years ago in Africa in the so-called Oldowan technological stage. Moreover, they make tools in the same four ways postulated for Oldowan hominids - holding two stones and hitting one with another, using a stone to hit another stone placed on a rock, striking a stone on a rock, and throwing a stone against a rock. Although the tools produced are still cruder than Oldowan tools, they are remarkably close.