Although I am a strong supporter of an early peopling of America (over 20 and possibly 50 or even 100 kya), I must be fair and that is why this post will look into the intriguing possibility that monkeys, not humans, crafted the crude stone tools dated to around 40,000 years ago, found in Brazil.
The first to suggest this idea was Stuart Fiedel, in 2017, with a research paper titled Did Monkeys Make the Pre-Clovis Pebble Tools of Northeastern Brazil?, in it, he reports that the capuchin monkeys of South America use pebbles as tools to crack open nuts, they hammer them with these cobbles to open them. They also pound wood to find bugs. In the process, they leave behind remains that resemble man-made stone tools. They may have been doing so for the past 100,000 years!
The idea is interesting. The remains left behind by monkeys look like human stone tools. Furthermore, the paper suggests that monkeys taught humans how to use local resoures: "the possible influence of monkeys’ tool use on human behaviour. For example, cashew nuts are native to this area of Brazil, and it is possible that the first humans to arrive here learned about this unknown food through watching the monkeys and their primate cashew-processing industry..."
The matter was followed up by two Argentine researchers, Agustín and Federico Agnolín (see article) suggest that the stone tools attributed to pre-Clovis humans are in fact made by monkeys. They didn't find any differences or evolution between the tools that are 50,000 years old, and contemporary monkey-made tools: "Our study shows that the tools from Pedra Furada and other nearby sites in Brazil were nothing more than the product of capuchin monkeys breaking nuts and rocks some 50,000 years before the present,” says F. Agnolín, also a researcher at the ‘Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences “Bernardino Rivadavia”’ (MACN-CONICET), and the “Azara Foundation.”"
Besides using rock hammers to dig, and break open nuts, the capuchin monkeys also use them to pulverize other stones and lick the mineral-rich dust as natural mineral supplements. The resulting flaked stone fragments resemble human-made stone tools.
The authors argue that the ancient tools attributed to humans, found at the Piedra Furada site (see my post about this site), are far to simple to have been made by humans "they always consisted of fractured pebbles, anvils, hammers, and jagged-edged rock fragments, but other types of tools never appeared. All these characteristics are indistinguishable from the tools used today by capuchin monkeys".
But, what if... they are the work of a cobble or pebble type lithic industry, simliar to the Oldowan, one used by archaic hominins? Could Homo habilis or even Australopiths have reached America with primitive stone tool know-how?
Read the paper here: Agnolín, A. M., & Agnolín, F. L. (2022). Holocene capuchin-monkey stone tool deposits shed doubts on the human origin of archeological sites from the Pleistocene of Brazil. The Holocene, 09596836221131707. https://doi.org/10.1177/09596836221131707
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025by Austin Whittall ©
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