School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
Am J Primatol. 2018 Sep;80(9):e22921. doi: 10.1002/ajp.22921. Epub 2018 Oct 3.
Chimpanzees are well-studied, but raw material acquisition for tool use is still poorly understood as sources are difficult to trace. This study pioneers the use of information that can be gleaned from plant scars made by chimpanzees while they source vegetation parts to manufacture termite fishing tools. Source plant species, raw material types and locations relative to targeted termite mounds were recorded for populations at Gombe, Issa, and Mahale in western Tanzania. Recovered bark, twig, and vine tools were traced to 29 plant species, while grass sources were indeterminable. Bark extraction scars remained detectable for months, and thus possibly for as long as the plant is alive, while twig and vine scars preserved for a few weeks only. Scars preserve better than tools, given that twice as many plant species could be linked to the former than to the latter. Some source species were exploited across all sites for the same type of tool material, while two species were sourced for different types. Compared to apes at Gombe and Mahale, Issa chimpanzees carried material from twice as far away, perhaps because the Issa habitat is more open and dry, which entails greater distances between suitable raw material sources and targeted mounds. Site-specific tools were based on different raw materials, in two cases sourced from the same species, which could suggest learned preferences for particular tool material. "Archaeology of the perishable" as pioneered in this study broadens the methodological approach of the wider field of primate archaeology to include reconstructions of past animal behavior associated with the production of plant based tools.
黑猩猩是研究得比较透彻的物种，但由于难以追踪其原材料的来源，因此对于它们如何获取制作工具的原材料仍知之甚少。本研究开创性地利用了黑猩猩在获取植物部分以制造白蚁钓鱼工具时在植物上留下的疤痕信息。记录了来自坦桑尼亚西部贡贝、伊萨和马哈尔的黑猩猩种群的来源植物物种、原材料类型和相对于目标白蚁丘的位置。回收的树皮、小树枝和藤本植物工具可追溯到 29 种植物，而草的来源则无法确定。树皮提取的疤痕可以持续数月，因此可能只要植物还活着，疤痕就会一直存在，而小树枝和藤本植物的疤痕只能保存数周。由于可以将两倍数量的植物物种与前者联系起来，而不是与后者联系起来，因此疤痕比工具保存得更好。一些来源物种在所有地点都被用于同一种工具材料，而有两种来源物种则用于不同类型的工具。与贡贝和马哈尔的猩猩相比，伊萨的猩猩从更远的地方携带材料，也许是因为伊萨的栖息地更开阔和干燥，这意味着在合适的原材料来源和目标蚁丘之间需要更大的距离。特定地点的工具基于不同的原材料，有两种情况是从同一物种中获取的，这可能表明对特定工具材料有学习偏好。本研究开创的“易腐考古学”拓宽了更广泛的灵长类考古学领域的方法学方法，包括重建与制作植物工具相关的过去动物行为。
