In the journal Natural Ecological Evolution, a study mentioned a non-human archaeological site in Brazil's Monte Capivara National Park, which lasted 3,000 years ago to the present, where scientists found that layers of small boulders accumulated here, which were used to knock out seeds and stone fruits, similar to the tools used by humans in the Paleolithic age, but this site was not left by human activities. Rather, it is a kind of monkey that still lives on earth: the capuchin monkey left behind.
In fact, capuchin monkeys not only used tools in the past, but today's capuchin monkeys still use tools to beat hard fruits, and scientists have observed that capuchin monkeys living in the local area will use fist-sized stones as tools to beat hard cashews.
Not only that, but they also know how to use hard stones as "cutting boards", so that when they smash nuts with stones, the nuts will not fall into the soft soil.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="4" > use tools</h1>
The use of tools is an important milestone in the evolution of human beings, because the use of tools can empower us, for example: bones are very hard, only by human strength can not break it, but the use of tools can make people easily break the bones, so as to obtain the bone marrow in the bones.
In addition, although humans are predators, human physical conditions are not suitable for hunting, this is because human teeth are not as sharp as lions, claws are not as strong as tigers, running speed is not as fast as cheetahs, humans want to hunt, they must use external forces, throwing tools are one of them. Nowadays, the Maasai people living in Africa still use the traditional way of lion hunting, that is, the spear, after training, the Maasai can throw the spear very far, the impact is very strong, and the throwing accuracy rate is also very high, which makes it possible for humans to attack prey at a great distance, while prey is difficult to approach humans.
In addition, the use of tools can also help humans obtain energy at the least cost. For example, human teeth are not very chewable, but humans can use stones to smash food, thereby reducing the number of chews and saving energy.
The use of tools has greatly improved the ability of human beings to adapt to the environment. In nature, animals want to adapt to the changing natural environment, can only rely on their own genetic changes, and the speed of their own genetic changes is very slow, at least tens of thousands of years or even hundreds of thousands of years to form a new species, but also many because it is difficult to adapt to changes in the environment and extinction, such as: saber-toothed tiger, mastodon and so on.
After humans learn to use tools, they can no longer rely on their own genetic changes to adapt to changes in the environment, but rely on tools. For example, during the same Ice Age, many animals that had difficulty adapting to the cold froze to death, but humans survived by the skill of wearing clothes.
Nowadays, the reason why we can build high-rise buildings, launch spacecraft, develop high-tech, etc., depends on the continuous progress of tools.
That said, the use of tools is one of the most important milestones in our evolution.
Now that scientists have found that capuchin monkeys have learned to use tools for more than 3,000 years, will they evolve towards human evolution and evolve a civilization that can threaten humans?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="13" will capuchin monkeys evolve civilizations >? </h1>
Although capuchin monkeys have used tools for more than 3,000 years, studies have found that the tools they use are still very rough, and although they will choose the stones they use, these stones are still naturally formed, rather than they make themselves, which shows that the way they use stones is still very rudimentary.
Moreover, there is no fixed route for the evolution of animals, and even if humans themselves travel back hundreds of thousands of years and re-evolve along the original environment, they may not necessarily evolve into what they are now. The reason is because the evolution process is full of accidents, for example: human beings once encountered a super-large volcanic eruption 70,000 years ago, it is the toba volcano eruption, the chain reaction caused by the volcanic eruption caused by the human body plummeted to a small group of 1000-10000 people, through genetic research found that only 600 of them left offspring.
If humans were allowed to re-evolve once, no one could be sure that humans would have escaped this eruption 70,000 years ago.
Capuchin monkeys already use primary tools, but they don't yet know how to make tools, and they don't know how to use the sharp corners of natural stones to cut food, so they are still far from the real Stone Age, let alone the emergence of civilization.
In fact, scientists on the phenomenon that capuchin monkeys will use tools, more than fear, but want to recognize the situation of early human use of tools through capuchin monkeys, so as to understand the environment in which humans lived in early days.