4,300 Year Old Chimp Tool, World's Oldest, Found in Ivory Coast Rain Forest

In the West African rainforest, archaeologists have found ancient chimpanzee stone tools thousands of years older than the previous oldest finds in the same area. The discovery suggests that chimps may have passed cultural information down the generations for more than 4,000 years.

The human fossil record dates back 2.6 million years, thanks to our ancestors' who lived in more arid areas, where bones are well preserved. But the chimp fossil record is very sparse. We know little about ancient chimps' lifestyles, and only one previous set of old tools, dating from 100 years ago, has been found1.

Both sets of tools consist of stones used to smash open the nuts of the panda tree (Panda oleosa), and the flakes of stone chipped off by this hammering. They were found in the same spot of rainforest in the Côte d'Ivoire. The recently discovered set is dated to 4,300 years ago, researchers report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences2.

"What makes this find interesting is that the rocks are so old," says Huw Barton, an archaeologist from the University of Leicester, UK. We have no idea how far back such tools were used, he adds: "For all we know stone tool use behaviour could be very ancient."

Although panda nuts are found across Africa, only West African chimps (Pan troglodytes) have been seen cracking them with rocks, using a piece of granite and steadying the nut against a cracking post, usually the nook of a tree stump.


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