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Three thousand years of wild capuchin stone tool use

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Tiago Falótico at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Tiago Falótico
Tomos Proffitt at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Tomos Proffitt
Eduardo Ottoni at University of São Paulo
Eduardo Ottoni
Richard A Staff at University of Oxford
Richard A Staff
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Abstract and Figures

The human archaeological record changes over time. Finding such change in other animals requires similar evidence, namely, a long-term sequence of material culture. Here, we apply archaeological excavation, dating and analytical techniques to a wild capuchin monkey (Sapajus libidinosus) site in Serra da Capivara National Park, Brazil. We identify monkey stone tools between 2,400 and 3,000 years old and, on the basis of metric and damage patterns, demonstrate that capuchin food processing changed between ~2,400 and 300 years ago, and between ~100 years ago and the present day. We present the first example of long-term tool-use variation outside of the human lineage, and discuss possible mechanisms of extended behavioural change.
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Brief CommuniCation
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0904-4
1Department of Experimental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of São Paulo, Butantã, Brazil. 2Neotropical Primates Research Group, Butantã,
Brazil. 3Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, UK. 4Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, East Kilbride, UK.
5Independent Researcher, London, UK. 6These authors contributed equally: T. Falótico, T. Proffitt. *e-mail: t.proffitt@ucl.ac.uk
The human archaeological record changes over time. Finding
such change in other animals requires similar evidence,
namely, a long-term sequence of material culture. Here, we
apply archaeological excavation, dating and analytical tech-
niques to a wild capuchin monkey (Sapajus libidinosus) site in
Serra da Capivara National Park, Brazil. We identify monkey
stone tools between 2,400 and 3,000 years old and, on the
basis of metric and damage patterns, demonstrate that capu-
chin food processing changed between ~2,400 and 300 years
ago, and between ~100 years ago and the present day. We
present the first example of long-term tool-use variation out-
side of the human lineage, and discuss possible mechanisms
of extended behavioural change.
Our understanding of long-term human behavioural evolution is
primarily built following changes in stone technology. Palaeolithic
archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists use this variation to infer
changes in hominin cognition1 and manual dexterity2, as well as
subsistence strategies and environmental adaptations3. However,
there is no long-term record of tool use variation in any other ani-
mal lineage. Excavations of western chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes
verus) nut-cracking sites have highlighted the potential antiquity of
primate stone tools4, but without finding changes in tool function5.
Similarly, although previous excavations of wild Burmese long-
tailed macaque (Macaca fascicularis aurea) and bearded capuchin
monkey (Sapajus libidinosus) sites have identified a range of stone
tool behaviour6,7, we have lacked evidence of behavioural varia-
tion over time. Here we show that wild bearded capuchins in Brazil
have been using stone tools for at least the past ~3,000 years, with
marked variation in tool use through this period. This discovery
presents the first example of long-term tool use variation outside of
the human lineage, providing comparative data on the mechanisms
of extended behavioural change.
The wild S. libidinosus of Serra da Capivara National Park
(SCNP) use stone tools in a wider variety of behaviours than any
living animal other than Homo sapiens. These activities include
nut cracking, seed processing, digging, stone-on-stone percussion,
sexual displays and fruit processing8–12. For percussive tasks, the
SCNP capuchins use rounded quartzite cobbles as hammerstones,
which are readily available in the immediate landscape. For anvils
they use tree roots and limbs, as well as loose cobbles and conglom-
erate blocks10.
The current study focuses on Caju BPF2, an open-air site located
in the Baixão da Pedra Furada (BPF) valley (08° 49.740′ S, 42° 33.292′
W) in SCNP7 (Fig. 1). Wild capuchins currently bring stones to this
site to process endemic cashew nuts (Anacardium spp.), resulting
in the accumulation of cashew-residue-covered hammerstones and
broken cashew shells, along with heavy percussive damage on local
cashew trees. Our most recent excavations build on the those previ-
ously reported7 and extend the site’s limits and time depth.
A total of 16 radiocarbon dates closely associated with percus-
sive stone tools demonstrate that capuchins have used this location
during four separate chronological phases (I–IV; Supplementary
Table 1). Caju BPF2 consists of two separate excavated areas, Caju
BPF2 East (20 m2) and Caju BPF2 West (47 m2). Combined, a total
area of 67 m2 was excavated to a maximum depth of 0.77 m, with
1,699 lithics >2 cm recovered of which 123 (7.2%) exhibited percus-
sive damage. The excavation was separated into 16 arbitrary 5-cm
spits, grouped into four chronological phases based on radiocarbon
dating, Phase I being the most recent and Phase IV representing
the oldest currently known capuchin occupation. The sedimentol-
ogy (fine sand with frequent small, rounded pebbles) is consistent
throughout, with no discernible change between spits or levels.
Gaps in the radiocarbon dating, however, suggest periods of low
sedimentation rates. Dates for the lowest levels push the earliest
known capuchin occupation at SCNP back to approximately 3000–
2400 cal , quadrupling the time depth of evidence for non-ape
tool use. A natural control sample representative of the raw materi-
als available to capuchins within the landscape was sampled (see
Supplementary Information).
We recovered 122 clearly identifiable capuchin stone artefacts,
weighing 46.7 kg in total, from the Caju BPF2 excavations. Percussive
evidence on these tools includes multiple individual impact points,
incipient cones of percussion, adherent residue, crushing of the stone
surface or a combination of these (Supplementary Information).
The Caju BPF2 artefacts include active percussive tools, as well
as passive elements and fragments (Supplementary Table 2), with
the majority being quartzite pebbles and cobbles (97.1%) and the
remainder sandstone. Raw material representation parallels that of
the landscape at SCNP (Supplementary Information), with the clos-
est lithic material source being a seasonally dry streambed about
25 m to the east. All recovered hammerstones are considerably
larger than the natural background stones, indicating capuchin tool
selection throughout the site’s occupation.
The earliest hammerstones at the site (Phase IV, circa 2993–
2422 cal ) are heavily damaged by percussive battering (Fig. 2),
and the large majority of hammerstones with flake detachments
were found in this level (Supplementary Information). Tools from
this phase possess considerably more impact points across more
surfaces, have more extensive use-wear and are much smaller and
lighter than those from the more recent Phases I and II. These damage
Three thousand years of wild capuchin stone
tool use
Tiago Falótico 1,2,6, Tomos Proffitt 3,6*, Eduardo B. Ottoni 1, Richard A. Staff 4 and
Michael Haslam 5
NATURE ECOLOGY & EVOLUTION | VOL 3 | JULY 2019 | 1034–1038 | www.nature.com/natecolevol
1034
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... At SRL the hammers used to break open Cansanção were significantly heavier on average than those used to break open the smaller fruit Guariroba, providing evidence in favor of the hypothesis proposed by Visalberghi et al. (2007) that capuchin monkeys select hammers on the basis of the characteristics of the target fruits. Sapajus xanthosternos, like S. libidinosus as described in Ferreira et al. (2010) and Falótico et al. (2019), seemed to be able to judge and choose which stone tool was ideal for breaking open a given fruit, as larger, more resistant fruits could be more easily opened with heavier stones, but avoiding excess force, on the other hand, as smaller fruits may not require heavy stones for efficient processing. ...
... Hammering with stone tools has now been observed directly in the wild for five Sapajus species (S. libidinosus, S. flavius, S. nigritus cucullatus, S. apella, S. xanthosternos) (Steinberg et al. 2022;Lima et al. 2024;dos Santos Gutierres et al. 2025;Medeiros et al. 2025). The most commonly observed tool use type across Sapajus is the use of hammer stones to break open hard-encased fruits or shellfish on anvils, and there is archeological evidence that S. libidinosus has been using stone tools for nutcracking at Serra de Capivara for at least 3000 years (Falótico et al. 2019). Stone tool use has also been observed in two species of gracile capuchins, Cebus imitator (Barrett et al. 2018;Monteza-Moreno et al. 2020) and C. yuracus (Araujo et al. 2022), but is absent in many well-studied populations of wild Sapajus species (Steinberg et al. 2022), and apparently absent in most Cebus species, although very few of them have been studied in the wild. ...
Characterization of Stone Tool Use in Wild Groups of Critically Endangered Yellow-Breasted Capuchin Monkeys (Sapajus xanthosternos)
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Objectives A hallmark of hominin evolution is the advent and diversification of stone tool use, and biological anthropologists have a particular interest in characterizing tool use behaviors in different hominin species. Robust capuchins, the genus Sapajus , are an excellent convergent model system for understanding tool use evolution, principally in the context of foraging, in terms of how they use stones to process hard fruits. However, most published studies of capuchin tool use in the wild focus on the species Sapajus libidinosus . In order to strengthen comparative analyses, it is important to do research across robust capuchin species to understand tool use capacities and variation across the genus. The first indirect evidence that reported tool use in wild S. xanthosternos was in 2009, but since that time no additional publications have described this behavior for this species. In this study we provide the first complete characterization of tool use in wild S. xanthosternos for two areas within Montes Claros, Minas Gerais state, Brazil: Santa Rosa de Lima district, and Lapa Grande State Park. We compare our findings to the stone tool use characteristics reported in wild Sapajus libidinosus and other capuchin monkey species. Materials and Methods In monthly surveys from January to September 2018, we walked trails through the two study areas and categorized tool use site characteristics, including anvil area, height, and perimeter; hammer stone weight; and species of fruit utilized. Additionally, we utilized camera traps at high‐use sites. Results We describe the tools used by S. xanthosternos at 169 sites clustered in seven Nutcracking Areas, for processing three different species of encased fruit: Macaúba ( Acrocomia aculeata ), Cansaçao ( Cnidoscolus pubescens ), and Guariroba ( Syagrus oleracea ). With camera traps, we directly observed tool use behavior for the first time in this species. Discussion Sapajus xanthosternos displayed tool use patterns very similar to those of S. libidinosus . The main difference was in regards to physical force; in our study, the mean weight of stones used by S. xanthosternos was higher than the mean reported for S. libidinosus at most field sites; however, there was no difference in hammer weight between S. libidinosus and S. xanthosternos when hammering Macaúba. We also registered the heaviest hammer stone for tool use (7.675 kg) known for the robust capuchin genus. It is clear from our study that tool use capacity and characteristics are conserved across the radiation of extant Sapajus , suggesting a possible stone tool use cognitive capacity spanning up to 3.3 million years of diversification within this genus. Unlike stone tool use occurring throughout the year for S. libidinosus , at our study sites S. xanthosternos used nutcracking tools only during the dry season.
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... Archaeological digs have shown that nut cracking using stone hammers has existed for over 4000 years in chimpanzees [82] and over 3000 years in capuchin monkeys [83]. Searching for archaeological evidence of culture may seem a niche approach, but the systematic analysis of tools and other artefacts left behind by animals over shorter timescales can be a productive avenue [61,84], although for perishable items, repeated sampling over longer periods is required for investigations of cross-generational transmission. ...
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... We argue that the evolution of the Primate lineage (rather than Hominids per se) was critical on Earth to the development of intelligent, tool-using, language-bearing life. While many non-Primate organisms, notably the Corvids, use tools (Rutz et a., 2016;Bayern et al., 2018), tool-use is endemic in the Primates, with at least 32 species seen using them (Bentley-Condit and Smith, 2010;Haslam, 2013;Proffitt et al., 2016;Falótico et al., 2019;Agnolín and Agnolín, 2023). There are also at least three Primate species able to use spoken languages (Girard-Buttoz et al., 2022). ...
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Archaeological excavation of wild macaque stone tools
Article
  • May 2016
More than 3 million years of excavated archaeological evidence (Harmand et al., 2015) underlies most major insights into the evolution of human behaviour. However, we have seen almost no use of archaeological excavation to similarly broaden our under- standing of behaviour in other animal lineages. The few published examples include recovery of a late Holocene assemblage of stones from the Ivory Coast, attributed to the agency of both humans (Homo sapiens) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) (Mercader et al., 2002, 2007), and exploration of the occupation sites of non- tool-using species such as penguins (Emslie et al., 2014) and other birds (Burnham et al., 2009). The development of viable methods for identifying and interpreting past non-human tool use landscapes is essential if we are to gain a better understanding of technological evolution within other animals, including our close relatives, the primates. Recently, the growth of primate archaeology has built on the close phylogenetic relationship between humans and other primates to begin filling in this lacuna (Haslam et al., 2009; Carvalho, 2011; Stewart et al., 2011; Haslam, 2012, 2014; Visalberghi et al., 2013; Haslam et al., 2014; McGrew et al., 2014; Benito-Calvo et al., 2015; Luncz et al., 2015; Kühl et al., 2016). Here, we present the first report on an archaeologically exca- vated Old World monkey tool use site, which was created by wild Burmese long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis aurea) (Bunlungsup et al., 2016) during shellfish-processing activities in coastal Thailand. These macaques use stone and shell pounding tools to access a wide variety of coastal and inter-tidal resources, including shellfish, crabs and nuts (Fig. 1) (Malaivijitnond et al., 2007; Gumert et al., 2009, 2011; Gumert and Malaivijitnond, 2012; Tan et al., 2015), and previous work has demonstrated that use-wear on the stone tools permits reconstruction of past ma- caque activities (Haslam et al., 2013). Uncovering the history of this foraging behaviour opens up opportunities to study its evolution within the macaque lineage and, more broadly, to retrieve comparative data for researchers studying human and primate coastal exploitation (e.g., Marean, 2014; Russon et al., 2014).
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