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Monkeys in modern-day Thai forests create stone artifacts uncannily similar to those crafted by early humans — challenging the established narrative of human cultural evolution. A new study published on Friday in Science Advances suggests the possibility that a critical hallmark of human tool use happened by accident — potentially blurring the line between tool use by early humans and our primate relatives. - snip - In an abandoned oil palm plantation on a national park site, the monkeys would create nut-cracking ‘stations’ beneath the feral trees. There they break open the palm fruit’s oil-rich pit between hand-wielded hammer rocks...

AKSON RUSSIAN SCIENCE COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION—Russian scientists studied the Zhokhov site of ancient people, which is located in the high-latitude Arctic, and described in detail the way of life of the ancient people who had lived there. It turned out that, despite the sparsely populated area, the ancient people had communicated with representatives of other territories and had even exchanged various objects with them through some kind of the fairs. Zhokhov Island, located at 76º N in the New Siberian Islands, 440 kilometers north of the modern coast of the East Siberian Sea, belongs to the High Arctic. Here, the Zhokhov...

Walker 'stone tools' weren't made by humans, state archaeologist says By Robert Franklin, Star Tribune Materials found on a hill above Walker, Minn., were not clearly stone tools dating back 13,000 to 14,000 years, the state archaeologist has concluded. Several experienced archaeologists have concluded that "the great majority of the collection was produced by natural processes," State Archaeologist Scott Anfinson said. "There were a few 'maybe' flakes [of stone], and there were clearly no stone tools of obvious human manufacture or use." Nor is it likely that people lived in the "very uninviting environment" of the Late Glacial age in...