White flour curled its tail and threw stones at nuts.
What is the Stone Age?
The Stone Age refers to the era when stone tools played an important role in human production and life, which was divided into two stages: Paleolithic Age and Neolithic Age. The Paleolithic period began 2 million years ago and finally ended 1000 years ago, mainly making stone tools. The Neolithic Age was from 6,543,800 years ago to 4,000-5,000 years ago, and further developed into grinding stone tools. The Stone Age was followed by the Bronze Age.
In the Stone Age, ancient people used their own stone tools. As early as the Paleolithic Age, the technology of making stone tools was quite exquisite. For example, Neanderthals invented Levalova technology 250,000 years ago, which can make a stone core into several thinned stone tools, and make tools such as chisels, scrapers and spears.
Neanderthal tools can be used for cutting.
The research shows that capuchin monkeys mainly hit shells and nuts with ready-made stones, but did not master the technology of making and improving stone tools, which is really far from our human stone age.
At what stage of human evolution is capuchin monkey? Let's look at the intellectual performance of chimpanzees, our close relatives. Chimpanzees wipe leaves with sponges, then fill them with water to drink, or soak them with termites. They also use stones or wooden blocks as bases, put nuts on them, and then break them with another stone. This behavior is passed down from generation to generation in some chimpanzee groups. Scientists have found traces of chimpanzees chiseling nuts, some of which can be traced back hundreds or even thousands of years.
chimpanzee
There are too many animals in nature who can use tools. For example, otters will hit the clams' shells with stones, and Shu Boluodong will hit rocks with clams repeatedly, which is the same as capuchin monkeys hitting shells with stones. Octopuses even tear off the poisonous tentacles of jellyfish and attach them to suckers as weapons. It can be seen that the use of tools has never been a patent for humans and advanced primates.
Shu's pig-toothed fish uses rocks to crack open shells.
Australopithecus, 4 million years ago, is considered to be the direct ancestor of our human beings and the first step from apes to humans. The amazing Australopithecus, who lived in Ethiopia 2.5 million years ago, has initially mastered the ability to make and use tools. Scientists found traces of tool cutting on unearthed animal bones.
At present, the research only supports capuchin monkeys to choose various specific stones to treat food and use wooden sticks to drive away snakes to protect their young, but they have not been found to make tools. Therefore, capuchin monkeys are very clever monkeys, but they have not yet begun to evolve into highly intelligent creatures, at least 5 million years behind humans.
Will capuchin monkeys threaten human dominance? When it comes to interspecific competition, species can be divided into strong interfering species and weak interfering species. Weak interference species can be saved, and strong interference species have to fight to the death. Animals at the top of the food chain belong to strong interfering species. Two kinds of mice and two kinds of deer can be placed in the same forest, but there is no room for two kinds of tigers.
Neanderthal life
We humans rule the world by our own ability. No species is more invasive than us, and there is a second kind of human on the whole earth. After millions of years of struggle, only Homo sapiens (that is, us) is left in the existing animal genus, so some people joked that although we humans have a population of 6 billion, we are the most "lonely" animals in the world.
In the process of our Homo sapiens growing into the only overlord on earth, we have defeated countless opponents, including our ancestor Homo erectus (Yuanmou and Beijingers in history textbooks belong to this category) and our closest relative Neanderthals. When facing Homo sapiens for the first time, Neanderthals had learned to use machetes and spears. They are the top predators in Europe and have ruled Europe for 200,000 years. However, in front of modern people, it became extinct in just ten thousand years.
The life of Homo erectus
There is a law in ecology called "preemption rule". When one species occupies an niche, it is difficult for other species to develop in this niche. With the advantage of quantity, it is easy to exclude those who come first. Humans have occupied the whole earth, and there is no room for other intelligent creatures to develop.
So don't worry, we Homo sapiens can defeat the powerful Neanderthals at the level of science and technology 40 thousand years ago, and the capuchin monkey will not pose any threat to modern people. Unless a particularly serious disaster or nuclear war destroys all or most of mankind, there will never be another intelligent creature on earth.
Black striped capuchin monkeys teach their offspring to use tools.
Capuchin monkeys belong to the new world monkeys, and their relationship with human beings is quite far away, even farther than the old world monkeys such as macaques. However, they show a higher level of tool use than monkeys in the old world, which shows that in the evolutionary history of primates, tools were used not once, but twice. Apes and New World monkeys independently developed the ability to use stone tools, which has been passed down to this day. Therefore, the intellectual performance of capuchin monkeys has aroused widespread concern among scholars, but it is impossible to say that they will threaten the status of human beings.