The Use of tools by human and non-human primates

Bibliographic Information

The Use of tools by human and non-human primates

edited by A. Berthelet and J. Chavaillon

(Oxford science publications)(A Fyssen Foundation symposium)

Clarendon Press , Oxford University Press, 1993

Available at  / 29 libraries

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Includes bibliographical references and indexes

Description and Table of Contents

Description

This volume brings together contributions on the theme of tools from international specialists in various disciplines - anatomists, neurobiologists, prehistorians, ethnologists, and primatologists - at a symposium arranged by the Fyssen Foundation. Tools, whether of stone, wood, or metal, are a prolongation of the arm, but they acquire precision through the hand directed by the brain. A movement may have been identical from one another, in apes and in humans, in the past and in the present, but the resulting action varies according to the extended use of the tool. It is therefore necessary to understand the origin of tools, and also to be able to describe the techniques of cutting tools, and to imagine the possible uses of certain tools. Comparison of the techniques of chimpanzees with those of prehistoric Man and of twentieth-century Man has made it possible to appreciate the common aspects and to identify the differences. The transmission of ability, and of the understanding also called apprenticeship, has been studied in the various relevant societies: chimpanzees in their natural habitat and in captivity, hunter-gatherers, and workmen in prehistoric and in modern times.

Table of Contents

  • List of participants
  • Introduction
  • 1. Primate hands and the human hand: the tool of tools
  • 2. The hand and the tool: the functional architecture of human technical skills
  • 3. Control of the monkey's hand by the motor cortex
  • 4. Human prehension and its prosthetic substitution
  • 5. Some one- and two-handed functions and processes in tool-use by pongids
  • 6. Cognitive competence underlying tool-use in free-ranging orang-utans
  • 7. Tool use in a South American monkey species. An overview of the characteristics and limits of tool use in Cebus apella
  • 8. Brains, hands, and minds: puzzling incongruences in ape tool-use
  • 9. Tool-use and tool-making in wild chimpanzees
  • 10. Local variation of tools and tool-use among wild chimpanzee populations
  • 11. The earliest stone tools: their implications for an understanding of the activities and behaviour of late Pliocene hominids
  • 12. Are we able to determine the function of the earliest palaeolithic tools?
  • 13. The origin of secondary tools
  • 14. The origin of tool-use and the evolution of social space in palaeolithic times: some reflections
  • 15. Ecological determinism, group strategies, and individual decisions in the conception of prehistoric stone assemblages
  • 16. Tools and hunter-gatherers
  • 17. A framework for analysing prehistoric stone tool manufacture and a tentative application to some early stone industries
  • 18. Some socio-economic aspects of the knapping process among groups of hunter-gatherers in the Paris Basin area
  • 19. The transfer of knowledge within the craft industries and trade guilds
  • 20. From polished stone tool to sacred axe: the axes of the Danis of Irian Jaya, Indonesia
  • 21. How can we analyse and describe technical acts?
  • Epilogue
  • Author index
  • Subject index

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