ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2015
Experimental studies illuminate the cultural transmission of percussive technologies in Homo and Pan.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 26 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed.
- Savanna chimpanzee tool and fruit transfers facilitate the transmission of technological behaviours at Dindefelo, Senegal.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Costs of Early Stone Toolmaking cannot Establish the Presence of Know-how Copying.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Stone toolmaking difficulty and the evolution of hominin technological skills.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Emergence of perceptuomotor relationships during paleolithic stone toolmaking learning: intersections of observation and practice.Communications biology · 2021Article
- Object sorting into a two-dimensional array in humans and chimpanzees.Primates; journal of primatology · 2021Article
- The ontogeny of exploratory object manipulation behaviour in wild orangutans.Evolutionary human sciences · 2021Article
- Early sociability fosters later exploratory tendency in wild immature orangutans.Science advances · 2020Article
- Roles of Technical Reasoning, Theory of Mind, Creativity, and Fluid Cognition in Cumulative Technological Culture.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2019Article
- Social learning through associative processes: a computational theory.Royal Society open science · 2019Article
- A Shared Food Source Is Not Necessary to Elicit Inequity Aversion in Dogs.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Article
- Article
- The pervasive role of social learning in primate lifetime development.Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2018Review
- The effects of sociability on exploratory tendency and innovation repertoires in wild Sumatran and Bornean orangutans.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Teaching to make stone tools: new experimental evidence supporting a technological hypothesis for the origins of language.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- A second inheritance system: the extension of biology through culture.Interface focus · 2017Review
- Synchronized practice helps bearded capuchin monkeys learn to extend attention while learning a tradition.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
- Culture extends the scope of evolutionary biology in the great apes.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
- What Pinnipeds Have to Say about Human Speech, Music, and the Evolution of Rhythm.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2016Article
- Perspectives on object manipulation and action grammar for percussive actions in primates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2015Article
- Percussive tool use by Taï Western chimpanzees and Fazenda Boa Vista bearded capuchin monkeys: a comparison.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2015Review
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The complexity of Stone Age tool-making is assumed to have relied upon cultural transmission, but direct evidence is lacking. This paper reviews evidence bearing on this question provided through five related empirical perspectives. Controlled experimental studies offer special power in identifying and dissecting social learning into its diverse component forms, such as imitation and emulation. The first approach focuses on experimental studies that have discriminated social learning processes in nut-cracking by chimpanzees. Second come experiments that have identified and dissected the processes of cultural transmission involved in a variety of other force-based forms of chimpanzee tool use. A third perspective is provided by field studies that have revealed a range of forms of forceful, targeted tool use by chimpanzees, that set percussion in its broader cognitive context. Fourth are experimental studies of the development of flint knapping to make functional sharp flakes by bonobos, implicating and defining the social learning and innovation involved. Finally, new and substantial experiments compare what different social learning processes, from observational learning to teaching, afford good quality human flake and biface manufacture. Together these complementary approaches begin to delineate the social learning processes necessary to percussive technologies within the Pan-Homo clade.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.