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Archaeological excavation of wild macaque stone tools Project ID: 00000C308 Public
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We present the first report on an archaeologically excavated Old World monkey tool use site, which was created by wild Burmese long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis aurea) 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, and previous work has demonstrated that use-wear on the stone tools permits reconstruction of past ma- caque activities. 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.

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