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An image of the Title, with subtitles, of the document on Study of Chimpanzee Tool Use debunks Chimps in Stone Age Theory by Ancient Origins, with Commentaries by Homer Dewayne Shappley of Peace Publishers.

UPDATED  JULY 23, 2021 ASHLEY COWIE

A chimpanzee uses a stick as a “tool” in his search for food in the little hole in the tree trunk. “Intelligence” equal to that of humans in the Stone Age?

Ashley Cowie writes…

You’ve probably heard some hip podcaster like Joe Rogan, or watched that National Geographic YouTube video, about a chimpanzee spear-fishing.

Photograph of a chimpanzee using a stick as a "tool" in his search for food in the little hole in a tree trunk, illustration for: Study of Chimpanzee Tool Use debunks Chimps in Stone Age Theory.

Rogan, along with an alarming number of scientists, claims things like “Chimps are now in the Stone Age.” However, the idea that chimpanzee tool use is on a par with that of Stone Age humans seems to have been snuffed. For the National Geographic video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P46vKuO3Hg  

These kinds of headlines give way to the idea that in the future our hairy primate cousins may evolve into having businesses, cars and maybe even their own cell phone. Now, refreshingly, a new study clearly demonstrates that “chimpanzees have not entered the Stone Age.” Furthermore, they are far from it.

Commentary by HDS. Oh! The world-famous “National Geographic” and podcasters like Joe Rogan are mistaken! “Snuffed” the “idea that chimpanzee tool use is on a par with that of Stone Age humans.” The proof is stated further along in the article.

Photograph of a chimpanzee in a thinking posture, illustration for: Study of Chimpanzee Tool Use debunks Chimps in Stone Age Theory.

Although many have reported witnessing chimpanzee tool use on a level of Stone Age humans, chimps do not actually have this level of ability innately. (Kajenna / Adobe Stock)

New Paper On Chimpanzee Tool Use
Overrides All Others

In 2007, National Geographic announced that “for the first time, great apes had been observed making and using tools to hunt mammals.” The article explained that no fewer than 22 scientific papers in the 1990s and early 2000s had documented observations of wild chimpanzees on an African savanna snapping sticks into so-called “spears.” 

Their aim was reportedly to use the sticks like weapons, jabbing them into hollows in tree trunks in order to hunt and stab bush babies, a type of small primate. According to the National Geographic report, this reportedly “offers insight into the evolution of hunting behavior in early humans.”

The number of these papers is now closer to a hundred, and they all suggest apes are advancing on an evolutionary path similar to humans. 

But the new research paper published on "Open Research Europe" claims to prove them all wrong, demonstrating that 99% of ape scientists, (and Joe Rogan) should drop their “chimps in the Stone Age” fantasy

Commentary. Hundreds of “ape scientists” mistaken! That they “should drop their “chimps in the Stone Age FANTASY?” Hundreds of scientists, and also the “National Geographic,” believing and promoting FANTASIES! The truth is forthcoming below.

Following are two more documents on this site highlighting the lack of objectivity by "National Geographic" editors and writers and the notable propensity of some to lump all "Christians" in the same category with the most unlearned, irrational, infantile, and morally compromised, ridiculing them.

The celestial alignment of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn lined up with the sun and the moon on May 5, 2000. National Geographic reacts with an article on the “Doomsday mentality of Christians.

The passing of the Hale-Bopp comet in 1997 and the tragedy of 39 Heaven's Gate members who committed suicide, certain their souls would board a spaceship in the tail of that Hale-Bopp comet. Hale-Boppalypse, Doomsday, National Geo, Christianity. Are comets Doomsday omens?

The STONECULT project is led by Dr. Claudio Tennie and the new study has been conducted by Dr. Elisa Bandini and Dr. Alba Motes-Rodrigo of the University of Tübingen and Dr. Shannon McPherron of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Published in the ERC-journal, the paper suggests that chimpanzee tool use is nowhere near the abilities of early Stone Age humans.

Where Did So Many Scientists Go Wrong?

Let it be duly noticed: The question posed in this subtitle is made by various scientists with doctorates in different specialties!

“SO MANY SCIENTISTS” gone “WRONG,” says the subtitle. Also, the “NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC.The reasons are given as follows.

While chimps do use tools, they can’t make stone tools. (rai / Adobe Stock)

The new, and somewhat controversial, conclusions were drawn after a study of eleven chimpanzees at a zoo in Kristiansand, Norway, and Chimfunshi Wildlife Sanctuary and Orphanage in Zambia. Chimpanzees “do not seem to be able to spontaneously make and use sharp stone tools, says the new paper, which directly conflicts 

Photograph of chimps poking sticks in holes, illustration for: Study of Chimpanzee Tool Use debunks Chimps in Stone Age Theory.

with the hundreds of other similar studies which suggest the very opposite. Furthermore, this lack of ability and inspiration to make sharp tools was observed even when chimps had all the materials and incentives at hand.

The research team asked a very clear question: do chimpanzees possess the spontaneous ability to make stone tools like humans did 2.6 million years ago? Alba Motes-Rodrigo pointed out that all previous experiments had focused on “great apes that had been enculturated or trained by humans and had been shown manufacturing techniques by humans.” Therefore, the primary reason the new experiments show the opposite from earlier studies is because it analyzed the behaviors of untrained (unenculturated) chimpanzees. 

Study Conducts Experiments
On Chimpanzee Tool Use

The observed chimps were shown two different sealed containers of food through a clear Plexiglas pane, but they could only access the meal if they made sharp stone tools. Even with a stone core and hammer stones to knock sharp-edged stones off this core shoved under their noses, there was no evidence the chimpanzees could make the tools they needed to solve the problem.  Nothing. They would have starved. Unlike all previous studies, this experiment shows that wild chimpanzees who have not observed humans making tools in their lifetime are unable to make tools on a par with Stone Age humans. 

Accepting chimpanzees are not in a period of evolution equable with the human Stone Age, how close might they be? Claudio Tennie explained that although the chimpanzees likely understood that the containers contained food, they were clearly unmotivated to get to it. “None of the animals in the test even attempted to make sharp stone tools.” 

“Chimpanzees do not have this spontaneous ability” to make stone tools, claims the study. This suggests “all” previous studies on chimpanzee tool use have been contaminated, in that the test subjects, the chimps, have all been in close contact with humans before being studied. Tennie reiterated: "...they have not entered the stone age.”

Commentary. So then, hundreds of scientific papers affirming the ability of chimpanzees alive today to make stone tools, but, nevertheless, all in error because they were based on “contaminatedstudies. “…contaminated” because the scientists who carried out the experiments did not have the intelligence common sense to take into account the circumstance that they were observing acculturated apes who were just imitating human beings.

This whole scenario highlights the notable tendency of all human beings to make mistakes, to overlook key factors, to assume as fact what, in reality, is not, etc. Neither scientists, teachers of religion, nor reviewers (like myself) are exempt. That being true more often than we would like to believe, with what justification should we implicitly and unconditionally trust absolutely any of them, or ourselves? Without exhaustive verification, as arduous as it may be. Holding no one to be infallible. Not deifying anyone, as if their conclusions were law. A great error many young people are inclined to commit, especially university students taking science courses. A fact also highlighted in the article "Your Life. Your Body."

In the paragraph above, below the picture of two apes poking sticks into holes in a termite mound, it is stated: “The research team asked a very clear question: do chimpanzees possess the spontaneous ability to make stone tools like humans did 2.6 million years ago?”

Thus, the members of the “team” affirm that “humans” did, indeed, live on the earth “2.6 million years ago” and had “the spontaneous ability to make stone tools.” “2.6 million years ago,” in the time frame, they identify as the “Stone Age.” Here we have two more controversial subjects on which innumerable scientists have made authoritative declarations with such confidence that one would think they themselves had been alive on the Earth “2.6 million years ago.” To wit: the age of planet Earth and the time human beings have been on the Earth.

Highly speculative subjects, though the scientists cited would vigorously disagree. How do they know with such certainty that the Earth and its human inhabitants have existed for such a long time? Of course, they present arguments and evidence they hold to overwhelmingly support their convictions. But, nevertheless, given their notable tendency to interpret “evidence” according to their own rules and formulate fundamental conclusions based on mountains of “suppositions,the which they frequently present as “facts,” with what logic should we quickly embrace their explanations as if they were absolutely unquestionable truths?

Of a certainty, many scientists do not, presenting evidence and arguments against such a long existence for Earth as 4.54 billion years, and of human beings (Homo habilis) on the Earth since 2.8 million years ago.

Photograph of Hugo Reinhold's scupture Ape with a Skull, illustration for: Study of Chimpanzee Tool Use debunks Chimps in Stone Age Theory.

Left. The obsession science has with the chimpanzee is rooted in the fact that this ape is our closest living relative. In the image Hugo Reinhold’s 1893 “Ape with Skull”. (Darwin Monkey /CC BY-SA 4.0 )

Commentary. The “Skull” the “ape” is contemplating is of a human being (Homo habilis). The “fact” is that “so many scientists” gone “wrong,” and also multitudes of other Darwinian evolutionists, claim “this ape” as their “closest living relative.” That being the “fact” and truth for them, it is their right to rejoice in their relationship with, and the company of, their “hairy primate cousins!” If that is what they want. If that is the highest concept they wish to have of themselves. That they have evolved from the great apes, particularly, chimpanzees, and are no more than a superior class of purely physical animals. Humans have one pair fewer chromosomes than other apes…”  is a statement that unmistakably classifies humans (homo habilis) as APES. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanzee

Personally, I have a higher, more noble concept of my being and a wider, higher vision of myself in the cosmos.  So “chimpanzees and humans are closely related, having 95% of the DNA sequence and 99% of coding sequences.”  And, thereby, scientists come up with a hypothetical hybrid of “humanzee,” yet inexistent, thankfully. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanzee. Even so, my human, physical body is obviously hugely different from that of a chimp, orangutan, or gorilla!

Above, one of the great apes, a powerful male gorilla, tears into eucalyptus trees to get the sap.

However, the vital consideration is that I can think, even as I am doing at this moment, on a level, both real and abstract, of conceptual complexity, reasoning, and projection beyond -such is my deduction and conviction- the powers of a mere physical, purely animal, ape brain, including the physical brain of Homo habilis Darwinian evolutionists also classify as “APE.” “A big, naked ape,as one is reported to have said.

Is a chimp capable of conceiving and analyzing the idea of “a higher, more noble concept of being,” or “a wider, higher vision of self in the cosmos?” And that is just a tiny part of concepts, visions, values, projections, and regions beyond the merely visible-physical-material I am able to think rationally about, understand, and adjust my existence to as I desire.

Do you mean to tell me, dear Darwinian evolutionist, that this ability of mine, which we have in common, is also a product of purely material, physical evolution? Of course, you do and I know your line of argumentation, but I do not accept it, for it seems totally unreasonable to me to think the completely physical brain could make the quantum leap from the absolutely material-physical existence to the type of “thinking” I am exercising at this moment. Yes, I use my human physical brain to write all this down and publish it on the Internet, but my “MIND” is not limited to the synapses of my physical brain.

Teaching, as Darwinian evolutionists do, not a few with aggressive, imperious insistence, that we human beings have evolved from chimpanzees and other great apes, that we are of their lineage, and that we should not harbor illusions of being anything more than animals on a higher level than they are on the evolutionary scale, and that this is the absolute and only truth about our nature and standing, is to deprive us of the option of conceiving ourselves to be of a very different lineage than that of the great apes, infinitely superior to them, to wit: that of being “God’s offspring,” of the lineage of the Creator who made us “in his own image” and “likeness.” Acts 17:24-29; Genesis 1:26-27. Of course, this option is summarily discarded as childish and foolish by “so many” of those “scientists” gone “wrong,” as also perhaps the majority of those who think of and are thought of by others as not being in that embarrassing category.

Top image: Study on chimpanzee tool use concludes that chimpanzees use a variety of tools, but sharp stone tools are not one of them. Source: Kevin Langergraber

By Ashley Cowie

Published, minus the “Commentaries” of the reviewer HDS, in:

“Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away
from godless chatter
 and the opposing ideas of what is
falsely called knowledge
, which some have professed
and in so doing have departed from the faith.”

1 Timothy 6:20

Text and Document Composition by the author Homer Dewayne Shappley. All rights reserved. The only restrictions on the use of this document are the sale of it in any format and proper identification of its origin.

CATEGORY: Belief Disbelief.

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