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> Chimpanzee and monkey stone tools look very primitive. But then again, our ancestors' stone tools were just as primitive too, long ago.
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> In May 2015, archaeologists working in Kenya published details of the earliest stone tools ever made by members of our lineage.
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> > Within about 700,000 years of those Lomekwian stone tools, human technology had moved on
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> These "Lomekwian" stone tools were recovered from 3.3-million-year-old deposits. According to the team that found them, they were produced using techniques similar to those used by stone-wielding chimps and monkeys.
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> This means studying primates that use stone tools could tell us about the nature of early human behaviour. However, drawing conclusions won't be easy: early humans are very different from chimpanzees and monkeys.
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> Within about 700,000 years of those Lomekwian stone tools, human technology had moved on. First came "Oldowan" tools, including stones that had been deliberately modified to make a sharp edge by "flaking" off small pieces. A million years later, Acheulean hand axes with carefully-shaped cutting edges begin appearing in the archaeological record.
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> Why did our ancestors learn to make such sophisticated stone tools, and so long ago, while chimps and monkeys never got beyond a Lomekwian-style technology?
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> You might think it would be down to evolutionary advances in the anatomy of our hands, perhaps allowing for finer manipulation of objects.
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> > The problem probably lies in their brains
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> In fact, a July 2015 study by Sergio Almécija of George Washington University in Washington, DC suggests that, if anything, human hands have changed less over the last few million years than chimpanzee hands.
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> "The ancestor of humans and chimps had hand length proportions more similar, but not equal, to humans than to chimpanzees," says Almécija. "In terms of [digit] length proportions, humans are in fact more primitive than chimps."
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> If it's not chimpanzees' and monkeys' hands that are holding them back, the problem probably lies in their brains, says Almécija.
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> "It seems plausible that the ability to create stone tools requires some additional cognitive abilities: not just recognising what would be a useful tool, but also creating it," says Alexandra Rosati at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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> > Cooking increases the energy available from food relative to a raw diet
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> Humans' larger brains, and our resulting greater smarts, may be what allowed us to make ever better tools. But it's difficult to say exactly why our ancestors' brains began to swell.
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> One idea, suggested by primatologist Richard Wrangham, also at Harvard, is that our growing brains were fuelled by the development of cooking. "Larger brains require a lot of energy to grow and maintain, and cooking increases the energy available from food relative to a raw diet," says Rosati.
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> It's not clear when humans first invented cooking. It may have been long after our brains began swelling, which would mean Wrangham's idea is probably wrong.
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> But if he is correct, it suggests that a 2015 study by Rosati and her Harvard colleague Felix Warneken is very significant. Chimps might not have learned to control fire, but Rosati and Warneken found that they have enough smarts to appreciate the benefits of cooking.
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> In a series of experiments, Rosati and Warneken introduced chimps to an "oven": a container into which the apes could place food, which would later be returned to them in a cooked state.
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> > It's not clear whether they will have the opportunity to advance their Stone Age technology
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> The chimps were far more likely to put raw potato chips into this "oven" than into a second container that returned the food still raw.
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> What's more, when the chimps were given wood chips as well as raw potato chips, they generally didn't bother placing the wood into the "oven". That suggests they didn't see it simply as a cooked food dispenser, but understood that it would only cook edible things.
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> The chimps were even prepared to carry raw food from a remote location to the "oven" to have it cooked. This reflects the way our ancestors must have begun transporting food to the fireside millions of years ago.
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> Of course, until chimps do learn to control fire – if they ever make that leap – they won't be able to put their appreciation of cooked food to use. But Rosati and Warneken's work suggests that the relevant brain pathways, which perhaps allowed our ancestors to develop bigger brains and more advanced stone tools, are present in chimpanzees too.
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> It's possible that chimpanzees – and macaques and capuchins – haven't yet reached the limits of their technological capabilities, says Haslam.
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> But it's not clear whether they will have the opportunity to advance their Stone Age technology.
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> "We are shrinking their populations dramatically through habitat destruction and hunting," says Haslam. "Smaller populations cannot spread and sustain complex technologies as well as larger groups."
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> In other words, chimps and monkeys might have the capacity to make much more sophisticated stone tools, but they may never get the chance to achieve that potential: all because of another group of primates that became master stone tool manufacturers.

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