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https://phys.org/news/2024-11-genetic-machine-reveals-complex-chimpanzee.html

'Genetic time machine' reveals complex
chimpanzee cultures

In recent decades, scientists have clearly
demonstrated that chimpanzees, like humans,
pass on complex cultures such as tool use
from generation to generation. But human
culture has become vastly more sophisticated,
from the Stone Age to the Space Age, as new
advances have been incorporated. Chimpanzee
cultures haven't changed in the same way,
which suggests that only humans have the
remarkable ability to build more
sophisticated cultures over time.

Scientists studying chimpanzees in the wild,
however, have disputed this, suggesting that
some of chimpanzees' most complex
technologies, in which they use multiple
tools in sequence to extract hidden food
sources, were probably built on previous
knowledge over time.

A new, multidisciplinary study led by the
University of Zurich suggests that some of
their most advanced behaviors may have been
passed down and refined through generations.
....
"As most chimpanzee tools, such as sticks
and stems, are perishable, there are few
records of their history to confirm this
hypothesis—unlike human cases such as the
evolution of the wheel or computer
technology," says lead author Cassandra
Gunasekaram from the Department of
Evolutionary Anthropology at the University
of Zurich.

For the new study, a team of anthropologists,
  primatologists, physicists and geneticists
from universities and research institutions
in Zurich, St. Andrews, Barcelona, Cambridge,
Konstanz and Vienna joined forces to trace
genetic links between chimpanzee populations
over thousands of years, using new discoveries
in genetics to uncover key pieces of chimpanzee
cultural history in ways never before imagined.
....



https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk3381

Population connectivity shapes the distribution
and complexity of chimpanzee cumulative culture