Homo faber juvenalis: Constructing an Ancestral Prototype of Children as Tool Makers/Users.
Abstract
This paper attempts to reconstruct a detailed portrait of children becoming tool users in the distant past. As children
“grow up in a world of tool users, tools became part of
the developmental world of young Hominins (Jaffares 2010: 517).” The overall aim is to derive a set of
generalizations that ought to characterize children as tool makers/users in the earliest human societies. These
generalizations will be sought from the collective wisdom of four distinct bodies of scholarship: lithic archaeology;
primate tool-use; relevant work in human infant and child cognition and; the cultural anthropology of children’s
playful and purposeful use of tools.
Becoming Tool Users
“Becoming” is used in the sense of ontogeny or the process whereby a naive child learns to use tools. “Becoming”
also refers to the fact that, for tool using to spread and endure among Hominids, children or juveniles had to serve as
the conservators retaining the tool, its manufacture and use in the culture.
The study of children’s work as integral to the domestic economy and to the child’s development as a mature,
successful individual has, until recently (Lancy 2015a, Rogoff 2003), been a relatively neglected topic in the study
of childhood. This omission is likely attributed to the fact that work, particularly work with tools comparable to
those used by adults, is largely absent from the lives of contemporary or WEIRD (Henrich et al 2010) children. In
the ethnographic record, in contrast, work, or at least “chores,” is ubiquitous. There is considerable variability in
how quickly children are to master the subsistence skills of adults and just how much they’re expected to contribute
to the family economy (Lancy 2015b). However, even in cases like the Ju/’hansi (!Kung) where children are in their
teens before they are expected to become proficient contributors to the larder, the very young will already be busy
making and using smaller, somewhat less effective food gathering tools such as bows and arrows and digging sticks
(Liebenberg 1990; Wilhelm 1953).
In this initial survey, a generous definition of “tool” seems appropriate: “…a tool is perceived as an extension of the
body that is used to achieve a goal that cannot be directly achieved with the use of only hands or teeth (Boesch
2014: 24).”
The analysis offered here falls in line with previous attempts over the years to create an ancestral prototype by
drawing on studies of contemporary hunter-gatherers. Probably the latest example is Konner’s revision of what he’s
called the HGC or Hunter-Gatherer Childhood model. From a survey of both historical and more recent studies of
selected hunter-gatherer societies, he identifies commonalities that may reveal the nature of infancy and childhood
among the earliest humans. These commonalities include: “close physical contact…indulgent and responsive infant
care…[and] multi-age play groups (Konner 2016: 153). In this paper, I will focus on only one narrow aspect of the
prototype, namely children’s engagement with tools. And my survey will extend well beyond the literature in
ethnography and recent empirical studies of hunter-gatherer practices. The primary aim is to recruit insights
regarding children and their work with tools from corollary bodies of literature that are not often taken into account
by evolutionary anthropologists. The research traditions that I will draw on in this review include studies of early
Hominins and their work with tools; chimpanzee tool use; recent research on infants and toddlers assembling a suite
of tool-related adaptations that emerge spontaneously and; reports of tool use by children in the ethnographic record.
Focusing on tools taps into rich veins of research in all four lines of inquiry and I hope to exploit the potential for
cross-fertilization. The goal then is to identify probable features of ancestral childhood with respect to tool use and
fabrication.
Early Hominins and Tools
While no one would deny the importance of tools in human evolution, paleontological research has taken us far
beyond the Leakey’s Homo habilis (Shipton and Nielsen in press). These fossil Hominins were discovered in the
early 1960s in the Olduvai Gorge in association with stone artifacts that had been modified and shaped by their
users. Homo habilis (handy man), dating from 2.8 to 1.5 MYA was considered the earliest tool maker and an
ancestor of Homo sapiens. Homo habilis, the “handy man” 1, had a brain capacity roughly 50% greater than the toolless Australopithicenes that were discovered in the 1960s and 1970s (“Lucy” was found in 1974) and somewhat less
than half the capacity of “modern” humans—a good candidate for the role of “missing link” between non-tool using
ancestral primates and “brainier” successors (Byrne et al 2014).
This straightforward picture of larger brain=tool-making=Homo species has been repeatedly challenged. More and
more Hominin fossils, including smaller brained, Australopithecus garhi (2.6 MYA) and Paranthropus
(Australopithecus) boisei (2.3 MYA) are being found in the context of active tool-making industries. Recently, near
Lake Turkana in Kenya, 3.3MYA knapped stone tools have been found in association with Pliocene-era Hominin
fossils. The Oldowan (from Olduvai Gorge) tool-kit (choppers, scrapers, pounders, awls and burins, cf. Mary
Leakey 1976) required the repeated application of a hammer-stone to a suitable stone core to shape a chopping tool
and produce, as a by-product, sharp-edged flakes suitable for cutting or reshaping into other, smaller tools.
Undoubtedly, there were other tools made from organic materials (and hence not preserved) such as wooden digging
sticks, hide carry sacks, nets, throwing sticks and gourds for carrying liquids. Tool assemblages similar to the
Oldowan from the Lower Paleolithic (2.6 MYA to 1.7 MYA) have now been found across much of Africa, South
Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
For a very long time, crude stone tools would have been utilized largely to process food acquired through
scavenging or plant foraging. The few tool forms (e.g. handaxe) remained unchanging over almost a million years
(Mithen 1999). Diversity begins to emerge during the Middle Pliestocene—the earliest stone spear points date to
500ka, wooden hunting spears from at least 400ka (Thieme 1997), well-made long and thin blades were made in
East Africa by 280ka and arrow points (implying arrows and bows) date to 17ka. From 2 MYA to 200ka, brain size
in the Homo line nearly doubled (Wong 2014). There is the implication that, as humans focused their diet more on
meat, as revealed in contiguous fossilized animal remains, their brains had sufficient fuel to permit an increase in
size, facilitating the development of more effective tools and techniques, particularly for hunting, fishing and
trapping. Anatomically modern humans (AMH) appear about 200,000 YA, by which time, the current human life
history pattern was probably firmly in place. That is, compared to earlier Hominins, modern humans enjoyed a
longer period of juvenility with the addition of two life history stages Middle Childhood and Adolescence (Bogin
1999; Lancy and Grove 2011). One explanation for the lengthening of the juvenile period was to facilitate the
thorough mastery of the adaptive skills, tools and life-ways of the group (Kaplan et al 2000).
Children as Novice Tool-Makers
By 75,000 BP, humans had developed a robust tool kit and their stone tools, now bi-faced, were much more
complex than their predecessors. A varied tool kit 2, implies a diversified system of resource acquisition, which, in
turn suggests flexibility in dealing with varied climate and environment. One of the most important and essential
“tools” was the use of fire for cooking foods. This widened array of tool types and applications required a reliable
means of transmitting the manufacturing process intact from generation to generation. Thus the onus is on children
and adolescents who must demonstrate interest, determination and a willingness to practice for years before
becoming legitimate inheritors and progenitors of the technology.
Stone tool makers enjoyed the advantage of distinct anatomical adaptations that facilitated percussive technology:
•
“The human arm represents a complex biomechanical system. Its anatomy allows seven independent
rotations in three arm joints, the wrist;…the elbow and;…the shoulder (Biryukova et al. 2005:74).”
•
“humans have unique patterns of grip and hand movement capabilities… a distinctive set of forceful pinch
grips…that are effective in the control of stones by one hand during manufacture and use of the tools
(Marzke 2013).”
1 Another term, used more in philosophy than paleontology, is Homo faber or Man the maker (of tools).
2 Such a rich “tool tradition” has also been noted for more modern hunter-gatherer populations such as the Inuit
(Boyd et al 2011). This same article relates the history of the Polar Inuit who “lost” a significant part of their tool
tradition around the mid-nineteenth century and this resulted in a marked population decline. The cultural
transmission process seems to have broken down, possibly due to an epidemic which removed the older generation
before they’d passed on their knowledge.
2
Nevertheless, “it is widely recognized that flint-knapping…requires a great deal of practice before good results can
be achieved consistently. Thus, there is a general consensus that knapping practice begins early in the life cycle, that
is, during childhood (Grimm, 2000: 54).”
The nature of flint knapping is such that researchers are able to reassemble or refit the original stone core from the
resultant tool and associated waste flakes or debitage. Stone tool making sites tended to be used for extended periods
or episodically, hence most sites yield a large cache of worked stone to analyze. Also important is the nature of the
stone and its probable source. With the growing interest in the archaeology of childhood (Baxter 2005), investigators
are paying increased attention to stone products that are faulty in some way. The typical site, in fact, reveals the
presence of expert knappers, beginners and those who are moving along from one state to the other (Stapert 2007).
Fortuitously, the debitage from a novice’s efforts is fully intact as none of the products are useable (Karlin and
Julien 1994). Abandoned, incomplete cores show precisely where the novice went wrong. The idea that becoming a
master takes a great deal of practice is evidenced by the fact that errors are patterned and predictable. The following
offers a series of windows into the past from a variety of lithic scholars:
•
“… strategic errors that novices make as they learn to work stone…include such things as stacked step
scars, hinge terminations and hammer-marks on the core faces (Bamforth and Finlay, 2008: 6).”
•
“…novices commonly fail to maintain either the proper platform angle or the differentiation of the striking
platform and the blade production face…novices do not attend systematically to either core maintenance
during the reduction process or overall core organization (Grimm 2000: 54-55).”
•
“Very small artefacts - too small to be of use - may be products of learners, especially if they show
beginner’s marks. The small size would have been an adaptation to the small hands of children (Stapert
2007: 33).”
•
At a Neolithic site in Ireland, evidently abandoned stone axe heads were never destined for use.
“…everything about them appears to be wrong: the raw material is unsuitable, the workmanship
is poor and…many of them would have broken during the first few minutes of use. Their
manufacture, however, provided an excellent opportunity for practice (Sternke 2010: 13).”
•
“The production of the flake axe from Hundvåg shows signs of random, poorly planned knapping, and
therefore a poor grasp of basic technological principles. The removal of flakes had penetrated the body of
the axe, terminating in hinge and step fractures. The edge was also damaged by a succession of failed
strokes, and finally the axe was discarded. The knapper understood the concept of the production and the
desired final shape, but lacked the practical skill needed to complete it (Dugstad 2008: 70).”
•
There is much more to stone tool manufacture than learning to hammer accurately. From the study of the
debitage from expert knappers, it is clear that making a hand axe, for example, involves several distinct
steps. The actions taken by the knapper must be executed in a particular order and this order is referred to
as the chaîne opératoire (Leroi Gourhan 1964). Consequently, “…learning knapping routines likely
required selective attentional faculties that were focused upon specific actions involved in achieving subgoals, which were then ultimately organized into a hierarchical structure of tool production (Caruana et al
2014: 268).”
Another “window” is provided by contemporary replicative knapping experiments in which novice knappers are
given the material and opportunity to create a stone tool. Their work is compared with that of expert knappers from
whom data has also been obtained and from the vast archive of pre-historic tools and debitage (Cunnar 2015). In a
contemporary expert vs novice (9 of each) comparison—of hand-axe construction—the researchers identified three
problems which the novices had to overcome which would not have been apparent from a study of debitage alone.
From the videotapes, they noted problems with the type of percussion support, the position of the blank and “the
ratio between percussions and rotations was greatly unbalanced (Beribas et al 2010).” Another, similar study found
that all novices struggled with the problem of applying too much or too little force (a failing shared by chimpanzee
3
novices, see below). However, novice knappers displayed considerable variability in the kinds of errors made and
actions taken to correct them (Shelley 1990)—suggesting the importance of trial and error.
From Carroll’s experimental study, we learn that some egregious errors—using the wrong end of an antler tine to
hammer a biface, for example—are easily avoided when the novice can observe an expert (Carroll 2016). Similarly,
Ferguson (2003) compared two groups of novices in an experiment. One group worked in consort with an expert and
had ample opportunity for observation. They made more rapid progress and wasted far less material than the
comparison group members who received direct instruction followed by practice. A similar study with 24 novice
college student 3 knappers offered two conditions:
“Each week, both groups had identical learning goals to meet, which progressed in order of difficulty from
recognizing ideal angles and making flakes, to producing alternate, bifacial flaking, to shaping completed
bifaces. In the verbal group, the goals to achieve each session and all attendant advice and information were
conveyed via spoken communication, and by example. Participants in the nonverbal group received no
spoken instructions at all; they had to infer the goals for each session based on observing and mimicking
the instructor (Putt et al 2014:98).”
Verbal instruction was counterproductive as the instructed students were hindered by the tendency to overimitate
whereas the non-verbal group focused on the goal and through greater trial and error, achieved success more rapidly.
The authors cite several earlier studies which reached a similar conclusion (Putt et al 2014).
There are a few studies of stone knapping by living New Guinea highlanders that, until the mid-20th century, or
somewhat later, continued to make adzes, axes and knives in stone. Field observers note from the Western
Highlands that:
“…copying, and trial and error, rather than explicit teaching, are certainly the methods by which Duna [Lake
Kopiago Western Highlands, PNG] learn about flaked stone…[which is reinforced by] by Duna attitudes about
knowledge. Duna men are not intellectualists and do not spend their time discussing the meaning of things.
They assume that all people think the same way until faced with evidence to the contrary, in which case they
remark: ‘well they’re other men, their ways are something else.’ Duna men always insist on the particularistic
nature of knowledge. What one man knows is not what another knows and… the two cannot know the ‘same’
things (White et al. 1977: 381).”
In a comparable study in a contemporary stone working site in the Hunsgi-Baichbal Valley in India, the authors
report:
“,…interpersonal observation in quarries is common, and learning takes place by watching skilled workers.
Juveniles imitate adults in making groundstone tools, but proficiency in tool manufacture does not occur until
sub-adulthood to adulthood stages, when adequate skill, strength and dexterity have been developed (Petraglia
et al 2005: 216).”
Overall, the optimal learning environment appears to one where the novice can learn socially with an expert role
model as well as peer models and be afforded the scope for extended practice and improvement over several years.
Instruction, as such, may not be helpful.
Grimm (2000) asserts that flint knapping required a great deal of practice and would, necessarily, commence in
childhood. But there is a lack of consensus in estimating the length of time it would take for a novice to become
proficient (Roux, Bril, and Dietrich 1995) or in the likely age at which learning commenced. With respect to the
latter, we have two reports of contemporary knappers that are relevant. In one experiment, the archaeologist knaps a
stone arrow head—without any further explanation—at the request of his 5 year-old nephew. He was amazed to
observe the child 6 weeks later at the same site, busily knapping found material to produce a reasonable facsimile of
3 Bear in mind that these modern simulations are imperfect in some respects. It is unlikely that, in the distant past,
aspirant tool-makers began the learning process in their late teens/ early 20s—the typical age of college student
subjects.
4
his uncle’s work, including flaking the core bi-facially. He concludes that “Very young individuals can begin
learning to knap through social observation (Shipton and Nielsen in press; see also Petraglia et al 2005).”
With respect to the question of the duration of the novice phase, in a contemporary study done in the Gona area of
Ethiopia, knappers working in trachyte improved rapidly in attempting to match a model. However, when the same
novices tried producing the tools using quartzite the task became much more challenging (Stout and Semaw 2006).
The authors speculate that learning the characteristics of various types of stone—or, more generally, the raw
materials used to make tools—under stress is an important corollary of learning to make tools. The study and use of
properly finished tools must also facilitate learning to make them. According to one theory, objects offer
affordances (Gibson 1979) or clues to how they are best used or made (Caruana et al 2014).
Another example that illustrates the great variability in the “learning curves” for different tools comes from
Etiolles—a Magdalenian site in France where long blades were made. Completing the tool involved two stages:
rough reduction, carried out with a stone hammer and; more refined edge reduction carried out with a soft hammer
of antler or wood. Furthermore, Pigeot draws in the perspective of experimental archaeology to explain that
“difficulty in knapping increases exponentially with the dimensions of the worked material.” It is much easier to
produce a 10cm blade than a 30cm one (Pigeot 1990:130; Stout 2002). The nature of the finished product, whether
an axe or a scraper or hammer, would also affect the length of the apprenticeship. Experiments show that the
“…earliest pebble tool ‘chopper’ of the Oldowan industry can be made by a modern human adult with but a few
minutes practice…to acquire full competency in the production of the highly standardized blades of
the…Magdalenian industry…in late glacial Northern Europe…would have taken hundreds of hours (Shennan
and Steele 1999: 374-375).”
Age would also be a factor contributing to the slope of the learning curve. While it may be beneficial for children to
begin to learn knapping at an early age, the knapping process, depending on the nature of the material and the tool
itself, may require a level of strength and dexterity that is only achieved in, perhaps, middle childhood or later.
Among the Grand Valley Dani in the Western New Guinea Highlands, Hampton (1999) photographed a stone
knapping “workshop.” This was a semi-circular ensemble of boys, ranging in age, each knapping at whatever level
of skill they’d reached and a single adult knapper positioned at the apex. Variations on this image of a social group
composed of beginner to expert tool makers, arranged in a particular pattern, are not uncommon. In another study in
the same region, among the Langda, Stout documented a still-functioning stone adze-making workshop. Children
were not able to participate but they were welcomed as observers. At the work area, several adult knappers of
varying skill—but with an acknowledged master—were arranged in a line.
“As knapping proceeds there is a great deal of socializing, including discussion of the ongoing work. It is also
traditional for adze makers to call out after a particularly successful flake removal. Sometimes the flakes (yatokol) produced are held aloft in display or passed along the line for examination. It is also common for
knappers to observe and comment on the work of their neighbors (particularly if these neighbors are less
experienced) and even to give aid by taking over for a while from another individual who is having difficulties
(Stout 2002: 698).”
At Etiolles, (14,000 years BP) the work-space was roughly circular with the most productive workers in the center,
nearest the hearth. Less proficient knappers were stationed at a corresponding distance from the center with child
novices at the periphery where they could watch while “play” knapping but without getting in the way (Pigeot 1990:
132-133). A very similar distribution of knappers was excavated at Pincevent, a contemporaneous site (Julien and
Karlin 2015). Cunnar noted from a dart-making site in the Great Basin of the North American West that “the ‘poor’
preforms…are positioned in an arc around the excellent knapper [producing] a pattern of poor skill surrounding
good and excellent (Cunnar 2015:143).” At a Neolithic site in Sweden, the debitage pattern showed an expert
knapper remaining in place whereas less expert knappers seemed to change position (Högberg 2008), perhaps to get
different vantage points on the expert. There is also evidence that suggests that children may have moved through
the workshop area and gathered larger, discarded tools to remove to more peripheral “play” areas. Here, they play
with “real,” if flawed, tools in sight of experts making them (Hammond and Hammond 1981). This is very much in
line with the theoretical proposals that children are “legitimate peripheral participants” (Lave and Wenger 1991)
5
and, also, that “being a ‘toy’ is a potential characteristic of all objects in a child’s environment (Crawford 2009:
55).”
And the workspace is decidedly social—as noted also for chimpanzees, and in most pre-industrial, small-scale
societies—which creates a “relaxed field” (see the following section) for children to play near adults without fear.
Children’s play with objects helps them to discover affordances of the tool which may “jump start” their social
learning. The need, therefore, for “fine-grained social learning strategies, such as true imitation of observed action
goals and means” may be reduced (Jacquet et al 2012: 227).
Another cultural adaptation that supports the novice’s training is the provision of poorer quality material to practice
on. Stone tool-making inevitably produces a great quantity of waste material on the one hand (Cunnar 2015) and, on
the other, suitable, high quality raw material may be difficult to obtain (Stout 2002). Novices may find or be given
stone that can be worked but otherwise unlikely to yield a useable tool. At an Upper Paleolithic site in the
Netherlands, “children practiced on used-up cores abandoned by expert knappers (Stapert 2007: 21).” The onus
seems to be on the learner to secure workable material that has not already been claimed by a more advanced
craftsman.
As we will see, chimpanzees also show a differentiation between good quality stones used by mothers for nutcracking and ready-to-hand stones used by juveniles for practice. And, as noted below, village children may be
given old, worn tools to practice with.
Before the second millennium B.C.E. the archaeological record is relatively silent on children as tool users (but see
Thompson and Nelson 2011). Child burials in ancient Mycenae often include tools the child may have used for
weaving, basketry and leather-working, hand mills for processing grain and tools for grinding and polishing,
including the preparation of clay tablets. These suppositions are supported by records written in Linear B (Gallou
2010). In archaeological sites with more recent dates we do find evidence of the crudely made (and made of wood
rather than bone or stone), toy-like tools that were likely used by children in play. Archaeological and ethnographic
studies of tool-rich Arctic foragers point to children being introduced to critical tools via miniatures that may not
have been functional but were used in “make believe” hunting, for example (Kenyon and Arnold 1985). Also,
harpoon heads are found in a range of sizes, suggesting, perhaps, they were made to match the skill and strength of
developing juvenile hunters (Park 2005: 61). “Toy” tools suggest that children may have begun their tool-making
careers quite early, as young as five in one replicative study. But for some tools, size and strength requirements may
have extended the apprenticeship into adulthood (Stout 2002).
Discussion
As tools played a critical role in Hominin evolution, juveniles must have been heavily focused on becoming tool
makers and users. Research to date suggests that even young children were engaged with tools, in play initially. In
more recent periods, archaeological studies reveal the presence of toy or miniature tools suggesting their use in
make-believe episodes which replicate adults’ use of tools. And the infant cognition literature reviewed later in the
paper suggests that this play stage is essential to learning the nature of material and the affordances associated with
the various tools in use. The stone scatter at tool-making workshops points to a graduated “curriculum” in which
juveniles began tool making as clumsy novices working with poor quality material. But the scatter also shows
persistence—poor products were discarded and a new core took its place. Skill improvement obviously implicated
physical maturation—some tools require greater strength, reach and dexterity—and a higher level of cognitive
ability as some tools require a multi-step, sequence which demands a retrievable mental map of the process.
The distribution of worked stone shows characteristic error patterns and improvement in stages as knappers of
varying skill levels were gathered around in a social assembly. The best knappers occupied the central position,
perhaps near the hearth, and this suggests they served as models for the learners to emulate. Modern replications of
these knapping circles show how critical close observation of an expert is in skill development. Equally important is
the opportunity to practice—to improve through repeated trial and error. But teaching, as shown in replicative
knapping studies, may have hindered the learner more than it helped. As tools varied in difficulty (size, raw material
to be worked, topographic complexity), it’s likely that learners achieved early success in making simpler, “easier”
tools and were motivated to continue their apprenticeship towards mastering the entire tool-kit. Learners were also
accommodated with poorer quality material making their failed attempts less consequential.
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Tool Using Apes and Monkeys
As tools are now seen to be fairly common among bi-pedal Hominins, we have growing documentation of
widespread and varied tool use (including the modification of natural objects to improve their effectiveness) among
non-human primates. This, still recent, discovery has put paid to the “‘silver bullet’ theory of human origins—
specifically, that using a tool provided the magic ingredient that converted an ancient ape to a person (Byrne, et al
2014:48; Oakley 1949).” In view of this revised assessment of our closest relatives, it has become commonplace to
see chimpanzees as a possible model or analogue for early Hominins. It seems that chimpanzees routinely use and
make tools and that these skills constitute evidence of “culture.” The skills endure over generations with juveniles
the likely agents in acquiring, retaining and using skills that do not appear spontaneously. As I hope to show, the
chimpanzee model seems robust and capable of reinforcing ideas derived from other research traditions. More
specifically, I will bring out the many concordances between the ontogeny of tool use in chimpanzees and in early
Hominins.
Macaques are an extremely widespread and common Old World primate, and not generally known as tool users.
However, under favorable conditions, such as found on Piak Nam Yai Island in the Andaman Sea, they display
skilled tool use in extracting food items in the intertidal zones of the various coastal environments. The investigators
found that the Macaques used three different tools, including an auger snail as a pick, to separate shellfish attached
to mangrove branches and to rocks and, then, to open them (Gumert et al., 2009). New World Capuchin monkeys
use stone tools to crack open variously sized palm nuts. They carefully select appropriately sized stone anvils and
hammers, then manipulate the nut to find the most stable position on the anvil before striking (Fragaszy et al 2013).
The most thoroughly studied non-human primate tool users are chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). In fact, at the time
the Leakeys were linking Oldowan tools to Homo habilis, their colleague Jane Goodall discovered that chimpanzees
along the Gombe were modifying twigs to “fish” for termites in their nests. Chimps in a study site in the Ndoki
forest of the Republic of Congo take this further. They use a heavier stick to open a passage into the termite mound,
followed by a specially prepared fishing twig to collect the termites. The fishing twig is chewed to splay the end into
a brush. The brush attracts many more clinging termites than an unworked twig. The two tools come from different
plants, in different places and are carried to the termite mound suggesting an ability to “plan ahead” (Sanz et al
2009; see also Byrne et al 2014). Juveniles learn to make and use these tools.
Loango (Gabon) chimps use combinations of three to five tools in extracting honey from the distinctive nests of
three different bee species. Most remarkable is their exploitation of subterranean Melipone nests. While the
Melipone signal their presence by building narrow exit tubes above-ground, the nests themselves are offset by 70cm
and lie up to 1m deep. Humans, attempting to replicate the chimps’ accomplishment, took 20”-40” minutes to locate
the nest (Boesch et al 2009). The cognitive and mechanical challenge this task presents is entirely analogous to
human foragers (e.g. Hadza, !Kung) finding and excavating various tuber species—a dietary staple. And
chimpanzees aren’t just facile tool users: “When you first see an adult chimpanzee make a tool, the most impressive
aspect is this natural swift ease with which they make all the necessary transformations to the raw material (Boesch
2013:132).”
Chimpanzees in Fongoli Savannah, Senegal, have been observed making and using wooden spears to hunt other
primates. They fashion tools to spit small primates sheltering in tree cavities. Previously, it was assumed that only
Hominins had devised hunting implements. The Fongoli chimpanzees carry out four or more steps to manufacture
spears for hunting. In all but one of the cases observed, chimps broke off a living branch to make their tool. They
would then trim the side branches and leaves. In a number of cases, chimps also trimmed the ends of the branch and
stripped it of bark. Some chimps also sharpened the tip of the tool with their teeth. These innovations—mostly by
females—were first adopted by juveniles, last by male adults (Pruetz and Bertolani 2007).
Recently, archaeologists have carried out excavations of sites in the Täi Forest in Côte d’Ivoire noted for the
widespread use of hammer/anvil nut-cracking by resident chimps. Initial research uncovered clear evidence of
chimpanzee-produced stone tools dating to 4,300 BP. The authors speculate that tool-making (percussive stone
7
technology) may be a very early adaptation passed down from an ancestor common to humans and chimps
(Mercader et al 2007) 4.
This apparent adaptation for tool using is accompanied by an obvious reliance on the information storage and
transmission capacity of a shared culture (Boyd, et al 2011). Among the twenty or so distinct populations of
chimpanzee so far studied in the wild, there are over twenty distinct tools (Boesch 2013:179). Some troops use
several types of tool, others only one or two. Each tool-kit is uniquely associated with a particular troop or several
interacting troops. Chimps in the Täi forest of Côte d’Ivoire use stone and wood tools to open panda and coula nuts.
Troops in the neighboring state of Guinea, don’t always utilize the nuts available to them (Biro et al 2003). In the
same general area, some troops use sticks to capture army ants and other troops don’t (Humle et al 2009). The
multi-site chimp tool-using comparisons “conclude that ecological differences alone—such as the availability of
target items—are not sufficient to explain why members of some communities use particular species of nuts as
targets for nut-cracking, while others do not (Biro et al 2003: 220).” Even when several troops in a region share the
practice of nut cracking, there may be enduring and consistent variation in the kind of hammer utilized (stone vs
wood, size) (Luncz et al 2012). Within the troop, use of particular tools to do specific tasks, if discovered or adopted
from other troops, will, over time, be widely shared among members and must be learned by each new generation.
The failure of an entire generation to master a particular technology, in a pre-literate society, means that it will
disappear from the repertoire (Boyd et al 2011). This reality clearly implicates juveniles as the “learner generation.”
While innovation must be uncommon under natural conditions, and even more rarely observed by a field researcher
(Boesch 2014; Hobaiter et al 2014), a number of studies have introduced novel foraging opportunities to free living
chimpanzees (Biro et al 2003). These are done to see if the chimps can capitalize on such opportunities. One of the
most informative studies presented two non-contiguous communities in Uganda with an artificially constructed
honey store (holes drilled in logs, then filled with honey). Members of one troop habitually used leaf sponges but not
sticks as tools, the second used sticks as tools but did not make sponges. In the novel situation, members of the
troops made and employed the kind of tool they were already familiar with to gather the “bonus” honey. The authors
conclude: “wild chimpanzees rely on their cultural knowledge to solve a novel task (Gruber et al 2009: 1809).”
Chimps Becoming Tool Users/Makers
Studies of chimp behavior in the wild are now considered vital in understanding the origins and capacities of the
Homo line and that is particularly true for the study of the juvenile period in human life history. “Vast domains of
human child-rearing…are largely shared in common with apes (Konner 2010: 564).” Increasing attention has been
given to the study of juveniles as novice tool users. Since tool use seems to significantly enhance diet and, therefore,
fitness, it will be retained. How does this happen? We start with the fact that, among primates, especially the great
apes, infants remain largely attached to their mothers. Even as they become bolder the young will still remain in
close proximity, watching and being watched by the mother. This dependency continues for up to five years,
pending the arrival of another sibling to nurse. Juveniles, therefore, enjoy a front-row seat at the mother’s
continuous performance of food gathering/ processing and social (e.g. social grooming) chores. The fact that they
are learning while observing is borne out in long-term studies of nut cracking. Once mobile, the juvenile tends to
manipulate and transport stones that resemble his nut-cracking mother’s anvil and hammer.
The centrality of observation is demonstrated in several studies (Boesch 2013). A study in Bossou focused on “ant
dipping.” Mothers varied in the time they spent catching army ants. Mothers who spent more time dipping,
especially at safer (trails vs nests) sites, had youngsters who displayed greater prowess than their counterparts whose
mothers spent less time ant dipping (see also Lonsdorf 2006 for parallel results at Gombe). In two further cases
recorded in Bossou, in-migrant chimps who’d learned nut-cracking elsewhere served as role models for naive
resident chimps. Juveniles were more attentive and successful in picking up the skill than adults (Matsuzawa 1994;
Marshall-Pescini and Whiten 2008). Another study reports the spontaneous invention of “moss sponges” to collect
water by the alpha male. This innovation then spread to the rest of the troop over a six-day period (Hobaiter et al
2014). In a controlled experimental study carried out in a Ugandan sanctuary, young chimps who observed a model
cracking and eating palm nuts had no difficulty learning the skill while others, who had access to the material but no
role model, handled the three objects (anvil, hammer and nut) and hit one against the other but never chanced upon
4 This does not mean that chimpanzees’ use of stones in nut-cracking is comparable in complexity and difficulty to
Hominin stone knapping (Foucart, et al 2005).
8
the correct arrangement and behavior sequence (Marshall-Pescini and Whiten 2008) This study replicated an earlier
study with captive animals (Whiten et al 2005) which showed that, when chimps observe a troop member using a
more efficient tool to obtain juice from a hole than the technique they’d been using, they switch tools (Yamamoto et
al, 2013).
Observing competent tool users/makers provides a rough set of guidelines for the novice. She or he will likely not
attempt to match or imitate the behavior of the model—a near impossibility—but, instead, will display “emulation.”
Emulation goes beyond mere imitation to work out a comparable but, inevitably unique, strategy to reach the same
goal as the model (Boesch and Tomasello 1998). Long-term study of novice nut-crackers in Bossou finds that they
only roughly approximate the behavior of the expert. They work with various stones and nuts, singly and in
combination. They take various actions on the objects. But “to accomplish the [task], the [novice] must put together
the five basic actions: Take (Pick), Put, Hold, Hit, and Eat. At the age of 1.5 years, all of these basic actions had
already been [learned] (Inoue-Nakamura and Matsuzawa 1997:170).” However, it took 3.5 years for young
chimpanzees to gradually refine the process achieving a workable trio of objects and a sequence of actions with
those objects which result in cracking open and exposing an intact nut. During this entire period, the novice would
not receive much of a reward, if any. This argues for a powerful motivation to master the task.
It’s important to note that, in the case of many primate species 5, including those that don’t use tools, foraging may
be “gregarious.” The foraging group is relatively tolerant of juveniles in their midst. Juveniles can learn a great deal
from observing where more mature animals search for food, what they find and what they do with it (e.g. consume
it, discard it or add it to a collection that will be later processed) 6. And juveniles do not always observe from a
respectful distance but might be, literally, “in their face” to register olfactory clues. Taking food from the forager’s
mouth is not unknown.
To varying degrees, the experts (typically the juvenile chimp’s mother) may facilitate this process by providing
visual access to their tool use and, more rarely, they provide direct access to their tools (Boesch 1995). They may
also permit more intimate contact while they’re working. This close involvement affords the learner a thorough
visual, tactile, kinesthetic and even gustatory (the expert permits the learner to “steal” and eat processed food)
demonstration. In the Goualougo Triangle, Republic of Congo, at least some mothers surrendered their termite
dippers to importuning offspring and found another tool to continue dipping (Byrne et al 2014)—a practice that has
been labelled “teaching” (Musgrave et al 2016).
Observers working in Bossou Forest find there is a transition point around two years when the juvenile is permitted
to closely observe the mother’s movements, to steal some nut fragments she has extracted and, in some cases, at
least, may be permitted to use the mother’s (superior) tools. In other words, mothers seem more tolerant of older
juveniles who are focused and making steady progress (Matasuzawa et al 2001) while withholding such facilitation
from their less focused younger offspring (Boesch 2013). Furthermore, while mothers were the sole role models for
under five-year-olds, those older than five—with greater freedom and confidence—were able to observe and learn
from other troop members (Humle et al., 2009). Indeed, two Bossou chimps learned entirely from others as their
mothers did not practice nut-cracking (Inoue-Nakamura and Matsuzawa 1997). But, of course, as the juveniles
become proficient, they cease observing others so closely (Humle et al., 2009).
In addition, the degree of tolerance or facilitation seems to vary widely among communities and among mothers
within those communities. And, incidentally, the ethnographic record reveals similar variability in parents’ or adults’
willingness to aid learners (Lancy 2015a).
“Gombe mothers never share their tools with their infants, and they never actively aid access to the termites
they have caught. As one observer writes, ‘In no instance did I see a mother actively facilitate her offspring’s
learning in any way. Mothers were oriented completely to the task of termite fishing and rarely ever made eye
contact with offspring. A mother never offered a termite to her offspring, never handed her offspring a tool and
never molded the offspring’s behavior while fishing. Chimpanzee offspring were simply allowed to observe and
occasionally ‘steal’ a tool or a termite (Boesch 2013:142-143).”
5 Orangutans, especially those living in Borneo, tend not to be very gregarious and this lack of opportunity for social
learning might explain their limited use of tools compared to chimpanzees (Meulman and van Schaik 2014).
6 The term “local enhancement” has been coined to describe this learning process (Boesch and Tomasello 1998)
9
There also seems to be considerable variation among mothers in any troop. From Jane Goodall’s (2010) earliest
work, we know that chimp mothers display a range of ability or commitment to their offspring. That may account
for the very different conclusions reached by Boesch (quotation above) and Sanz and Morgan (2014:162): “mothers
at Gombe were highly tolerant of their offspring …reaching toward [their] tool or termites, stealing tools and
investigating the termite mound even when these behaviors seemed to interfere with her food gathering.” It may be
that variability in tolerance for juvenile “interference” is correlated with the relative difficulty of the tool-using task
(Boesch 2013; Sanz and Morgan, 2014), with panda-nut cracking at the apex of difficulty and assistance. But,
clearly, if juveniles were entirely dependent on their mother’s facilitative intervention, many would never acquire
the skill.
Regardless of the amount of facilitation by the mother, younger learners are making progress, albeit somewhat
haphazardly.
[In the Taï Forest] “youngsters learning to nut-crack are like sponges, watching their mother’s actions at a very
close range… manipulating hammers before they can even lift them, and trying out the technique very early on.
Being very flexible, they quickly detect difficulties and immediately try to solve them so that when they start
attempting to nut-crack even before they have enough strength, they can already make all kinds of corrections to
improve their performance, such as changing their sitting position, the angle they are hitting the nut, the position
of the nut, the way they hold the hammer, or the hammers they are using, and so on. Thus youngsters will have
experienced all kinds of possible adaptations and corrections within the nut-cracking context, often before their
first serious attempt to nut-crack. One gets the feeling that whenever they can make progress, they will.”
(Boesch 2013:147)
It is not at all difficult to transpose Boesch’s analysis to the parallel situation of Hominin juveniles interacting with
stone tools and their makers. There also we have some evidence, from stone debris, of children’s intense exploration
and play with objects/tools.
Even earlier in the chimp’s progress toward becoming a tool user, observers note that the young of both sexes play
with found objects 7. In fact, object play appears in primate species that don’t actually use tools (Fairbanks 1995),
except in captivity (Lancaster and Lancaster 1983). A very early study of captive juveniles found that the chimps
who were permitted to play with objects (sticks) before-hand, used them more effectively to solve problems than
chimps without the prior play episode (Birch 1945). Familiarity with sticks as tools (extending the reach of one’s
limbs) seems essential to chimpanzees who use sticks in many applications. Chimps have often been observed
attempting to solve a problem—dipping. probing, gathering out-of-reach foods, releasing a snare trap—with the use
of a stick. Significantly, many of these attempts are unsuccessful. Chimps use sticks as tools to solve a new problem
without having observed another’s success and they persist (choosing and discarding various alternate sticks)
without having achieved a reward. The connection between particular problems and a stick as the most likely
solution seems automatic (Sugiyama and Humle 2011; Sugiyama and Koman 1979).
Playful learning is most evident “in an atmosphere of familiarity, emotional reassurance, and lack of tension or
danger (Dolhinow and Bishop 1970: 142).” Adults feeling sufficiently secure to quietly forage and process their
harvest create such an atmosphere or “relaxed field” (Bally 1945). Initially, the infant’s activity seems entirely
playful, without direction, but, gradually, the objects used in play look more like and are handled more like tools.
This transition occurs earlier in females (Koops, et al 2015) who more closely observe their termite fishing mothers.
Young males are less attentive and more rambunctious (Lonsdorf 2005).
Sanz and Morgan (2014) argue that juveniles, as they explore and play in areas where their conspecifics are using
tools, can also, like archaeologists, make sense of the material remains. There are distinctive physical alterations in
the landscape, discarded tools and detritus from tool use to examine and learn from. Matsuzawa (1994) describes
the connoisseurship of juveniles carefully selecting the stones left behind by nut-crackers for their play/practice.
Aside from observation, then, learners must, in the case of difficult skills such as nut-cracking, spend a great deal of
time engaged in trial and error practice.
7 Note that only the young of chimps and humans routinely play with objects (Visalberghi and Fragasky 1990).
10
“…a better understanding of the complexity of a hammer or of a stick’s physical properties, such as its shape,
weight, and hardness, can only be gained through practice and not imitation. This has also been shown for stone
knapping in humans (Boesch 2013:227).”
Limiting consideration to nut cracking, Chimpanzees exploit palm, coula and panda nuts. While all 3 are cracked
using a hammer and anvil, the last is extremely hard and the great challenge is to make a precise selection of anvil,
stone and nut and to bring the hammer down with just enough force to open the shell while leaving the nut intact.
Consequently, cracking the panda nut may take years to learn (Boesch 2013)—especially if the animal is yet too
young to have the requisite strength—while cracking the soft palm nut may be learned in days (Marshall-Pescini and
Whiten 2008).
Even a skill as apparently simple as ant fishing or dipping may take years to perfect. JJ, a Bossou juvenile, was
observed at 5-years transferring a known skill—using a stick to gather driver ants on the ground via “ant dipping”—
to a different, and previously unexploited resource—“ant fishing” in carpenter ant nests in trees. “Two years later,
at the age of 7, his tools for ant-fishing were shorter and more suitable for capturing carpenter ants (Yamamoto et al,
2008).”
In spite of these challenges, investigators have sought in vain for evidence of active teaching by experts in nutcracking or other skill areas. Matasuzawa and colleagues conclude: “active teaching in wild chimpanzees is either
nonexistent 8 or occurs only in very few and exceptional cases (e.g. (Boesch, 1995). [For example,] “we never
observed chimpanzee mothers perform molding (shaping the hands of infants for guidance) (Matasuzawa et al 2001:
571).” There’s also no evidence that “vocal communication [has any] adaptive connection to tool-use (McGrew
1993:166)” nor do mothers provide “social reinforcement” or any useful feedback (Inoue-Nakamura and Matsuzawa
1997).
While the value of the study of chimpanzees becoming competent tool users for understanding human
juvenile’s acquisition of the community tool kit cannot be overestimated, the parallel is not perfect.
Prominently, there is the questionable notion that the chimpanzee’s use of stone tools for nut cracking is
the forerunner of stone-knapping in Hominins (Marchant 2005). While both involve percussive stone
technology, there are significant differences and knapping is far more complex and difficult (Foucart et al
2005).
Discussion
Archaeological studies of the knapping process strongly suggest that transmission of the skills to make/use
stone tools relies heavily on learners being able to closely observe experts and to practice diligently with
appropriate materials in their presence. This proposal is certainly borne out in the studies of young chimps
becoming tool makers/users. As with the Paleolithic stone-knappers, juvenile chimpanzees learn to make
and use tools in a “relaxed” social setting. The “knapping circle” is clearly replicated in a gathering of
several adult chimps convivially cracking nuts while their offspring play at nut cracking, observe expert
crackers and practice the requisite skills.
This relaxed atmosphere facilitates a period of exploration and play that serves as a critical precursor to
more focused and productive interaction with tools. This is true for chimpanzees and humans (see below).
Also, like their early human counterparts, chimpanzees must have ready access to tools and/or appropriate
raw material to learn from and practice with. Juveniles are free to pick-up, explore and practice with tools
that have been abandoned as no longer effective. And this access expands as they mature as tool users to
include, in some cases, the opportunity to handle and use tools that are still being used by the mother.
There is considerably variability in the developmental process across any sample of juveniles. Some
mothers provide fewer opportunities to observe the gathering process with a subsequent deficit in the
juvenile’s progress. The juveniles themselves display varied levels of attention and diligence, particularly
8 Investigators studying Orangutans in the wild have also failed to record instances of teaching. Rather, immature
orangutans learn by closely observing their mothers during “extractive foraging.” (Jaeggi et al 2010).
11
as a function of age and gender. And there is no compunction or pressure applied to enforce their
involvement. Lastly, researchers have not been able to fin evidence that mothers or other more mature
troop members play an active role in (e.g. behavior whose aim appears to have a basis in teaching) in
juveniles’ acquisition of tool making/using. Juveniles must be self-initiated learners (Lancy 2016a).
The Ontogeny of Tool Use
Introduction
The next body of work that can shed light on children and tools falls, roughly, under the rubric of “infant cognition.”
Until the middle of the last century, “infant cognition” would have been treated as an oxymoron. Early founder of
scientific psychology, William James, referred to the infant’s mind as filled with a “buzzing confusion (1890/1981:
542).” This view not only characterized earlier western ideas but those of most societies recorded in the
ethnographic record as well. !Kung infants were said to have no awareness, “milk, that’s all she knows (Shostak
1981: 113).” Once investigators evolved methods to “read the minds” of speechless infants, that view was rapidly
replaced by the idea that infancy is an extremely intense period of rapid cognitive development. 9
Infant cognition researchers in lab settings study the infant’s glance (what it is looking at), looking time (how long)
and, sucking rate (increases with interest). Babies are processing the stream of information—aural, visual and
tactile—in their environment and show interest by glance, lingering gaze and an increase in sucking. Interest is
provoked by alterations in the information flow, in particular, violations of “normal” patterns. By noting what
attracts and holds an infant’s attention, scholars infer awareness, perception and understanding or at least the
engagement of thought. The work with infants is complemented by lab studies with children aged 12-48 months.
Investigators take pains to use experimental protocols that nullify cultural effects. Verbalization is absent, the
models are not familiar to the child and the tools are often original inventions of the researchers. That is, cues that
might trigger the child’s learned behavior are minimized.
There are two reasons why this work should interest us. First, we are learning about children’s capacities and
development before cultural practices have had much opportunity to guide and shape their thinking or behavior (Lee
et al 2009). One can argue that results from infant-child cognition research may be more firmly extrapolated to
children in the distant past than ethnographic accounts of infancy from the more recent past. Second, many of the
cognitive and sensorimotor capacities that have been revealed in the infant-child cognition research have a direct
bearing on children’s interaction with tools.
Imitation and Object Exploration in Year One
Virtually from birth, infants demonstrate an extraordinary talent for imitation 10. Two-to-three-week old neonates are
capable of imitating a great variety of facial gestures. By five months they can accurately reproduce phonemes. Sixmonth-old infants imitate body movements, especially hand movements. At this age, they have no difficulty with
delayed imitation, reproducing gestures they’d seen modeled a day earlier. “Evidently, infants can store a
representation of what they see another person do and can imitate the behavior on the basis of that stored
representation (Meltzoff 2002: 24).” The infant’s imitation repertoire—Tomasello (1999: 52) calls them “imitation
machines”—continues to expand throughout infancy and early childhood. 11
9 An often unstated assumption of infant cognition studies is that what emerges from the infant is spontaneous and
untutored, innate, if you will. More cautiously, in my review, I have attempted to screen out studies that, in my
opinion, were likely distorted by the exceptional materials used, the situation or the identity or behavior of models.
The studies I review could, in my opinion, be replicated in other cultures with little modification.
10 Ethnographers observing children call attention to their close observation followed by imitation, particularly in
play. Psychologists focus more exclusively on imitation in their studies but, of course, observation is treated as the
“silent partner” in this process.
11 There’s debate about the relative ability of chimp versus human juveniles to imitate others. Some (Boyd and
Richerson 1996) would argue for clear human superiority, but other researchers would demur:
12
Infants are also using all of their sense organs to “explore” objects in their environment (Rochat 1989). They pay
particular attention to what people they observe do with objects. Tests show that they discover patterns in such use
and are surprised when their expectations are violated. For example, six-month-old infants show predictive looks to
the mouth when they see a person grasp a cup and to the ear when they see her pick up a phone (Sommerville et al
2005). And they show surprise when the model brings a cup to the ear or hairbrush to the mouth (Hunnius and
Bekkering 2010). This occurs well before they can carry out such actions themselves. From this milestone, infants
move along to decoding the operational features of the object, noting that “containers” like cups, can hold things, for
example. “Infants pay attention to an artifact’s physical features that causally contribute to the achievement of a goal
(Hernik and Csibra 2009: 35).” These uniquely human adaptations are said to “facilitate the acquisition of
knowledge about material culture (Hernik and Csibra 2009: 34, italics added)”, e.g. tools.
As their coordination develops, infants attempt to reach, touch and manipulate objects. Indeed, infants are so keen to
manipulate objects that they attempt to manually investigate pictured objects by hitting, rubbing, and grasping as if
to pluck them off the page (Pierroutsakos and DeLoache 2003: 141 italics added).” From two-to-five months, they
expand their multi-modal exploration of objects to using their hands and mouths. By 3 months they modify their
exploratory actions to fit the physical properties and affordances of the object. Such manipulation enhances what
they’ve learned already from observing others. This was affirmed in an interesting study where one group of threemonth-old infants had their grasping ability augmented by “sticky mittens” and consequentially showed greater
understanding of changes in a demonstrator’s grasping of a toy as compared to mitten-less infants (Hunnius and
Bekkering 2014).
Simple grasping evolves into more systematic manipulation: “infants finger textured objects more than non-textured
ones, shake or bang sounding objects more than non-sounding ones and press pliable objects more than non-pliable
ones (Bourgeois et al 2005: 233).” In the process, they are constructing some general principles about the nature of
objects and their relationship to the environment—naive physics. In one investigation, eleven-month-olds were
“fooled” by demonstrations where a car rolled off a shelf and remained suspended in the air and a ball appeared to
pass through a solid wall. When subsequently permitted to play with these objects, the infants kept banging the ball,
to verify its solidity and they kept dropping the car to verify its obedience to gravity (Stahl and Feigenson 2015).
Infants do a lot of banging. Recent studies have attempted to discover the patterns underlying what at first may seem
like random behavior. Banging began to look like a ‘hammer curriculum” as the study showed that it followed a
clear, consistent developmental progression.
“Younger infants were inefficient and variable when banging the object. Their hands followed circuitous paths
of great lengths at high velocities. By 1 year, infants showed consistent and efficient straight up-down hand
trajectories of smaller magnitude and velocity, allowing for precise aiming and delivering dependable levels of
force. The findings suggest that tool use develops gradually from infants' existing manual behaviors (Kahrs et al
2013: 810).”
Steady improvement led to the result that “at the end of the 1st year, object banging had become well suited for
percussive tool use (Kahrs and Lockman 2014: 234).” Continued study through the second and third years—now
with a wooden hammer—revealed further refinement such as a preference for using the dominant hand and greater
use of wrist flexion (Kahrs and Lockman 2014). More generally, it appears that, before children handle actual tools,
they’ve learned a great deal about the qualities of objects and how objects transform the capacities of their bodies:
“individuals are at some level registering that the properties of their arms or hands have been changed by virtue of
the object they are holding (Bourgeois et al 2005: 235).”
From Object Exploration to Tool Use in Years Two-Three
“With respect to studies where we have compared the two species, the overall conclusion is that what the
chimpanzee and children represent in their imitations appears qualitatively quite similar. We find that
children generally tend to achieve a match to what they see faster and with a higher degree of fidelity, but
these are quantitative rather than qualitative differences (Whiten 2002: 117).”
13
There is somewhat of a gap between the study of the child’s object exploration and use and the study of early tool
use. In contemporary, post-industrial society, children don’t work because it’s “bad for them” and because they
don’t have to. So they have little need to learn to use tools. And, if their interest and curiosity motivates them to
explore and attempt to use “grown up” tools, anxious parents nip this dangerous behavior in the bud (Lancy 2016a).
But, in one, now classic, study, the investigators realized that a spoon could be considered a legitimate tool, whose
correct use is both necessary and “safe.”
Connolly and Dalgleish (1989) carefully documented children’s mastery of the spoon—perhaps the first tool to be
used successfully by a child, at least in our culture. They made video recordings at monthly intervals of children
aged 12-23 months. The skill of using a spoon appears to be built in a broadly similar way by different infants, in
that the order in which the problems are addressed is the same. Initially, rudimentary actions with the spoon are
observed; for example, dipping it repeatedly into the dish, banging it on the table, or putting it in and pulling it out of
the mouth. These simple repetitive actions serve a number of purposes. They provide a means whereby the infant
learns something of the mechanical properties of the spoon, and they also anchor the ends of the process. The launch
pad is the dish with its food, and the destination is the infant's mouth. Significantly, the child persists at attempting
to use the spoon over an extended period, gradually perfecting the skill; but until reaching complete mastery, he
receives no reward for his efforts. No food finds its way to his mouth. Therefore, it appears the child is compelled to
master a skill (White 1959) which he sees others in his family using routinely. “Success striving seems to be a
universal motivation (Weisfeld and Linkey 1985).”
The infant seems equipped, by nature, with a suite of complementary motor movements that appear automatically
over time. Parenthetically, I would suggest that the conscientious parent will not only ensure the child’s
nourishment in spite of their inability to feed themselves, but also enable the child to use and practice with the spoon
— in spite of the mess entailed. That is, to learn to use tools, children must have opportunities to observe competent
tool users and—as noted developmental psychologist Jerome Bruner (1976: 38) pointed out—they must be able to
practice with real tools.
More recently, there has been an exponential increase in studies of tool use in early childhood. For the reasons noted
above re: safety, and also because investigators want to minimize the effect of prior experience, “artificial” tools are
sometimes used. These studies show consistently that the nascent skills revealed in year one continue to expand and
become more refined and effective. As with chimpanzees, they show that infants who are free to manipulate tools or
tool-like objects are more readily able to use those objects to solve a problem than children without this opportunity
(Caruso 1993).
Much of the child’s exploration can be characterized as “play” and scholars assign a role to object play “in helping
children discover affordances of and between objects and how objects can be used as tools (Bjorklund and Gardiner
2010: 153).” Several studies affirm a link between object play and tool use: “for all participants, object-oriented play
was significantly and positively related to tool use scores (Schulz and Bonawitz 2007: 164).” In a series of studies in
which two-to-three-year-old children selected among an array of hook-like tools to retrieve a toy from a transparent
box, children who observed a model and were permitted to explore and manipulate the various tools beforehand
were more “tool savvy” than children who had only one or the other experience (Gardiner et al 2012). Chappel and
colleagues extended this finding to children acting as innovators, creating novel techniques to reach a goal. The few
children who were able to innovate showed high levels of exploration and ‘tinkering” and low levels of neophobia
(Chappel et al 2015).
When children of this age observe a model using a tool to accomplish a specific end, they treat the tool as iconic. A
fork is exclusively for eating, a comb for grooming, even though they might, pragmatically, be switched. Children
make this association quickly and, in experimental studies, two-year-olds protest when a puppet uses a tool for the
“wrong” purpose. “…such rapid tool-function mapping provides strong evidence that normative, socially learned
beliefs about function are at the core of artifact understanding, even for very young children” and this tendency
strengthens from ages two-to-three (Casler et al 2009: 241).” I see an analogy here to the child’s language
acquisition device (Chomsky 1975); that is, the child readily fills-in a tool template from the several information
sources available. “Hammer” quickly emerges and stabilizes: its shape; appearance; name; affordances; function
and; sensorimotor system (the act of hammering) coalesce into a single, enduring concept (Casler and Kelemen
14
2005). At any time in the future the child will know a hammer when she sees one, she’ll know how to hold it and
how to make it do its work.
The tendency to conform to the demonstrator’s behavior is not absolute, however. Between fourteen and eighteen
months, infants develop the ability to discriminate between a model’s intentional actions and her “accidents”
(Carpenter et al 1998). Fifteen-month-old children can discriminate between an effective and an ineffective tool
when used by a model (Elsner and Pauen 2007) and they will imitate a demonstrator’s problem solving strategy
“only if they consider it to be the most rational alternative. [Hence] imitation of goal-directed action by preverbal
infants is a selective, interpretative process (Gergely et al 2002: 755; for similar results with pre-schoolers—see
Keupp et al 2015).” If the demonstrator succeeds in the task, but, in the process, produces some irrelevant or
unnecessary actions, fifteen-month-old children will, eliminate them when given a chance to solve the problem.
“Infants appear to ‘‘filter’’ [the model’s] actions according to their own intentions, assessing each action for its
importance to fulfilling these (Brugger et al 2007: 814).” In short, while neonates may imitate a model
indiscriminately, by one to one and a half, children focus as much on the task or problem as they do on the specific
behaviors of the model. This was illustrated in an experimental task in which a model attempts to dismantle a
dumbbell-shaped object by pulling it apart, while infants “…used different means from the adult, but toward the
same end….young children are sensitive to adult goals and are not confined to imitating surface behavior (Meltzoff
2002: 32).”
Another series of studies demonstrated the child’s autonomy as a learner. In this research, two and three year olds
had an opportunity to surreptitiously observe a model try different tools to ring a bell. The model did not conduct a
demonstration, verbalize to the child, make eye contact or provide any other guidance, yet children extracted the
correct tool/procedure from observation alone (Phillips et al 2012). At some point in the child’s development as a
tool user but no later than fifteen months, s/he transitions from simple imitation to emulation. As I noted earlier in
the paper, emulation goes beyond mere imitation as the novice works out a comparable but, subtly unique, strategy
to reach the same goal as the model (Boesch and Tomasello 1998).
An earlier, but related line of research, looked at children volunteering to help an adult with a task. Mothers, fathers
or other adults began to carry out chores in the child’s presence. From eighteen months, all children:
“…spontaneously and promptly assisted the adults in a majority of the tasks they performed. Furthermore, the
children accompanied their assistance by relevant verbalizations and by evidence that they knew the goals of the
tasks, even adding appropriate behaviors not modeled by the adults (Rheingold 1982: 114).”
This finding has been replicated and considerably broadened. Eighteen-month-old children assist without being
asked and without even making eye contact with the person needing help (Warneken and Tomasello, 2006). In
another study, children overcame obstacles placed in their path in order to assist, and could not be seduced by a play
opportunity. Evidently, “young children have an intrinsic motivation to act altruistically (Warneken and Tomasello,
2009a).” In lab studies, chimpanzees also behave altruistically (Warneken and Tomasello 2009b). Children who
willingly help also display cooperation and understanding sufficient to collaborate in completing a task (Carpenter
2009) while chimpanzees seem to lack this ability (Warneken and Tomasello 2006). Cross-culturally, volunteer
collaboration and assistance by very young children is nearly universal and has been, informally, labelled “pitching
in” (Paradise and Rogoff 2009). However, Rogoff and her colleagues, who have long studied this process, call
attention to the learning opportunities that direct involvement with others who’re completing a task provide. As they
explain, children observe and attend with greater effort and intensity when they have to prove their worthiness to
become directly involved in the task (Rogoff et al 2003; see also Over and Carpenter 2009; Michelet 2016; Medaets
2016).
Autonomous Learning in Years Three-Five
Research with children in their third and fourth year continues to highlight the child’s autonomous learning.
Children in learning mode are clearly drawn to observing those older and/or more competent. Studies by DiYanni
and Kelemen found that two-three-year-old children have a ready-made “crap detector” (cf Hemingway). They can
sort several models from more to less competent and selectively attend to the more competent model (Harris and
Corriveau 2011). And they can accurately judge when a model is using a “bad” or a “good” tool. “Preschoolers are
15
not indiscriminate imitators of others’ intentional tool use and show selectivity about who and what they copy
(DiYanni and Kelemen 2008: 250).”
Earlier, in my discussion of knapping, I cited a claim that learning to knap involved the mastery of several tasks and
their integration in a “hierarchical structure of tool production (Caruana et al 2014: 268).” In at least one
experimental study of child cognition, three-year-olds were capable of successfully imitating a model (without any
explicit guidance) in carrying out a complex, multi-step task (opening an ‘artificial fruit’). Component tasks and the
hierarchical structure that organized them was “clearly copied” (Whiten 2002: 111). It is evident from this and other
studies that the child is “in charge,” using the model’s behavior as a kind of instructional video, rather than being a
dutiful pupil following the model’s direction.
However, while the child is clearly an efficient learner of tool use, this efficiency may be sacrificed in order to earn
social capital, as “imitation leads to liking (Dijksterhuis 2005: 209).” They attend to the model closely and their
imitation becomes very faithful. Children must parcel their attention and energy to advance their own instrumental
competence and also to secure the support and approval of appreciative family members. Commonly, then, children
seek more direct involvement through “joint participation” (Rogoff et al, 2003). They do so in part to garner social
approval (Keupp et al 2015; Over and Carpenter 2011) and, in part to enhance their mastery through close
observation and relevant, goal-directed practice 12.
In a case study of tool learning among pre-schoolers, the majority learned the techniques through observing peers
who already knew the technique before the experiment started or had quickly picked it up. Only a small portion (less
than 20%) of the children discovered the techniques independently. Discoveries made by these few innovators then
diffuse through the group. The authors argue that a “small minority of innovators, mixed within a large population
of followers, creates a community (Whiten and Flynn 2010: 1707)” which can reliably conserve adaptive tools and
their applications and, also innovate when needed.
As psychologists reveal increasing evidence of children’s ability to learn socially, an interest in studying guided
learning or teaching has emerged. These recent studies continue the pattern of using artificial or invented toys/tools.
Pre-schoolers were given an opportunity to explore a multi-faceted, multi-function toy in several laboratory
experiments. Various conditions were imposed, in particular, a pedagogical and an unconstrained introduction to the
toy. In their subsequent exploration and play, children who were exposed to instruction, focused entirely on the
function(s) demonstrated while the unconstrained discovered several additional functions through greater
exploration of the toy. This “channeling” effect of teaching was evident when the child was the subject of instruction
and also when the child only observed an instructional session directed at other children (Bonawitz et al 2011). The
study was then extended to a sample of two-year-old children with no experience of pre-school and Mayan village
children whose parents don’t use directed teaching in the socialization process. The results showed a very similar
response pattern to the earlier results. “Instructed” children’s use of the toy was limited to what they’d been “taught”
(Shneidman et al 2016).
Teaching seems also to hamper the child’s ability or willingness to evaluate the reliability of the model and his/her
solutions and act accordingly. Imitation is no longer a “selective and interpretative process (Gergely et al 2002).”
Children are lead to “overimitate” the demonstrator, copying irrelevant or inappropriate actions (Buchsbaum et al
2011; Over and Carpenter 2011). For example, in a two-condition study, preschoolers overimitated only when the
inefficient model was present, if the model exited first, children deleted the extraneous actions from their replication
(Nielsen and Blank 2011). In yet another study on overimitation, a comparison was made between a model who
introduces the complex toy to the child as “I wonder how this toy works” versus “I’m going to show you how my
toy works.” Children in the latter condition precisely imitated the model’s demonstration and learned nothing further
about the toy. Children’s attention to “what the teacher wanted, made them worse at actually learning (Gopnik 2016:
107).” Lastly, in a simulation study, of a “micro-culture” composed of pre-schoolers, investigators studied the
12 In an ironic note, I would call attention to a Blog post aimed at bourgeoisie parents, especially fathers, of young
children. The advice, in so many words, explains how to successfully un-package and assemble the child’s more
complex toys and “play-sets” while insuring that the child remains uninvolved and out-of-the-way. “If your child is
the type who is endlessly curious and wants to help-get rid of them. They'll just get in the way. If he insists on
helping you, give him the packing to flatten.” http://www.npr.org/2015/12/26/460957279/toy-stories-when-someassembly-is-required
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diffusion of innovative tool-use across the group. The majority (91%) of members learned by observing those who
had already picked it up but a few cases of teaching—only by dominant members—was noted (Flynn and Whten
2012). It may be that teaching serves as a mechanism to establish or assert one’s dominant rank.
Not surprisingly, Aka forest forager children fail to display overimitation behavior under similar experimental
conditions to those used in Western studies (Berl and Hewlett 2015). They do not attend school and their parents
rarely “teach” them, granting them full autonomy to learn on their own. The society is highly egalitarian with little
evidence of a dominance hierarchy. Furthermore, Aka bands are small and children have multiple caretakers. This
diversity in available alloparents suggests that Aka children also freely select from several potential models to focus
on while emulating a particular task.
Discussion
The study of infant cognition allows us to add considerably to the ancestral prototype or model of children as tool
makes/users. We now know, from this line of research, that very young infants reveal a readiness and striking
capacity for observation, imitation and learning. Second, much of this arsenal of information gathering skills is
focused on objects, particularly those that cause an effect or alter the environment. Infants seek and identify patterns
and regularities in the appearance and behavior of people and objects they encounter. If these traits did not evolve
specifically to prepare them to make and use tools, they greatly enable these skills. As soon as they are permitted,
infants handle and explore available objects to further their information gathering. From manual exploration,
including handling, mouthing and banging, infants learn properties of objects such as smooth and rough, hard/soft,
sharp/dull, light/heavy. Objects have ends and sides. They have sections suitable or unsuitable for grasping and
sections that can accomplish an effect. Children look like they are, almost from birth, “studying” to become tool
users.
At the end of their first year, children’s interaction with objects is captured by the need to represent “props” in
make-believe, such as a doll or a grass house and also by an interest in objects that are used as tools. In fact, an
anonymous object in the child’s environment “becomes” a tool when he or she sees someone using it to do
something. From that point on, if given a chance, the child will attempt to copy the behavior of the tool user and, in
many cases, they will, eventually, succeed in using the tool to achieve a goal. As the spoon example showed, the
child demonstrates persistence, steady practice and patterned improvement until eventually becoming successful.
This process unfolds without any evident need to compel, motivate or instruct the learner. There are evident parallels
among chimpanzees, even in the symbolic use of objects (Kahlenberg and Wrangham 2010).
The child’s inventive replication or application of tools in make-believe play “uncouples” the tool from its
customary appearance and use. The tool can be both a thing and an idea which is a cognitive breakthrough that
leads to the child’s next major accomplishment. This appears to be the ability to look past the model who’s using the
tool and their specific steps and movements and to pay attention to and analyze the chaîne opératoire or entire
process. They can discriminate between more or less competent tool operators and to distinguish between
essential/non-essential steps or accidents and adapt their behavior accordingly. The child’s role as an autonomous
learner, setting their own pace and “course of study,” is evident in the child’s instrumental eavesdropping or
surreptitious observation of a tool user or users. There does not appear to be any necessity for interaction or shared
intent between the tool user and his/her would-be “student.”
In the next section, I will review cross-cultural literature that leads to an inevitable conclusion that the child’s
eagerness to learn complements a similar drive to fit-in, to be accepted. Children learn from opportunities to observe
those who are proficient and they “pay back” by being helpful and this reciprocity is widely acknowledged. Students
of child development interested in the origins of pro-social behavior have uncovered surprisingly high levels of
altruism (helping another with a task) at least by 18 months of age. The child’s predilection to help is augmented by
emerging cognitive abilities that facilitate shared understanding and collaboration in carrying out a task. Learning to
make and use tools occurs in a social context in which the not-so-proficient novice tool-maker brings other assets to
the table. However, the need to earn social capital may lead the child to suppress their preference for learning
autonomously. If the model(s) they’re learning from attempts to more actively direct their actions, children’s
exploration and learning is over-ridden by the felt need to comply.
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Children and Tools in the Ethnographic Record
There is a long tradition of using the ethnographic record to shed light on the distant past (Lupo and Schmitt 2002)
and “ethnographic research is useful for the exploration of children’s relationships with the physical and material
world (Thomas 2005: 27).” In this section, I will briefly summarize some of the prominent patterns in the
ethnographic study of childhood, paying particular attention to children becoming tool users and makers.
Infants as Keen Observers
In contemporary, middle class society, infants are surrounded by colorful, manipulable, noisy objects. These may be
objects that the infant can handle such as a rattle or objects that can engage the infant at a distance such as a crib
mobile or music box. Chimpanzee infants, on the other hand, remain securely “attached” to their mother’s body for
at least a year after birth. Their limited contact with objects may occur as they cling with one hand to the mother’s
fur and stretch with the other to grasp something within reach.
Much like chimpanzees, a majority of societies sampled from the ethnographic record limit the infant’s mobility and
access to objects. An ideal infant is one that remains quiet and stationery, restrained by some device such as a
cradleboard.
“The apparent goal of virtually every [Yucatec Mayan] care routine is to produce a contented, quiet
baby…infants are almost never stressed by overstimulation… [mothers] induce long naps in older infants so
[they] can attend to household chores…[Spending] long hours in the hammock…children’s ability to explore
the environment and interact with others is considerably constrained (Howrigan 1988: 41).”
Nevertheless, developmental tests (Bayley Scales) indicate that immobile and undisturbed Mayan infants are as
cognitively engaged with their environment as their highly stimulated middle class counterparts (Brazelton 1977).
Zinacanteco [Maya] infants, while stationery and quiet are “attentively observing their surroundings, laying the
foundation for later observational learning (Greenfield et al. 1989).” Similarly, Matsigenka “Infants and young
children are embedded in the middle of quotidian activities where they are positioned to quietly observe and learn
what others are doing (Ochs and Izquierdo 2009: 395).”
Only rarely do we find cases of adults providing the infant with toys such as a rattle: “…the [Warao] father may
make a toy basketry rattle which he puts into the infant’s grasping hand (Wilbert 1976: 316).” More often, a fussy
child is given a stick or a corn cob to gnaw on. Most infants only encounter objects once they’re crawling. Still,
many societies, recognizing the perils of insects, sharp objects and hearth fires, may keep the child on a short tether:
“A crawling [Gau Island] child who…goes near the kitchen hearth or some other object of interest…is scooped up
and set down again near her mother (Toren 1990: 171-172).”
However, in spite of these many restrictions, the literature in early infant cognition suggests that immobile infants
will “explore” objects as well as human-object and object-environment relationships. It’s as if infants can conjure up
their own “virtual reality.”
Playing with Knives
Once the child is walking, it will be granted more freedom to venture some distance away from its mother and,
importantly, to freely manipulate objects, including tools. In fact, in many societies, a large knife or machete is often
one of the first such “targets of opportunity” (Lancy 2016a). John Whiting (1941), studying the Kwoma in the Sepik
Region of Papua New Guinea in 1936, provided one of the earliest of many records of toddlers (or younger!)
handling, or, in this case, mouthing knives—in full view of adults. Indeed, there are accounts of adults handing
objects, including sharp knives, to their importuning toddlers (Pirahã-Everett 2008; Maniq- Khaled Hakami,
personal communication 2015). These accounts are often accompanied by an analysis of the evident laissez faire
approach of the child’s caretakers. A common parental response underscores the child’s autonomy and of the futility
of trying to impose one’s will on a “senseless” child (Broch 1990). A second, complementary, rationale is that it is
only through, direct, hands-on interaction with tools that children learn to use them. Yukaghir Arctic foragers, for
example, claim that “doing is learning and learning is doing (Willerslev 2007: 162).” And, third, an unspoken but
18
obvious rationale for giving children free-reign to learn tool use is that this obviates the need for a parent or another
alloparent to spend time “instructing” the child. In short, adults or older siblings who make and/or donate tools are
investing in and directing the child’s eagerness to become competent and to “fit in.” As I’ll discuss shortly the
adults’ confidence in the child’s self-initiated learning is not misplaced.
The child’s access to tools may be limited primarily by the fragility of the tool (men’s bows and arrows are usually
taboo) and by the preemptory requirements of the tool owner (Marlowe 2010). Hence, various substitutes for “real”
tools come into play. A Chewong child may be given an old, blunt knife (Howell 1988) and, generally speaking, old,
broken, cast-off objects are often simply lying around the house or village (akin to the used, faulty and incomplete
stone tools available to the Acheulian child, cf Hammond and Hammond 1981) waiting to be “adopted.”
A Kammu child may be given a functional “toy” knife made of bamboo or hardwood (Tayanin and Lindell 1991).
Adults or older children occasionally make functional but child-sized (less refined, less fragile) versions of critical
tools, such as Nukak foragers providing boys of the right age smaller blow-pipes (Politis 2007: 224). Mayan girls
are given simple but useable toy looms to learn on (Greenfield, 2004). In parallel with chimp mothers only
permitting older, more focused and capable offspring access to their tools and nut cracking station, so too, humans
seem to provide well-made “practice” tools only after a certain level of diligence is achieved (Wilhelm 1953). A
Huaorani boy who’s “ready” (he isn’t likely to use the pipe to wack his adversary while play-fighting) is given a
well-made, small size blowpipe to stimulate the boy’s commitment to learning the tool and to making his own (Rival
2000).
Tools and Toys
In lieu of hand-me-down or smaller tools made by those more expert, children seem, universally, to actively
construct their own gender appropriate tool inventory. Girls make dolls, anticipating their later role as sibling
caretakers and mothers. They make digging sticks, baskets and string bags consonant with their emerging role as
gatherers. Nukak children make a wide array of small and poor quality, but still quite functional, tools including
bows, harpoons, blowpipes, and various kinds of vessels (gourd, basketry, ceramic) (Politis 2007). Daboya boys
who will, eventually, become proficient weavers, delight in making toy looms capable of handling simple projects
like lamp wicks (Goody 1982). Of course children make many toys, such as tops, balls and marbles that aren’t tools
(Hilger 1957: 105).
The presence in child burials from history and prehistory of toy tools or tools used as toys reinforces a claim that
children’s deep interest in tools may be a human universal (Crawford 2009).
The use of the qualifier “toy” in designating child-sized tools correctly signals that the object will be used in play
and that the child is not expected to complete a chore using the tool or make a significant contribution to the family
larder. As I indicated, children have access to found objects and, as soon as they are mobile, they will become as
readily engrossed in exploring their properties, as the children in the lab experiments described earlier. The earliest
sign that the child has begun to think of the object as a tool occurs when the child’s movements with it mirror those
of someone using such a tool. The “delayed” imitation described earlier for infants is seen most clearly in makebelieve play. The ethnographic record is especially rich in descriptions of children’s make-believe which, inevitably,
replicates the work activities they observe in their community. I recorded a multi-player, extended make-believe
session among Kpelle children that was based on the children’s observations at the blacksmith’s forge. The
boy/blacksmith “in charge” of the play group had carefully fabricated facsimiles of the smith’s bellows, anvil, tongs,
hammer and so on. He directed his “cast” in their roles as apprentices and journeymen using the replica tools, while
the girls busied themselves preparing “dinner” for the smiths (Lancy 1996).
Becoming Tool Users and Makers
The process whereby children adapt adult activity—utilitarian tasks, particularly—to their own level of skill,
strength and interest and then proceed to create a “classroom” to educate themselves is often noted by
anthropologists. Unlike formal education, however, there’s rarely a graduation point. Rather, the child transitions,
seamlessly from playing to working or at least helping. Note the consistent reference to tool-using in these samples.
19
•
“The playful experimenting and exploratory inquiry of [Fore] children led them to familiarity with the
materials, tools, and activities of their hamlet-mates. As this familiarity increased, their activity began,
almost unconsciously, to dovetail more and more with the life-sustaining activities and interests of their
older hamlet-mates (Sorenson 1976: 200).”
•
“Watching [Hadza] 3–4-year-olds playing a while, one eventually realizes that children are not just playing
but are actually digging small tubers [with a digging stick] and eating them…Foraging simply emerges
gradually from playing (Marlowe, 2010: 156).”
•
“Kammu boys develop expertise in fabricating hunting weapons and traps by creating toys that gradually
evolve into the genuine articles (Tayanin and Lindell 1991: 15).”
•
“[On adult absent] gathering trips in the forest…[Mbya] children collect especially tangerines and oranges
from the tallest trees, helping with sticks of different length, and once collected they consume them during
the journey, and the remaining are brought to share with other members of their household (Remorini 2016:
39).”
•
“…cutting up bush meat…is a context in which [Baka] children frequently hear adult–adult (or adolescent)
talk about social events such as hunting, sharing meat, and so forth…An adult or adolescent cuts up the
animal using his or her machete or knife, and frequently asks children to help by holding the animal’s legs
or bringing tools like a pan or other vessel, as well as leaves to wash, carry and distribute the meat (Sonoda
2016: 44).”
Where hunting is an important component of subsistence, boys as young as two may be given serviceable bows and
arrows, which they use for hours each day, shooting at targets or pinioning large insects, lizards, small birds, and
mammals (Blurton–Jones and Marlowe 2002; Hill and Hurtado 1996). By five-to-seven, boys can be found avidly
observing adults crafting fine bows and arrows and assiduously emulating these skills (Little and Lancy 2016).
Tapirapé boys, for example, are deliberately housed with men so they can closely observe them at work making
various tools, including bows and arrows. On the other hand, the ethnographer never saw “any express attempt on
the part of an older man to teach a young boy such pursuits (Wagley 1977: 150).”
Girls, similarly, follow a gender-specific path to competent tool use. Preparing foodstuffs by cracking (grain) or
crushing (palm nuts) with a free standing mortar and pestle is women’s work. Where this tool is ubiquitous, girls but
not boys “play pound” (Bock and Johnson 2004). Toddlers will create a mortar out of a hill of a sand and,
appropriately raise and lower a stick (pestle) into the center of the mound. Somewhat older girls will use a scaled
down mortar and pestle in tandem with an older, more competent sibling using her larger tool to gradually develop
the routine—without knocking over the mortar and spilling (ruining) the contents (Lancy 1996). Hadza girls are
given their first short, not-too-sharp digging stick at three. “As the girl matures, so does her digging stick
[eventually] she is able to make her own (Crittenden 2016: 166).” Of course, her tuber finding/excavating skill
develops along with the utility of her ts’apale.
The Necessity for Effective Models
It is appropriate to stress the child’s access to real tools and the freedom to explore, manipulate and attempt to use
them. But they must also be granted extended opportunities to closely observe competent users. Speaking of a boy
they’d observed in an Okinawan village, the ethnographers were somewhat surprised by the following:
“One 4 ½-year-old boy shinnied up the side of a feed box to get a sickle. There was no adult around to peel the
long stalk of sugar cane he had [acquired], so, with expert strokes and handling of the razor-sharp tool, he
shaved off the thick, hard skin. By the time his mother arrived on the scene, the child was busily chewing and
sucking on a considerable length of the peeled cane. The mother was asked who had taught him to use the
sickle, and she was at a loss for a reply. ‘I don’t know! He must have watched us and learned himself by trying
it out!’ she said (Maretzki and Maretzki 1963: 511).”
20
When questioned, adults often stress the importance of paying attention and express gratification when a child is
making a concerted effort to closely observe and replicate the process of tool making and/or use. Further, they
disavow any need or interest in “teaching.” For example, Inuit “parents do not presume to teach their children what
they can as easily learn on their own (Guemple 1979: 50).” Children on Samoa were observed trailing after and
watching expert fishers. Sometime later they “borrowed” the equipment (nets, spears) to practice the fishing
techniques they’d observed. This led, eventually, to proficiency even though “they never used fishing gear in an
expert’s presence, nor did an expert offer instruction (Odden and Rochat, 2004: 44).”
It would be a mistake to assume that the only available role models are adults. The ethnographic record is replete
with cases of children learning from older siblings or peers. Unlike chimps who remain in close proximity to their
mothers during the most intense period for learning to use tools, children are usually cared for by kin other than the
mother, predominantly by their older siblings. This “minding” often involves the young child in make-believe play
with older sibs and peers as well as observing and helping the sib-caretaker as she or he does chores. Consequently,
“toddlers learn primarily by observing and interacting with their sibling caretakers (Maynard 2002: 978).” Unlike
harried mothers, older siblings are, generally, more patient with their charges. A child’s first “real” tool may be a
scaled version made by an older sibling (Peters 1998). As role models, sibling caretakers, themselves, may still be
using smaller scale tools and work with them more slowly than adults. Their skills are, then, much more accessible
than an adult’s. Siblings as alloparents and role models may have been the norm even among early Hominins.
Learning to Make Pottery
The ethnographic study of children becoming potters is one of the richest areas of the literature. The principles that
emerge from this research match-up well with those deduced, more generally, from studying children’s learning and
contribution to the domestic economy (Lancy 2012a, 2015a, 2016a). More importantly, I am struck by numerous
parallels to what we’ve learned from lithic archaeology. First, both stone tool and pottery-making require a period of
learning and practice to shape an object that matches a model. Second, just as stone age children seem to have
learned a great deal from handling complete and unfinished tools as well as the by-products, aspirant potters may
study broken pot-sherds to better understand the architecture and design of the vessel (Bunzel 1929). Third,
archaeologists identify the work of child-potters by size (smaller than standard), crudity and, characteristic error
patterns, among others (Crown 2002; Králik et al 2008; Langdon 2013)—similar to criteria used in identifying
products of novice tool-makers. Fourth, novice potters learn through focused observation of competent potters.
Fifth, there are clear indications of development from novice to expert (Wallaert 2008).
[Aari] “daughters who are “ready” to make pots station themselves in front of their mothers so they can watch
her every movement…the mother may start to make a pot and, after forming the basic shape, will pass it to their
daughters to finish… Girls progress—over about four years—from making the smallest, simplest pots to
making increasingly larger and more complex pots…Girls set their own pace and decide, on their own, which
types to master and which types to make, once they’ve become competent (Kaneko 2014: 64-5).”
Sixth, pottery-making, particularly by women, is conducted in the open, in a relaxed social gathering where even
very young children are welcome. “If a woman has to stop to nurse her baby, another will often finish her pot for
her, lest it get too dry (Spindel 1989: 71; see also Köhler 2012).” Seventh, children, initially engage in potterymaking via play and this is condoned and encouraged by the expert. “A small girl plays with clay, making coils,
pinch pots, and miniature animals while her mother builds coils into vessels (Bowser and Patton 2008: 123).”
Eighth, they may signal their commitment and serious intent to learn by volunteering to help out. “Around the age
of two or three, children start assisting their mothers in making pots. For instance, …children carry partly formed
pots from workplaces and cover them with taro leaves to prevent them from drying completely (Kaneko 2014:64).”
Ninth, there is very little evidence of direct instruction. Puebloan girls in the southwestern US, for example, took the
initiative to learn the craft, observing and imitating their mothers or other competent female relatives. Mature potters
spared little time to serve as teachers. “Adults are quoted as stating that children understood the process more
thoroughly when they learned through trial and error…[progress was]…largely driven by the child’s interest and
skill level (Crown 2002: 109).” Tenth, with only a few exceptions (e.g. formal apprenticeship cf Lancy 2012b;
Wallaert 2008), children are rarely compelled to learn nor punished for mistakes. This is true across the
ethnographic record—even in societies that may use corporeal punishment in other contexts.
Summary and Conclusions
21
Woven together, these four strands of research portray a complex and coherent tapestry. Hominin babies would have
been born into a world of people and things. Like chimp juveniles, their curiosity would have focused their attention
on these two categories, especially when the two were joined in some way—a mother wielding a tool or eating a nut.
From birth they probably had sensory and cognitive capacities that gave them a head-start in making sense of their
world to guide their later attempts to master it. These capacities were of particular importance in the Upper
Paleolithic as, unlike their non-human ape counterparts, Hominin babies were virtually immobile and quite clumsy.
We can assume that infant cognition developed in tandem with the increasing complexity of pre-historic cultures,
including the expanded tool kit, group size and social complexity and, of course, language. Babies were always in
close proximity to their mothers—for ease of feeding—and mothers in turn, were likely part of an informal work
party of their mothers, sisters and older offspring. So infants had multiple caretakers and role models to interact with
and observe.
From several research strands, a picture emerges of juveniles as eager to explore their environment, particularly
objects. The extensive exploration of the properties of objects seems to be a necessary stage in the child’s
development as a tool user—as specifically demonstrated in several of the experimental studies with infants and
toddlers. Objects, and, especially tools, offer affordances which guide the child in discovering the tool’s proper
orientation, it’s handle and business ends, it’s weight, grasping points and so forth. In fact, every object has a story
to tell.
Much of this activity looks like play, children show clear enjoyment as they handle various tools or pseudo tools.
Along with an interest in objects, infants from birth observe and imitate con-specifics. They soon develop the
capacity for delayed imitation where observation is only later followed by replication. These emerging abilities set
the stage for make-believe play. Make-believe play incorporates and expands upon object play. It is a cultural
universal and probably arose by the Late Paleolithic, if not before. Play episodes place tools in a social context,
reinforcing their use and importance in the regular work of the household.
Among humans, as well as chimpanzees, an adult may further facilitate learning by making and donating a toy tool,
passing on an old tool or, occasionally, “loaning” a useable tool. In stone knapping sites, it seems as if children had
access to both cast-off incomplete tools and low value raw material that could be used for practice and obtained (or
provided by an adult) with little effort.
Observation and imitation or emulation was, until recently, 13 the primary means by which children learn so, it is not
surprising to find these skills emerging early, according to studies on infant cognition. The centrality of these
complementary mechanisms in the ontogeny of tool use and fabrication is echoed in all of the research strands
reviewed, including modern replicative knapping experiments. The ubiquity of knapping (or learning) circles at
stone tool making sites suggests that the best knappers worked in a location that facilitated close observation by an
array of less competent tool-makers, including children. These same sites suggest that, very young children, lacking
the dexterity or strength to create useable tools, nevertheless had ample opportunities to practice flaking and develop
in a playful way but with one eye on the expert. Village children and juvenile chimps are also found in close
proximity to tool-wielding adults where they are welcome if they don’t interfere.
Research with infants learning to use tools, such as the spoon example, show steady improvement over time and this
occurs in predictable patterns. Development is observed in hand-eye coordination, fluidity of movement, improved
trajectory and control of percussive force, among others. Steady repetition or practice over time, leading, gradually,
to mastery also appears in studies of tool making. We don’t know at what age children began to focus more intently
on learning to make tools. Certainly in the village context, children are observant helpers by 3 and tool makers
(digging sticks, for example) and users by 6. A similar transition occurs with chimpanzees where their interaction
with tools remains playful and unfocussed until they mature. For the more difficult applications like Panda nut
cracking, it may take several years until mastery. Debitage from Neolithic stone tool-making sites when analyzed
clearly shows a developmental progression with characteristic error patterns and stage-like improvement. This is
true as well of the great majority of the skills children acquire in village settings, as the pottery example shows.
13 Several recent studies suggest that, with the advent of schooling, children are less able to learn through
observation, relying on teacher instruction and texts (Correa–Chavez and Rogoff 2005; Gaskins and Paradise 2010)
22
As with nut-cracking, the length of a child’s apprenticeship in the Neolithic would depend on the nature of the tool
and the material from which it was made. In the ethnographic record, children are unhurried and learn at their own
pace, likely to be the case with hunter-gatherers in the Neolithic as well. Given how challenging some tools are to
make, it may be that not all individuals mastered all tools. Particularly among contemporary hunter-gatherers, bows
and arrows, for example, are often fabricated only by specialists (see also Note 2).
In addition to object handling, close observation of expert tool makers/users and lengthy practice, children, as often
noted in the ethnographic record, also learn by volunteering to help out. If they are successful at gaining entry to a
work party (butchering game, for example) they will not only observe processes at close hand, they can practice tool
use in a real-world context, receiving feedback as to their competence. They are doubly motivated—to master the
task and, to be socially accepted and valued.
Konner (2010) and others assign a major role to teaching in accounting for juveniles’ acquisition of tool related
skills. But the literature I have reviewed is at odds with that assumption (Lancy 2016b). With respect to lithic
studies, replicative knapping experiments indicate that teaching may actually retard the novice’s progress (Putt et al
2014). Among chimpanzees, teaching is extremely rare and may be explained by the idiosyncratic behavior of a few
individuals. In the experimental literature with infants and toddlers, teaching—of skills associated with tool-using,
as opposed to academics—has negative side-effects. That is, when children sense that they are supposed to adopt the
role of pupil vis-à-vis another acting as a teacher, they focus on the teacher, rather than the task. Their exploration
and analysis of the problem and the tools available is truncated while, at the same time, they over-imitate faithfully
incorporating the teacher’s errors and inefficiencies in their replication.
In the ethnographic record we find children learning to use and make tools through a variety of avenues including
object and make-believe play closely modeled on readily accessible working areas where tools are made and used.
Children closely observe working individuals, including siblings and then, attempt to emulate the process through a
lengthy period of practice and improvement—with real or scaled down tools. Children volunteer to help or carry out
necessary chores for the chance to interact more closely with expert workers and to gain social approval. Teaching,
on the other hand, is rarely observed and often condemned by informants as unnecessary and possibly harmful to the
child’s development as a worker. The facilitation that adults and older children provide to novices occurs through
free access to the work area and the worker as role model, access to poorer quality material for practice, the donation
or loan of actual tools or appropriate substitutes and an attitude that encourages and appreciates self-initiated
learning (Lancy 2016a). It is not unreasonable to claim, therefore, that this model of children’s role in cultural
perpetuation might be of great antiquity, even before the onset of speech.
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