Tools to Get Food: The Subsistants of Tasmanian Aborigines and Tanzanian Chimpanzees Compared

Abstract

Tools used to get food are compared between wild chimpanzees in western Tanzania and aboriginal Tasmanians at the time of European contact. Systematic qualitative and quantitative comparison is enabled by use of Oswalt's taxonomy of subsistence technology. The results show surprising similarity in the number of items in the tool kit, raw materials used, proportion of tools made versus those used unchanged, extent of complexity, type of prey, etc. Key contrasts also emerge: only human tools have more than one type of component and are made using other tools. Overall, however, the gap between the most technically diverse nonhuman tool kit and the simplest human material culture seems narrow.