Well-tooled primates: the evolutionary roots of our technological prowess may run deep

Science News,  Feb 10, 2007  by Bruce Bower

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Levinson's team theorizes that apes and people possess an innate tendency to navigate by tracking features of their surroundings. An observer-centered viewpoint develops slowly during childhood only when cultivated by language and culture, the researchers propose.

Psychologist Nora S. Newcombe of Temple University in Philadelphia expresses skepticism about that conclusion. Mobile individuals skillfully use both viewer-centered and environment-centered spatial strategies when necessary, she says. For instance, landmarks are essential to speakers of relative languages when they're planning alternative routes to a destination and to speakers of absolute languages when, on occasion, dead reckoning leads them astray.

Similarly, researchers will need to use a variety of strategies as they wend their way along the path from rake-wielding monkeys to tool-producing people. There's still a long distance to go, but a few neural landmarks now light the way.

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