Horses and donkeys can make human-looking stone ‘tools’
Equids have now joined the unintentional toolmaker club. Equids regularly kick and stamp rocks to trim their hooves. A Spanish research team placed a horse and three donkeys in an enclosure with lumps of flint and quartzite. After 52 days the rocks and flakes were examined. Much of it (pictured), strongly resembled flakes and cores created by human flint knapping.
“For us it was a surprise that donkeys can make flakes like human ones,” said Domínguez-Solera, part of the Spanish research team. It has long been assumed that “intentional flaking of stone tools is one of the hallmarks of hominin evolution”. But some evolutionists are now urging a more cautious stance on this position due to the findings.
Equids supposedly lived beside alleged human ancestors for millions of years, “so their ‘tools’ throw a much bigger spanner into the works. ‘We say be careful– this flake could be made by an [equid],’” continued Domínguez-Solera. Of course, not all evolutionists agree. Some say the results, while interesting, should not change textbooks just yet.
Such research and debate highlight the issue of making positive assertions about artefacts from the past when no-one was there to observe them being made. Without more context, i.e., other signs of human activity, a stone tool might ‘neigh’ be what they thought. It might have been made by an equid (or another unintentional toolmaker) instead.
When stone tools found by themselves without a fuller context are built into a human evolution narrative, even more caution should be applied to such an interpretation. Of course, the Bible is clear on human origins and our timeline. Any human-made stone tools would have been knapped by Noah’s intelligent descendants as they rebuilt society post-Flood from 4,500 years ago onwards.
- Domínguez-Solera, S.D. and 3 others, Equids can also make stone artefacts, J. Archaeological Science: Reports 40(A)103260, 2021; sciencedirect.com.
- Lawton, G. Stones smashed by horses can be mistaken for ancient human tools, newscientist.com, 1 Dec 2021.
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