Stone-throwing could mean chimps believe in a god

Stone-throwing by chimpanzees seems to be ritualistic and could suggest the animals believe in a god, according to researchers from a German university.

Video footage shows chimps in west Africa throwing rocks into holes in trees, apparently as a sort of ritual. The team reports that the indigenous peoples also collect stones at sacred trees in a way that looks "eerily similar".

"This represents the first record of repeated observations of individual chimpanzees exhibiting stone tool use for a purpose other than extractive foraging at what appear to be targeted trees," write the researchers.

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"The ritualized behavioural display and collection of artefacts at particular locations observed in chimpanzee accumulative stone throwing may have implications for the inferences that can be drawn from archaeological stone assemblages and the origins of ritual sites."

According to the Daily Telegraph, the discovery may help "piece together how human religious rituals started and developed".

Wildlife researcher Laura Kehoe, from the University of Berlin, said the footage "sent shivers down her spine".

Writing in The Guardian in March, she added: "What we have found might be more symbolic than a male display, and perhaps more reminiscent of our own past.

"Marking pathways and territories with signposts such as piles of stones is an important stage in human history. Mapping chimps' territories in relation to stone accumulation sites could give us insights into whether this is the case here."

She continued: "Even more intriguingly, we may have uncovered evidence of chimps creating a kind of symbolic ritual. Man-made stone collections are commonly observed across the world, including indigenous west African people who have been found to have stone collections at sacred trees that look eerily similar to what we have discovered here."