If A Big Chimp Could Use Tools 3 Million Years Ago, Why Is My Tap Still Leaking? Demands Public

It's upstairs, first door on the left

The public has reacted with fury to the news that ancient hominids were able to use tools, demanding to know why, after 3.2 million years of evolution, modern tradesmen are incapable of operating a spanner.

Bones with clear cut marks made by primitive stone tools were unearthed by palaeontologists working in Ethiopia, pushing back the earliest known date for tool use by 800,000 years. The only species known to have inhabited the Dikka region so long ago is Australopithecus afarensis, a distant ancestor of modern homo sapiens resembling an orang-utan.

Scientists are, however, at a loss to explain precisely when modern man lost the ability to use simple tools. Some estimate that the process began as far back as the mid-20th century, while others put the date as recently as 6th May 2009, when the National Apprenticeship Service was launched after the government decided that six weeks was plenty of time in which to learn everything there was to know about being a skilled gas fitter.

“Hello, is that Paignton Zoo?” commented a typical homeowner this afternoon. “I’d like to book one of your gibbons to come and mastic my bathroom next Monday.”