Correction to: Communications Biology https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-025-08217-2, published online 7 June 2025

In the version of the article initially published, three references were missing that should have been cited in the sixth and seventh paragraphs of the Introduction (Whiten, A. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2022.10.003 (2022); Tennie, C. et al. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-020-09769-9 (2020); and Tennie, C. The earliest tools and cultures of hominins. in Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution (Oxford University Press, 2023). The references have been inserted in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.