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Homo Floresiensis ('Hobbits'; Small Archaic Humans)

carlosox said:
If there is sufficient interest, I'll relate the stories about these beings told to me by the natives of Flores and Timor.

Pulls up chair.
 
*shoos everyone out of the office and takes phone off the hook*
 
O.K. This is the tale related to me by my foreman Aloysius.
Aloysius had just finished schooling ( 17 years of age ) and had applied to be a teacher in one of the schools in Flores. While waiting for his application to be processed he was helping out as a pastor boy in a nearby church. The pastor liked him very much as not only was he efficient and quick in whatever he did, but he also played the guitar well and was rather intelligent. Aloysius was then staying with his mother in a remote part of Flores where water was drawn from a well and electricity was non existant.
One moonlit night, Aloysius woke around 1am and went outside to relieve himself. As he was urinating near a clump of banana trees, he heard a rustling sound near the trees. When he turned his head toward the direction of the sound, he was shocked to see a minature man standing next to the trees and glaring back at him. Aloysius told me that he was exactly like a human in all respects except that every body part was miniaturised. He told me that he was especially fascinated by the cute knees of this creature. The creature was about a metre tall and was very ugly. He was also in a very foul mood. Placing his hands on his hips and glaring at Aloysius all the time, this creature then uttered a sound like " tsk tsk tsk" ( like the sound a house lizard makes ). What happened next is unclear. Either Aloysius actually performed the actions described below or was hypnotised by the creature into believing that he was carrying out these actions.
Aloysius ran for his life with the creature in hot pursuit . He was running this way and that with the creature right behind him. Aloysius clearly remembers that he tried to seek refuge in the nearby church, but he had to cross a bridge in order to reach the building. But the creature somehow overtook him and stood on the bridge between him and the church thereby preventing him from reaching the church. Aloysius turned around and another round of chasing followed. Aloysius finally heard his mother calling him and found himself sprawled at the doorway of his house with his mother bending over him and calling out to him.
He ran a high fever the next few days,which was only cured by the pastor sprinkling holy water on him.
I have several other weird tales which actually took place in Indonesia. I will relate them later on.
 
carlosox: Excellent stuff. Could I ask you to send that account (along with a sentence on background from the previous thread) to the FT letters page (Paul Siveking deals with all that) as the Flores finds are going to be important for a long time and these kinds of first/secondhand accounts are pure gold!!

Email:
[email protected]
Other details if you want them:
http://www.forteantimes.com/mag_info/contact.shtml

I have started a general thread for Indonesian stuff:

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18579

so if you can't think of anywhere else to put any further info then feel free to use that thread.
 
He ran a high fever the next few days

Sounds like a bad dream brought on by the fever.
 
carlosox said:
Placing his hands on his hips and glaring at Aloysius all the time, this creature then uttered a sound like " tsk tsk tsk" ( like the sound a house lizard makes ).

Perhaps the 'tsk' noise was the sound of a tiny blowpipe?
Perhaps Aloysius got his fever from some kind of mild neurotoxin?
Are there any plants (or whatever) in Flores that might be used to produce a poison that has this effect?
 
mythopoeika: never thought of that; but in all the stories told to me by the natives of Flores and Timor, these beings are generally unarmed. Whereas before Dutch colonisation of Indonesia whole groups of these beings could be seen roaming about at night ( probably foraging for food ), the sightings now are mostly of lone males. Their population could have been reduced drastically by some factor(s), not the least of which being hunting by the natives of these islands ( the Ebu Gogo were considered as pests at one time as they raided the villagers' crops at night ).
The males that are seen nowadays appear to have remarkable mind power ( which I guess is their main form of defence), and are seen walking fearlessly about at night. If it is not too far fetched, I might even add that they are capable of time warping. Consider this:
This happened in Malaysia about five years ago. A tractor driver was returning to his quarters at about 8pm after delivering crop to the mill. His headlights suddenly picked out a couple of these creatures crossing the road ( unpaved, as it was within the plantation ), right in front of him. The driver had to apply emergency braking to avoid hitting them, but these two creatures were completely unaware of the tractor and were busily engaged in coversation as they were walking.
 
carlosox: Thanks for that - any more information would be gratefully received ;)

---------------
From the letters in the Garudian's science supplement today:

Kicking the hobbit

The description of the "ebu gogo" on Flores (Our not so distant relative, October28) corresponds almost perfectly with a creature supposedly living in the mountains of the island of Makira in the Solomon Islands. I lived in the Solomons for 26 years, and often heard stories of the "kakamora". These were invariably described as humanoid, about a metre tall, covered with long sparse red hair and having a bipedal gait. They were also credited with the ability to talk. In the mid-1970s village people at the western end of Makira told me how less than a year previously they had captured a kakamora and held it for several days before it escaped.
Mike McCoy
Kuranda, Australia

I hope Michael Morwood and Bert Roberts will consider the impact of diseases such as influenza on the indigenous populations before they go haring round Sumba and Sulawesi looking for remnant populations of a species so closely related to our own.
Rob Bell
Editor, Environment Business

As it is clear from all reports that the main hominin fossil from Flores is a female, why do you then perpetuate tired old myths by drawing her as a man, and a hunter at that?
Dr Patrick O'Sullivan
University of Plymouth

Hobbits? Nonsense: these guys belong to Kurt Vonnegut, who recorded their development in Galapagos.
Timothy Mason
Clichy, France

You report Tim White of Berkeley as saying "Darwin and Wallace would be pleased ... What better demonstration that humans play by the same evolutionary rules as other mammals?"
Darwin would undoubtedly have been happy, but not Wallace, who (in)famously thought that humans were not subject to natural selection, and left the door open to divine intervention in the creation of our species.
Dr Matthew Cobb
University of Manchester
 
Kakamora

The Kakamora sound interesting - some reports:

We passed one cool island in the eastern Solomons called “Makira.” Remote caves in Makira’s inaccessible interior are inhabited by the Kakamora, a race of midgets a meter tall who have been called the leprechauns of the pacific. As legend has it, they go naked, have very small teeth, and their long straight hair comes down to their knees. Most are harmless, but some Kakamora have been known to attack other men. It’s said that one Kakamora is as strong as three or four men! Whooah! The rumor was confirmed twice. Once in Guadalcanal and once in the Florida Group. For real.

http://www.outofbounds.com/html/os_6_5_98.html

MAKIRA or SAN CHRISTOBAL has remote caves in its inaccessible interior which are said to be inhabited by Kakamora, the 'the leprechauns of the Pacific' a race of natives who stand a metre tall.

http://www.janeresture.com/makira/

Melanesian spirits that are often described as large creatures with long nails. They live in caves and trees in the forest and are generally harmless, but they have been known to prey on unaccompanied children and lone men. Protection against them is anything white as they are terrified of this color.

http://www.geocities.com/z_mythica/creatures/k/kakamora.html

KAKAMORA
Oceanic spirits with long sharp nails, which they use on stray children and travelers. They can be kept at bay by waving something white. Far from being a token of surrender it terrifies them.

http://www.godchecker.com/gotw/016_halloween_nasties.php

A rough translation:

Kakamora

* Place of origin: The South Seas (Melanesien)

?

* See also:

The Kakamora is small baertige men only the three foot is high. In former times they lived Melanesien, in peaceful unity at the beach, with the natives on South Seas islands, e.g. where both groups fished together. Then however the Melanesier saw like one the Kakamora alone a kanu easy to water carried. Whereupon the Melanesier, from loud fear of the forces of the Kakamora, drove it out the inside the island. To see still from time to time the Kakamora in the forest, whatever is to be recognized easily by it, foot-forces the inhabitants away of the islands (the legend of the Kakamora has itself distributed on different islands), because the Kakamora runs in each case on its tips of the toe. The natives likewise learned their songs of the Kakamora and its ancestor those to live in the forest.

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://myht.creative-work.de/html/kakamora.htm

He told us some stories that his grandfather had told him. His grandfather, he said, lived to be 125. In the old days there were 3 kinds of people on Makira. The Pawpawronga (called Kakamora in the South Pacific Handbook) are half human, half devil. They are only 1 meter tall but are extremely strong. It would take many big men to defeat one of these little guys. They get their strength from a stone which is under the skin in their arm. Mark Philip has never seen one but he knows people who have seen them deep in the bush where they still live today. The second type is Masi. They were very stupid, had no eyes but a very keen sense of smell. They built their canoes on the mountain tops and slid down to the sea with many of them dying at these launching episodes. There are none alive today but skulls have been found with no eye sockets, proving their existence. The third type of people is “real people”, today’s Solomon Islanders.

http://www.worldvoyaging.com/travel_logs/2002/makira_travellog.htm
 
gorillas have very sharp nails which can inflict horrifying injuries upon anyone unfortunate enough to get in the way.

Chimpanzees are very small animals that are incredibly strong.
 
So they are, but its behaivior we can relate to known apes. (I dont know about Orangs...) reported in a myth.
 
Sorry... dead right. Missed the point entirely. excellent observation too!
 
Doubts

http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillatestnews.asp?fileid=20041105185229&irec=1
Indonesian experts deny 'Flores man' fossil claim

YOGYAKARTA (Antara): Indonesian senior pale-anthropologist Teuku Jacob denied claims made by Australian anthropologist Peter Brown saying that fossils found in September 2003 were of a newspecies called Homo floresiensis.

"It was a sub-species of Homo sapiens and not a new species although it has gone through pygmization process," Jacob told reporters.

"It is a natural phenomenon as living creatures adapt to their environment. The bigger the habitat, the bigger their physical appearances."

Jacob, head of the paleo-anthropology laboratory at the Gadjah Mada University (UGM), said such pygmization process did not take place in Flores only but also in Central Mountain, Papua and Andaman, Aceh.

The fossil was found in Liang Bua, Flores during a cooperation with Australian experts and drew large media attention.

Indonesian experts, however, were unhappy with their left behind by Australian experts who announced the findings.

Meanwhile, Harry Widianto of the Yogyakarta Archeology Agency said the "Flores Man" was best regarded as a sub-species of Homo sapiens regarding its evolution stage.

"We can call it Home sapiens floresiensis as it is still in the same evolution stage with Home sapiens.

"We can also consider Liang Bua as an important route of mankind migration from the west to the east during the Pleistocene age," he said.

Harry also said that "Flores man" may represent the transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens some 18,000 to 30,000 years ago.

"The Liang Bua fossil had characteristics from the two species and is easily reconstructed.

"Homo erects lived in Java 1.5 million to 100,000 years ago while the oldest Homo sapiens was found to be 13,000 years old."

The site is rich with archeological findings including of 900,000-year old artifacts and fossil of stegodon.
 
Re: Doubts

Keyser Soze said:
"It was a sub-species of Homo sapiens and not a new species although it has gone through pygmization process," Jacob told reporters.

"It is a natural phenomenon as living creatures adapt to their environment. The bigger the habitat, the bigger their physical appearances."

Jacob, head of the paleo-anthropology laboratory at the Gadjah Mada University (UGM), said such pygmization process did not take place in Flores only but also in Central Mountain, Papua and Andaman, Aceh.

http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillatestnews.asp?fileid=20041105185229&irec=1

It does appear that he hasn't read the actual paper as they go into detail on this and the difference between "pygmization" (a word I think he might have made up) and endism is critical for this whole thing.

The pygmy body form appears to have evolved as part of the general suite of thermoregulatory adaptations that we see across the planet. The change between latitudes is one towards a shorter wider bauplan with a much lower surface area to volume ratio to reduce heat loss, etc. The tall thin body , as can been seen amongst people like the Masai, is adapted to the open plains and can be seen in the early Homo erectus when the evidence suggests they eremed from the trees onto the plains. Pygmies have the general width of other people on the latitude but have adapted to the more humid rainforest conditions (which require less volume to store water in) and so they are shorter but their faces and their brains are the same size and shape.

Endism meanwhile actually shrinks the whole body which is why see the Flores finds with much smaller faces and brains.

Both are well understood evolutionary trajectories and apply to exisitng animal species as well as humans and fossil hominids.

More in a mo.
 
References:

Wheeler, P. (1991) The thermoregulatory advantages of hominid bipedalism in open equatorial environments: The contribution of increased convective heat loss and cutaneous evaporative cooling. Journal of Human Evolution. 21 (2). 107 - 15.

Wheeler, P. (1993) The influence of stature and body form on hominid energy and water budgets: A comparison of Australopithecus and early Homo physiques. Journal of Human Evolution. 24 (1). 13 - 28.

Ruff, C.B. (1991) Climate and body shape in hominid evolution. Journal of Human Evolution. 21 (2). 81 - 105.

Ruff, C.B. (1993) Climatic adaptation and hominid evolution: The thermoregulatory imperative. Evolutionary Anthropology. 2 (2). 53 - 60.

Ruff, C.B. (1994) Morphological adaptation to climate in modern and fossil hominids. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology. 37. 65 - 107.
 
From the paper (Browm, 1994: 1060):

Among modern humans, populations of extremely small average stature were historically found in predominantly rainforest habitat in the equatorial zone of Africa, Asia and Melanesia30,31. Explanations for the small body size of these people generally focus on the thermoregulatory advantages for life in a hot and humid forest, either through evaporative cooling32 or reduced rates of internal heat production30. For African pygmies, smaller body size is the result of reduced levels of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) throughout the growth period33, or reduced receptivity to IGF-1 (ref. 34). Although adult stature is reduced, cranio-facial proportions remain within the range of adjacent larger-bodied
populations, as does brain size35,36. The combination of small stature and brain size in LB1 is not consistent with IGF-related postnatal growth retardation. Similarly, neither pituitary dwarfism, nor primordial microcephalic dwarfism (PMD) in modern humans replicates the skeletal features present in LB1 (refs 37–40).

Other mechanisms must have been responsible for the small body size of these hominins, with insular dwarfing being the strongest candidate. Although small body size was an attribute of Pliocene australopithecines, the facial and dental characteristics of LB1 link it with larger-bodied Pleistocene Homo. In this instance, body size is not a direct expression of phylogeny. The location of these small
hominins on Flores makes it far more likely that they are the end product of a long period of evolution on a comparatively small island, where environmental conditions placed small body size at a selective advantage. Insular dwarfing, in response to the specific ecological conditions that are found on some small islands, is well
documented for animals larger than a rabbit41,42. Explanations of the island rule have primarily focused on resource availability, reduced levels of interspecific competition within relatively impoverished faunal communities and absence of predators. It has been argued that, in the absence of agriculture, tropical rainforests offer a very limited supply of calories for hominins43. Under these conditions selection should favour the reduced energy requirements of smaller individuals. Although the details of the Pleistocene palaeoenvironment on Flores are still being documented, it is clear that until the arrival of Mesolithic humans the faunal suit was relatively impoverished, and the only large predators were the Komodo dragon and another larger varanid. Dwarfing in LB1 may have been the end product of selection for small body size in a low calorific environment, either after isolation on Flores, or another insular environment in southeastern Asia.

Anatomical and physiological changes associated with insular dwarfing can be extensive, with dramatic modification of sensory systems and brain size44, and certainly exceed what might be
predicted by the allometric effects of body size reduction alone. Evidence of insular dwarfing in extinct lineages, or the evolution of island endemic forms, is most often provided by the fossil record.
 
And now for some metaphysically considerations

Do little people go to heaven?

When they showed on television the cave on the island of Flores where the remains of little people had been found, I felt, I admit, a Yeatsian frisson that the world of politics cannot give. It was not delight at a new branch on the hat-stand of anthropoid evolution, but the thought that in the thick Indonesian rainforest there were (or had been, perhaps as recently as the time when dodos lived) creatures with whom we could converse, but which were not men.

The appetite for talking to other creatures is amply exemplified by our often exasperated one-sided conversations: ‘Get off the bloody table, Tigger, there’s a good cat.’ The very existence of pets as a sort of imaginary friend shows how reluctant humans are to be alone among the frightening emptinesses of Paschalian space. The exciting news was that the folk tales of green men, little people, wood-dwellers, might be based on fact.

But don’t these new creatures in Flores, so gratingly christened hobbits, prove that the Bible is rubbish, Darwin is right and everything can be explained by evolution? Well, for so-called fundamentalists, the difficulties of keeping to the sentence-by-sentence literal truth of the biblical account of the Creation should not be much greater than they already are, even if a delegation of Flores hobbits arrived in Downing Street demanding equal rights and bus passes.

For mainstream Christians, Darwin was never much of a problem anyway. He was only thought to be so by those who presumed he had somehow either: 1) proved the Bible wasn’t true, or 2) proved that men had no immortal souls. He had proved neither.

Genesis was chewed over, about 1,800 years ago, by the clever Christian thinker Origen. ‘What reasonable man would think that the first, second and third day — and the evening and the morning — existed without a sun, moon and stars?’ he asked. I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries.

No one, before the phrase ‘sola scriptura’ became a motto, took the Bible for a sort of cosmological mechanical maintenance manual. But it was the contention of Christians 1,500 years before Darwin that evolution does not rule out questions of design, intention, teleology or why anything exists at all.

Far more interesting this week, in an irresponsibly speculative way, is what we should make of these Floresians’ spiritual life, if they existed.

The Church used, in the Middle Ages, to be very fierce against those who declared that there were men living in the Antipodes. The problem was that the scientists taught then that the torrid zone at the equator made it quite impassable to travellers, and so any human existing down-under would be descended from another first-father rather than Adam. But Christian doctrine had always maintained that all men were descended from one man. They were all fallen through original sin, but all redeemed by the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

The scientists who have come up with these new Floresians do not count them among the ancestors of man, but among the collateral branches which died out, like the Neanderthals, only later. The suggestion is that the Floresians are, like us, rational animals.

Now Christians believe that man (I mean homo, of course, not vir) is a special creation of God. Would these Floresians be in the image and likeness of God too, with immortal souls to be saved or lost, capable of praying to God and going to heaven?

I cannot see that evolution would be an obstacle to their being spiritual and rational creatures. ‘The Catholic faith obliges us to hold firmly that souls are immediately created by God,’ wrote Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Humani Generis in 1950. And he wasn’t just making it up; that was the general belief of Christians over the centuries. By ‘immediately created’ is meant that the souls don’t grow like coral out of the bodies that our parents kindly bequeathed us by their passionate or careless mingling of zygotes.

The soul is, in scholastic terms, derived from Aristotle, the form of the body, making it, with its constituent matter, a unified substance. Bunny rabbits have souls too, but they are not immortal. Ours are, and, as such, cannot be confected by a collision of matter. For more details see Aquinas’s Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima.

The assumption is that God does not deny any human an immortal soul; the bodily set-up is capable of working with an immortal soul, like a mobile with a charged battery, and God provides one. The one soul performs all the functions: spiritual, intellectual, animal and vegetative. It would be the same story for the Floresians if they were capable of rational, immaterial thought.

-----------
By ‘rational thought’ I do not merely mean the kind of cleverness we notice in our dogs, or in the cleverest mammals, dolphins or, if you are Lyall Watson, pigs. Descartes thought animals were mere automata, but he was wrong, for they clearly have feelings, can learn and make decisions.

If you accept the standard post-Aristotelian arguments for the immortality of the soul, you will link it to intellectual reason. This is more than mere mathematical calculation. Though we are animals when we are thinking intellectually, the thoughts themselves are not bits of brain or electrical charges being arranged. Of course the original information came in through the senses, but ratiocination is immaterial, and immaterial things cannot decay, having no degradable parts.

But even if you accept this unfashionable view of thought, is it not hard to see where on the continuum of intelligence our ape-like ancestors qualified as having true immaterial rationality? Well, naturally it is hard to detect a step-change on any continuum, but the scientists are ready to claim a new species in Flores, a specific difference that is more than a matter of degree.

I suspect that the Neanderthals did not have the spark of reason, and thus their souls departed, as any form of a substance does, when their bodies died and decayed. Only if the Floresians were brighter and could conceive of universal ideas, conversing excitedly perhaps about what should be on Saturday night television once Saturday night and television had been invented, would they be capable of sustaining an immortal soul.

The presence of these rational animals is no weirder than the belief millions of Christians hold, that there are lots of angels around, each a spirit individually created, like immortal souls, by God.

But would the Floresians be fallen creatures, like the children of Adam, or still walking in unsevered friendship with God? C.S. Lewis wrote about unfallen Martians in Out of the Silent Planet, one species at least of which, the sorns, were more intelligent than human beings. If the Floresians are fallen creatures, how would they be redeemed? Would the incarnation of Christ and his resurrection save them?

Not that I can see, since God did not become a Floresian but a human, a Homo sapiens. Still, the Incarnation and Resurrection have had a universal, cosmic effect, so it could well be lèse majesty to criticise divine arrangements for the redemption, if necessary, of an intelligent species, the existence of which is posited only on the evidence of some dry bones. Ezekiel had a vision of a valley of dry bones, and was much surprised by what happened next.

----------------
Christopher Howse is an assistant editor of the Daily Telegraph.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/spectator2/spec508.html

And what happened next? A scene more reminiscent of Army of Darkness:

1 The hand of the LORD was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the LORD, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones,

2 And caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry.

3 And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord GOD, thou knowest.

4 Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.

5 Thus saith the Lord GOD unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live:

6 And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the LORD.

7 So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone.

8 And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them.

9 Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.

10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.

11 Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts.

12 Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel.

13 And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves,

14 And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the LORD have spoken it, and performed it, saith the LORD.

Ezekiel 37: 1-14

http://www.carm.org/kjv/Ezek/Ezek_37.htm
 
Crytpid safari??

Monday, November 08, 2004


Mysteries of newly found ‘hobbit’ lure tourists to remote Indonesian isle

By Sebastien Blanc, Agence France-Presse

LIANG BUA, Indonesia—The discovery of remains of a tiny human closely related to man on the remote Indonesian island of Flores and tales of hobbit-like creatures who still roam its jungles have triggered an influx of visitors in search of a fabled lost world.

Paleontologists last week said they had exhumed the bones of a previously unknown species, Homo floresiensis, from a cave near the village of Liang Bua, a revelation that has shaken the evolutionary tree and the science community.

The find, by researchers speculating that the tiny humans match tales of gluttonous little folk seen in the island’s uncharted forests, has fired the imagination of visitors willing to make the arduous trek to what they hope will be a real-life Jurassic Park.

Canny local tour operators have already posted a package deal on the Internet, offering a five-day expedition to the village Liang Bua from the popular resort island of Bali—a trip with a price tag of 0.

But reaching the huge limestone caves, which lie in the heart of the densely vegetated island toward the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, is no holiday.

From Bali or the neighboring island of Sumbawa, the Flores port of Labuan Bajo can only be reached by a small-propeller plane or a boat which skirts the volcanic island of Komodo, the eponymous home of giant “dragon” lizards.

Then follows a half-day journey along narrow and sinuous roads through lush forests to the central town of Ruteng, from where a bumpy ride over a cratered 14-kilometer track reaches Liang Bua.

The inhabitants of this village bordered by rice fields have rarely encountered foreigners over the past half-century, apart from Dutch and Portuguese missionaries and a few mainly Australian scientists.

However, this is beginning to change with the arrival first of TV crews and now, sightseers.

“There has already been a German tourist here,” said Agustinus Manga, who has been charged by his village with the task of guarding the cave after the departure of the archaeologists.

Happy to see his pale-faced visitors, he makes them sign a slim gold book.

According to researchers, Flores man lived here 18,000 years ago, a relatively short time ago in the history of man’s development.

From the female skeleton discovered, scientists concluded the homonid stood one-meter tall and had a brain the size of a chimpanzee. Tools discovered in the cave suggest the dwarf could cut stone and drive off prehistoric elephants.

The species, which researchers say evolved from the larger Homo erectus in an environment where being small was an advantage, appears to have been wiped out by a volcanic eruption 12,000 years ago.

Though there have been reports of a hairy little people seen regularly up until Dutch settlers arrived in the 19th century, few residents in Liang Bua seem to have heard of these creatures.

Ricus Bandar, a 60-year-old villager, said he had no memory of tales of hirsute bipeds wandering through the jungles, but reflecting the island’s predominately Christian faith, he adds that “according to the Bible, Noah’s Ark was grounded here.”

The theory that some of the dwarf species may have survived was also met with skepticism from the head of the police post in the town of Ruteng.

But Timbul Marselinus, the tourism chief in this sleepy backwater, has dreams of grandeur, predicting both the fossil discovery and the mysterious jungle legends will put his town on the map.

“Lots of tourists will come here. It’s lucky for us. This the first time something important has happened in Ruteng,” he told AFP.

http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2004/nov/08/yehey/opinion/20041108opi6.html
 
oh great! exploitation by the great white sciencist/fundie missionary/tourist times ahead then :rolleyes:
 
This was always going to be tricky for some models of modern human origins as it seems to emphasise the bushiness of our family tree but here is the first attempt at spinning the finds in a way that it fits in with a less bushy model:

The researchers view the new species as a scaled-down version of Homo erectus, believed to be the ancestor to modern humans. The scientists argue in their paper that Homo erectus was found on the island of Java, the closest large island with fossil human ancestors.

Another possibility is that they descended from modern humans, or Homo sapiens, who had been living in New Guinea and Australia for at least 50,000 years before the Liang Bua woman was born.

"This is a wonderful discovery. And who knows whether it was Homo erectus or Homo sapiens that got marooned out there," said University of Michigan anthropologist Milford H. Wolpoff.

Adapting to their environment had made so many physical changes in the Liang Bua people that Wolpoff doubted that questions about their origins would be answered.

"What's important is they were human beings who illustrate that different species arise when populations become isolated. And then, they start to evolve in a totally different direction than their ancestors," he said.

For example, the genome of the wolf holds the possibility of creatures as diverse as the chihuahua and the Irish wolfhound, Wolpoff observed.

"But who would have thought the human genome could create a line of people as small as this?" he said. "Out of necessity, they had to develop their own path of evolution. And they give us a totally different story than we've ever seen before."

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/nation/10031634.htm

Needs more work I think.
 
OK, They are not human, compare the skull,similar but thats all.Think its been said before but, all the hominid fossils found would only fit in the back of a pick up truck.Adds a bit more confusion to the human "family tree" as if it was'nt confused enough:rolleyes: .Have only seen photo's of one skull,are there any more?.Or is this all based on one skull?.
What I find interesting is the, females "throwing breasts over shoulders when they run", exactly the same as has been stated for Bigfoot/Almas !:eek!!!!: .Food for thought there surely !.And the "Cryptozoology coming in from the cold", interesting,bets on Bigfoot et al being taken seriously soon?.
 
Bullseye said:
OK, They are not human, compare the skull,similar but thats all.Think its been said before but, all the hominid fossils found would only fit in the back of a pick up truck.Adds a bit more confusion to the human "family tree" as if it was'nt confused enough:rolleyes: .Have only seen photo's of one skull,are there any more?.Or is this all based on one skull?.

There are the remains of seven individuals. Most of the current study is on the main skeleton that has been found (Flo) and a premolar lower down in the section. The other remains are fragmentary but confirm that the stature isn't a freakish one of and is part of a population spanning a period from at least 75-18,000 years ago (and probably at least down to 12,000 years ago by the tools).

The idea that all the know hominid fossils would fit on two trestle tables, in a coffin, etc. is an urban myth (I'm unsure what the volume of the back of a pickup truck is but I suspect it would also fit in with the others).
 
Interesting article which covers the way the arguement (at last within academia) will probably go:

Miniature People Add Extra Pieces to Evolutionary Puzzle

By NICHOLAS WADE

Published: November 9, 2004

The miniature people found to have lived on the Indonesian island of Flores until 13,000 years ago may well appeal to the imagination. Even their Australian discoverers refer to them with fanciful names. But the little Floresians have created something of a headache for paleoanthropologists.

The Floresians, whose existence was reported late last month, have shaken up existing views of the human past for three reasons: they are so recent, so small and apparently so smart. None of these findings fits easily into current accounts of human evolution.

The textbooks describe an increase in human brain size that parallels an increasing sophistication in stone tools. Our close cousins the chimpanzees have brains one third the size of ours, as do the Australopithecines, the apelike human ancestors who evolved after the split from the joint human-chimp ancestor six or seven million years ago. But the Australopithecines left no stone tools, and chimps, though they use natural stones to smash things, have no comprehension of fashioning a stone for a specific task.

The little Floresians seem to have made sophisticated stone tools yet did so with brains of 380 cubic centimeters, about the same size as the chimp and Australopithecine brains. This is a thumb in the eye for the tidy textbook explanations that link sophisticated technology with increasing human brain size.

The Australian and Indonesian researchers who found the Floresian bones have an explanation that raises almost as many questions as it resolves. They say the Floresians, who stood three and a half feet high, are downsized versions of Homo erectus, the archaic humans who left Africa 1.5 million years before modern humans. But some critics think the small people may have descended from modern humans - Homo sapiens.

Homo erectus had arrived on the remote island of Flores by 840,000 years ago, according to earlier findings by Dr. Mike Morwood, the Australian archaeologist on the team. The species then became subject to the strange evolutionary pressures that affect island species. If there are no predators and little food, large animals are better off being small. Homo erectus was sharply downsized, as was the pygmy elephant the little Floresians hunted.

But the Morwood theory is not universally accepted. Homo erectus is known to have made crude stone tools but is not generally thought to have spoken or been able to build boats.

Maybe Dr. Morwood's alleged stone tools were just natural pieces of rock. "Many researchers (myself included) doubted these claims," writes Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London, adding that "nothing could have prepared me" for the surprise of the little Floresians.

It is surprising enough that Homo erectus managed to reach Flores. But not only have the Floresians evolved to be much more advanced than their ancestors ever were, as judged by the stone tools, but they did so at the same time that their brain was being reduced to one-third human size. Getting smaller brained and smarter at the same time is the exact reverse of the textbook progression.

The Floresians' other surprise lies in the time of their flourishing. The skeleton described in Nature lived as recently as 18,000 years ago, but Dr. Morwood said that in the most recent digging season he found six other individuals whose dates range from 95,000 to 13,000 years ago. Modern humans from Africa arrived in the Far East some time after 50,000 years ago and had reached Australia by at least 40,000 years ago.

There has been little evidence until now that Homo erectus long survived its younger cousins' arrival in the region. Modern humans probably exterminated the world's other archaic humans, the Neanderthals in Europe. Yet the little Floresians survived some 30,000 years into modern times, the only archaic human species known to have done so.

All these surprises raise an alternative explanation. What if the Floresians are descended from modern humans, not from Homo erectus?

-------------
"I think the issue of whether it derives from H. erectus or H. sapiens is difficult or impossible to answer on the morphology," says Dr. Richard Klein, an archaeologist at Stanford. And if the individual described in the Nature articles indeed made the sophisticated tools found in the same cave, "then it is more likely to be H. sapiens," he says.

The same possibility has been raised by two anthropologists at the University of Cambridge, Dr. Marta Mirazón Lahr and Dr. Robert Foley. Commenting on the sophisticated stone implements found in the cave with the Floresians, they write that "their contrast with tools found anywhere with H. erectus is very striking."

There is the basis here for a fierce dispute. Given what is on the record so far, the argument that the Floresians are descended from Homo sapiens, not erectus, has a certain parsimony. Moderns are known to have been around in the general area, and no Homo erectus is known to have made such sophisticated tools.

Dr. Morwood counters this thesis with data that he has not yet published, and which therefore does not strictly count in scientific arguments. The 95,000-year-old Floresians far antedate the arrival of modern humans in the area. There are modern human remains on Flores, Dr. Morwood says, but the earliest is 11,000 years old, suggesting there was not necessarily any overlap between the two human species.

His view is supported by Dr. G. Philip Rightmire, a paleoanthropologist at Binghamton University in New York and an expert on Homo erectus. "There is no ambiguity about the morphological pattern, and it is erectus-like," Dr. Rightmire says of the Floresian skeleton. "I'm not sure why it should be difficult to accept the reasoning that the little Floresians made progress with stone working and honed their hunting-butchering skills" during their long co-existence on Flores with the pygmy elephants, he said.

Dr. Morwood believes the little Floresians must have had language to cooperate in elephant hunts. Others are not willing to follow him so far, especially given Homo erectus's apparent lack of achievement. Even chimps can hunt cooperatively, Dr. Foley says.

Whether the Floresians' line of descent runs through Homo erectus or through Homo sapiens, a whole new line of human evolution has opened up, even though one that is now all but certainly extinct. The Floresians are not like human pygmies, which have almost normal-size brains but smaller bodies because their growth is retarded during puberty. Nor are they dwarves. The skeleton described last month could be a called a midget, in the sense of a tiny person with the head and body proportions of a full-size person, Dr. Klein said.

"I always tell my students that I've taught for 30 years and I've never given the same lecture twice. Hardly a year goes by when something new isn't found," says Dr. Leslie Aiello, a paleoanthropologist at University College London. Of the Floresian discovery she says, "It's a total knockout."

Requires (free) registration:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/09/science/09tiny.html

There will be more detailled studies but the archaic traits really do seem to suggest the ancestor of these people wasn't a modern human but we'll see - its going to be a fierce one and I'm getting a comfy seat and some popcorn ;)
 
And why calling them "hobbits" may not prove to be a good idea in the long run:

Published online: 08 November 2004; | doi:10.1038/news041108-4

[email protected]:
Kicking the hobbit habit

Henry Gee

The nickname for the new hominid Homo floresiensis has its advantages, but will the label obscure the true importance of the find, asks Henry Gee.


When the remains of a tiny species of human were discovered on the remote Indonesian island of Flores (as reported in Nature last month1,2), it was clear that the story was going to have far-reaching implications.

The one-metre-tall hominids jolted palaeoanthropologists' notions of what it means to be human, and challenged the idea that Homo sapiens has long been the only human species on this planet.

But one aspect of the find wasn't so obvious: what should the creatures be called?

For a formal name, the researchers chose Homo floresiensis, which is plain and neat. The creature belongs to the genus Homo, and it was found on the island of Flores. Simple.

We want someone we can get to know, not a list of bones.

The problem was choosing a nickname for the single specimen, catalogued as LB1.

Individual specimens are not the same things as species. They are more concrete; they can be imbued with a personality that a formal name such as Homo floresiensis doesn't convey. When a discovery leaves the halls of science and enters the public arena, we want someone we can get to know, not a list of bones.

Searching for inspiration

Anthropologists have long recognized that a good nickname can propel news of a discovery much further into the public gaze than any amount of formal nomenclature. AL 288-1, a skeleton of the extinct East African hominid Australopithecus afarensis, would have been invited to few parties without the nickname 'Lucy', after the Beatles song Lucy In The Sky with Diamonds.

Unfortunately, the researchers involved in the presentation of Homo floresiensis could not agree on a nickname, despite our entreaties to think of one. Parents with new babies have had less trouble with names than did the intellectual parents of this latest member of the human family.

The specimen number LB1 seemed rather impersonal (pace the loveable droids C-3PO and R2-D2 of Star Wars fame). Someone in the Nature office (I think it was our publisher, Peter Collins) suggested 'Flo', which would have worn very well, referring both to Flores and the suggestion that LB1 was female.

Everyone felt an instant kinship with LB1, because they could identify it with fictional characters known by millions since childhood.

Many in the field crew had become attached to the name 'hobbit', after Tolkien's pint-sized protagonists in his perennially popular novel, The Lord of the Rings. But the suggestion was anathema to others in the team. At the last minute, a compromise was attempted involving the name 'ebu gogo', the term for the small, hairy forest-dwellers of local legend. But it was hobbit that stuck.

Household name

The name hobbit does seem singularly appropriate for LB1. It was the right height, lived in a hole in the ground in an isolated part of the world, and was even chased by dragons. Really, it couldn't get any better.

And nobody can doubt that this nickname gave Homo floresiensis an instant and compelling identity. Coming hard on the heels of the spectacularly successful films of The Lord of the Rings, everyone felt an instant kinship with LB1. They could identify it with fictional characters that have been known by millions with affection since childhood and that are now household names.

If the researchers had left the find as Homo floresiensis, or promoted the name ebu gogo or even just LB1, the story would probably still have enjoyed wide coverage in those papers and magazines that routinely cover scientific stories (New Scientist called it Ebu). But it might not have penetrated the public consciousness very far, and it would not have been followed up (as it was) with editorials, cartoons and opinion pieces on its general significance.

In 1994, Nature published a paper on Australopithecus (now Ardipithecus) ramidus, a hominid from Ethiopia that was then the earliest known. The story was widely covered, and even penetrated the tabloids. But without a nickname, the journalists had to invent one (Britain's Daily Express duly came up with 'Uncle Ram', but it didn't catch on). Discussion of the new fossil continued in academic quarters, but soon faded from public consciousness.

Similarly, Toumaï (also known as Sahelanthropus tchadensis, found in Chad in 2002), made a big initial splash, but faded from view just as quickly.

LB1 is now inextricably entwined with the name 'hobbit', and all the cultural baggage that comes with the name.

The hobbit from Flores is likely to be more tenacious. In his book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins coined the term 'meme' as a cultural equivalent of a gene, standing for a concept that propagates itself through human cultural (rather than sexual) intercourse. The name 'hobbit' is a successful meme, already well established in popular culture.

Oddly enough, I was invited on to Richard and Judy, a daytime TV talk show popular in Britain, to discuss LB1, and I shared the comfy sofa with Dawkins, who made a plea that the find should not be called a hobbit. It was to no avail; perhaps memes have finally outdone their inventor.

Tolkien geek

I agree with Dawkins, however, that there is a downside to the name. Before I make the case against calling Homo floresiensis a hobbit, I should state my credentials. Not only did I edit the Homo floresiensis papers, I am a paid-up Tolkien geek.

I contribute to a Tolkien fan site, http://www.TheOneRing.net; I travelled to Los Angeles to celebrate the clean sweep of The Return of the King at the Academy Awards ceremony last February. I have even written a book called The Science of Middle-earth. If anyone should applaud the nickname 'hobbit' for Homo floresiensis, it should be me.

But here's my concern. For all the extra publicity, LB1 is now inextricably entwined in the public mind with the 'hobbit', and all the immensity of cultural baggage that comes with the name.

News stories on TV and in newspapers, especially outlets not usually associated with in-depth science reporting, prefaced the discovery with stills from the Lord of the Rings films. These articles were followed up with pieces about our enduring love affair with the 'little people', who populate the imaginations of everyone from Flores to Donegal.

LB1 is one of the most important discoveries in human evolution for decades. But the significance of the find in the tale of natural history, as a thing in its own right, irrespective of its name, is bound to be distorted or obscured.

The problem lies not with now, but the years to come. Will researchers looking at LB1 ever be able to study it without having their thoughts being crowded out by images of Bilbo Baggins?

http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041108/full/041108-4.html
 
<Twiddles hairy toes, and laughs evilly>

"And it serves them jolly well right!"
 
Intersting stuff thrown up from the Flores find:

Hobbit didn't land in Oz

By JOHN ANDERSEN
13nov04

A MEMBER of the team that discovered the remains of Homo floresiensis in a limestone cave in Indonesia said it was unlikely the mini-humans were related to the short-statured negrito Aborigines from the North Queensland rainforest.

Archaeologist Doug Hobbs from Townsville, who helped unearth the skeletal remains of the little people on the island of Flores 600km east of Bali, now known as Hobbits, said yesterday there was no evidence of any connection between the groups.

He said it was unlikely the 1m-tall Flores islanders migrated to Australia many thousands of years ago and evolved to become the rainforest tribes of North Queensland.

Author and James Cook University academic Dr Noel Loos expressed a similar view, saying it was more likely that the small-statured rainforest tribes descended from Aborigines from the plains tribes to the west.

"The pygmies of the Congo are genetically related to people outside (the jungle) and I would tend to believe it would be similar here," he said.

Dr Loos, author of the highly regarded book Invasion and Resistance: Aboriginal and European Relations in North Queensland 1861-1897, said that in the early part of the 20th century there was a theory Australia had been colonised by negritos who had travelled from elsewhere. He said this had since been debunked.

"In any case the Flores man was far too primitive (in comparison to the rainforest tribes)," he said.

Dr Loos said the rainforest tribes resisted European settlement in the 1870s and plundered the white man's crops and possessions.

As recently as the early 1960s workers clearing scrub for the development of the King Ranch company's Tully River Station reported seeing myall rainforest Aborigines running in front of the bulldozers.

They also saw gunyahs made from leaves and grass.

Although there have been whispers of sightings and of a lost tribe still in the Tully rainforest, no concrete evidence has been found.

Dr Loos does not believe there is a lost tribe.

http://townsvillebulletin.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,7034,11372176%5E14787,00.html

Although African pygmies are the best known there are other pygmies around who are most closely related to the other tribes in their area but exisitng in more closed cover rainforest conditions which again shows that the process wasn't a one of or the result of some kind of mutation.
 
Wow. I just read through every post in this thread, and every article linked to from it. :cross eye

As for creationists' viewpoints on this matter, I have a feeling that this will be simply sidelined or not looked at.

Then again, this find is so big, that it'll be talked about for hundreds of years, possibly. Maybe turning a blind eye towards it isn't an option.

I'd like to hear from a creationist directly though, how they feel about it. Without having to be defensive in anyway. Surprisingly, I haven't met many creationists online, maybe they don't exist. :p

PS: Emperor, excellent work, as usual. :)
 
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