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Hobbit found
« on: 2004-10-27 17:20:27 » |
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'Hobbit' joins human family tree
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3948165.stm
"Hobbit" Discovered: Tiny Human Ancestor Found in Asia
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1027_041027_homo_floresiensis.html
Scientists Find Prehistoric Dwarf Skeleton
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=753&e=1&u=/ap/20041027/ap_on_sc/dwarf_cavewoman
Three-inches-high prehistoric anthropoid found on a remote Indonesian Island. Evidence suggests that Flores Man made stone tools, lit fires and organized group hunts for meat.
<quote from BBC>
Professor Stringer said the find "rewrites our knowledge of human evolution." He added: "To have [this species] present 12,000 years ago is frankly astonishing."
<snip>
The sophistication of stone tools found with the "hobbit" has surprised some scientists given the human's small brain size of 380cc (around the same size as a chimpanzee).
"The whole idea that you need a particular brain size to do anything intelligent is completely blown away by this find," Dr Gee commented.
<quote from Yahoo news>
Still, researchers say the perseverance of Flores Man smashes the conventional wisdom that modern humans began to systematically crowd out other upright-walking species 160,000 years ago and have dominated the planet alone for tens of thousands of years.
And it demonstrates that Africa, the acknowledged cradle of humanity, does not hold all the answers to persistent questions of how — and where — we came to be.
"It is arguably the most significant discovery concerning our own genus in my lifetime," said anthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University, who reviewed the research independently.
<quote from National Geographic's sidebar>
From the time the genus Homo evolved about two million years ago, four or five different human species have emerged. Several of the species lived at the same times.
Modern humans emerged in Africa about 160,000 years ago and were contemporaries of the Neandertals, who became extinct only about 30,000 years ago. Both modern humans and Neandertals are considered Homo sapiens.
Genus Homo, compared with earlier species, is recognized by a range of characteristics, including a larger brain size, a prominent nose, smaller back teeth, and human body proportions, including longer legs. Behavioral characteristics include tool making and a diet with a heavy emphasis on meat, obtained by both scavenging and hunting.
Modern humans, compared with Homo erectus, have a very large brain in a high, rounded braincase, small brow ridges, a flexed cranial base, a retracted face, a chin on the lower jaw, a modern shaped pelvis, and a lightly built skeleton. Behaviorally, modern humans are noted for complex tools, complex societies and wide social networks, art and symbolism, religious systems, and complex language.
Although considerably smaller, the form of Homo floresiensis most closely resembles Homo erectus, a species of humans that populated Asia and Africa from roughly 1.8 to 0.2 million years ago. Homo erectus has been classified as archaic humans with brains ranging from 650 to 1,250 centimeters, and ranging in height from1.55 to 1.78 meters tall.
The smaller body and brain size of Homo floresiensis call into question a range of assumptions that will keep evolutionary biologists busy for years to come.
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rhinoceros
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Re:Hobbit found
« Reply #1 on: 2004-10-27 17:27:02 » |
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Important addition with interesting implications from
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=753&e=1&u=/ap/20041027/ap_on_sc/dwarf_cavewoman
<snip>
To others, the specimen's baffling combination of slight dimensions and coarse features bears almost no meaningful resemblance either to modern humans or to our large, archaic cousins.
They suggest that Flores Man doesn't belong in the genus Homo at all, even if it was a recent contemporary. But they are unsure how to classify the species.
"I don't think anybody can pigeonhole this into the very simple-minded theories of what is human," anthropologist Jeffery Schwartz of the University of Pittsburgh. "There is no biological reason to call it Homo. We have to rethink what it is."
<end snip>
Anthropologists who like to define their domain well might pursue this line. Others might take a wider view of "humanness."
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rhinoceros
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Re:Hobbit found
« Reply #2 on: 2004-10-27 19:20:28 » |
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More coverage in Nature
http://www.nature.com/news/specials/flores/index.html
There are two interesting graphics near the bottom of the page
("Homo evolutionary tree" and "Comparison of homo skull and skeleton size")
http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041025/full/4311029a.html
Little lady of Flores forces rethink of human evolution
Dwarf hominid lived in Indonesia just 18,000 years ago.
http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041025/full/041025-2.html
Flores, God and Cryptozoology
The discovery of Homo floresiensis raises hopes for yeti hunters and, says Henry Gee, poses thorny questions about the uniqueness of Homo sapiens.
http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041025/full/041025-3.html
A stranger from Flores
When a new fossil is found it is often claimed that it will rewrite the anthropological textbooks. But in the case of an astonishing new discovery from Indonesia, this claim is fully justified.
http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041025/full/041025-4.html
The Flores find
Interview: For the archaeologists who unearthed and studied the Flores skeleton, the discovery is a potentially career-defining event. So how did they greet the find, and has it changed their ideas about human evolution? News@nature.com asked Peter Brown, who led the analysis, and Mike Morwood, who directed the dig, for their reflections.
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Re: virus: Hobbit found
« Reply #3 on: 2004-10-28 06:24:57 » |
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Good Morning!
Just talked to my anthropology professor about the finding and she
definitely said there is a) no reason and b) no justification to call it "a
different species" yet. We do not know anything about the context, so first
of all, it might be some peculiar modern human phenotype (pygmys are modern
Homo sapiens after all); second, the evolutionary definition of "species"
requires an ancestor-offspring relationship, which clearly cannot be done
with a single finding.
So, at least on the first sceptical glance, this sounds more like a
give-me-more-research-fundings-hype (or even
we-get-sponsored-by-Peter-Jackson-so-he-can-write-a-sequel-of-Lotr-hype?)...
More later.
Björn
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Othello. Thou dost conspire against thy friend, Iago,
If thou but think'st him wrong'd, and mak'st his ear
A stranger to thy thoughts.
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rhinoceros
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Re:Hobbit found
« Reply #4 on: 2004-10-31 17:33:18 » |
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Richard Dawkins' view of the "Hobbit", adding to the sense of wonder: Could we find living survivors?
One giant leap for our sense of wonder
The Sunday Times
October 31, 2004
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1336836,00.html
(unfortunately, only for paying subscribers)
I have long nursed a wild and hopeful dream. A latter-day Wallace or Livingstone (Redmond O'Hanlon, perhaps) bursts with his machete into a sunlit glade, deep in the forest of some remote island. Incredulous, he is rewarded with the sight of a lifetime: living, breathing, copulating specimens of a second, very different species of human, intermediate between ourselves and chimpanzees.
This is not quite what the journal Nature has just reported from the Indonesian island of Flores, but it comes close. Eighteen thousand years close -- and that is very close indeed by evolutionary standards. Homo floresiensis is clearly not a member of our species, Homo sapiens. But the remarkable LB1 skeleton, with its 3ft stature, bipedal gait and chimpanzee-sized braincase has been found in close association with stone tools and evidence that it cooked its food.
Its discoverers have placed it in our genus, together with the much longer extinct Homo erectus and Homo habilis. Flores woman (for this tiny skeleton was female) died only 18,000 years ago. That is long after our own cultural great leap forward, which means that cave paintings of a Lascaux standard could be scanned for portraits of the lost little people drawn from life.
The Flores little people probably lived for thousands of years after LB1 herself curled up and died in her cave at Liang Bua. It has been suggested that a volcano wiped out her species 12,000 years ago which, think about it, is around the time of our own agricultural revolution and the birth of city states.
However, the volcano theory is not certain. Maybe Homo floresiensis survived the volcano only to be extinguished by competition -- or worse -- from our own species. They could easily have lived on into recent times or even . . . is it possible? Dare we hope that they still lurk in the forests? Why call it hope rather than just disinterested scientific curiosity? Because we are human and to meet another human species would be a soul-building experience. Besides, the live discovery I have imagined would turn our human complacency on its head.
Our endemic racism, which dominated western culture well beyond the end of slavery in the 19th century, was succeeded by a species-ism that accepts, without question, a vast moral gulf between Homo sapiens and every other animal. Nice, friendly people will unquestioningly value the life of a human embryo above that of an adult chimpanzee.
The very phrase "pro-life" always means pro-human life. What would become of such double standards in the face of a living -- perhaps suffering -- Homo floresiensis? Mischievously to invoke the bizarre laws of apartheid South Africa, would the absolutist mind set up courts of inquiry to determine whether Homo floresiensis should "pass for human"? The biological definition of a species states that if two races interbreed they belong in the same species. Members of different species within one genus, for example horses (Equus caballus) and donkeys (Equus asinus) can sometimes interbreed to produce infertile offspring. Could Homo sapiens interbreed with Homo floresiensis? I must admit, I am surprised that the discoverers of the new species have placed it in our genus, Homo. I should have thought the small brain would be enough to move it to a new genus and Floresianthropus minutus rings well. But I have not seen the material. Assuming she is Homo, a live Flores woman might be capable of interbreeding with us. And then where would we be? Even if, as seems most probable, the hybrids were infertile, their existence should shake absolutist morality to its ill-considered foundations. Please, somebody, go to Flores and search.
Although I do not realistically expect my hopes of a live sighting to be realised, there is a genuinely likely possibility which would be the next best thing. LB1 is not a fossil. Her bones are preserved and there is a good prospect that DNA could be extracted and sequenced. Hairs have also been found at the site. It is not clear whether they come from Homo floresiensis or stegodon, a dwarf elephant that lived on the island, but the DNA sequences would soon establish that.
As one of the world's leading specialists in sequencing ancient DNA, my Oxford colleague Alan Cooper has high hopes of being allowed to do this. If it comes to pass, the possibilities are staggering. As Professor Cooper said to me, "Who would have thought we would be contemplating Homo erectus DNA."
For Flores woman really does seem to be an independent, island offshoot of Homo erectus. But why was she so small? And why was her brain so very small even relative to her stature? For reasons that we do not fully understand and that interested Charles Darwin, when animals find themselves isolated on islands they often evolve, rather rapidly, towards either very large or very small.
The dodo of Mauritius (a giant pigeon) is a famous example of island gigantism. The formidable Komodo dragon, a giant lizard, is now confined to the island of Komodo, but it once shared Flores with the little people and probably ate them, as did an even larger related species of lizard, now extinct. The still surviving Flores giant rat, Papagomys armandvillei, is nearly 3ft long. It is easy to imagine the little people hunting this creature, which must have seemed to them as large as a pig does to us.
The other Darwinian trend is opposite: island dwarfism. Pygmy elephants only 3ft high were to be seen in Sicily around the time of Christ. Stegodon lived on Flores at the same time as Homo floresiensis, who almost certainly hunted it.
Homo floresiensis itself fits perfectly the evolutionary trend towards small size on islands. It was not small in the same way as a modern Bambuti pygmy. Modern pygmies have big brains because their small size is achieved in a different way, by a slowing of growth around puberty.
Flores woman was perfectly proportioned, but with a brain only the size of a chimpanzee's. Apparently the species evolved from Homo erectus, who somehow managed to reach Flores, perhaps by rafting. It then evolved smaller and smaller in just the same way, and probably for the same reasons, as ancestral elephants evolved to become stegodons the size of a Shetland pony.
Biologists expect small animals to have small brains anyway and they have developed ways of calculating this. The EQ or Encephalisation Quotient is a measure of how much bigger (or smaller) a brain is than it "ought to be" for its body size, given that it is, say, a mammal.
Calculated in this way, modern humans have an EQ of about 6, meaning that our brain is six times as big as it "ought to be" for a mammal of our size. Homo erectus is believed to have an EQ of about 4, and Australopithecus (our probable ancestors of about 3m years ago) about 2.5 or 3 (similar to a modern chimpanzee). Flores woman comes into the same range as Australopithecus or modern chimpanzees.
So, even allowing for their small body size, Homo floresiensis had small brains for a human (although large for a mammal). Yet they seem to have made sophisticated stone tools and used them to hunt, and then cook, dwarf elephants and giant rats. And their discoverers classify them in the same genus as us.
Did they have language? I suspect not. Some commentators have latched on to a local legend among the villagers of Flores about a little hairy people called the ebu gogo, which literally means "grandmothers who will eat anything". The ebu gogo are said to have conversed in strange "murmuring" tones and they parroted words of the local Indonesian dialect that they heard.
Is this just the local leprechaun, hobgoblin or fairy story, even down to the big ears that are said to have distinguished the ebu gogo? I suspect so (after all, legends of giants and werewolves are just as ubiquitous). But the details of the Flores legends are surprisingly plausible and myths of this kind feed my hopes of finding live specimens.
In any case I want to end with a heartfelt plea. Please, let's not call these wonderful little creatures hobbits. I know that is the nickname chosen by their discoverers, but I would ask them to reconsider.
If ever there was a case where fact really is stranger than fiction, this is it.
I cannot but think that adopting a name from fiction (especially Tolkien's fiction, based on bogus, trumped-up pseudo-myths) will diminish the wonder of this sensational discovery and insult the memory of these tiny cousins whom we came so tantalisingly close -- yearningly close -- to meeting.
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virus: Hobbit found
« Reply #5 on: 2004-11-11 12:58:16 » |
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Back again!
The world hasn't changed as much as I feared-hoped after Bush was
re-elected. And again, the unread or unheeded virus posts pile up in my
mailbox. I shall try to keep up again. But first:
On second glance, my scepticism regarding supposed Homo floresiensis
(revised book titles for the 21st century: J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Homo
floresiensis or There and back again") seems to be have been very sinful.
Out of APATHY (hey, let's invent corresponding "demons" for our cardinal
sins as the Christians did - you know, Wrath=Satan, Pride=Lucifer,
Gluttony=Belphegor etc.), I simply did not look up the Nature article
myself, nor did the person I was listening to.
Still mistaking,
Björn
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If thou but think'st him wrong'd, and mak'st his ear
A stranger to thy thoughts.
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