Old tools shed light on hobbit origins
Tiny toolmaker or microcephalic? The 'hobbit' debate continues.
They may have been tiny, but the hobbits of the Indonesian island of Flores are still the focus of the biggest controversy in anthropology. The latest twist in the tale suggests that these one-metre-tall hominids, with a brain the size of a grapefruit, were the final members of a tool-making tradition stretching back more than 800,000 years. But amid fresh doubts over the species' evolutionary history, the idea that the curious creatures were deformed modern humans refuses to go away.
Read the story here, and have your say about the origins of these novel fossils.
Comments
It is good to see photographs and descriptions of tools from Mata Menge and Liang Bua. But the argument of the cultural capabilities of their makers is not helped by this discussion by Hopkins. In the second paragraph, Hopkins states that the researchers concluded that Homo floresiensis were the ancestors of Homo erectus. Actually, what they are suggesting is the other way around - that Homo floresiensis is an insular species derived from Homo erectus.
Also, in the photo caption and in the fourth paragraph, Hopkins referes to the stone artifacts from both sites as blades. None of the artifacts pictured appear to be blades, which are specialized flakes end struck from cores, that have parallel edges. Brumm et al.'s paper make no mention of "blades", and discuss cores and flakes made by simple stone on stone percussion. Some of the detached flakes have been retouched, and so become "tools", in lithic classification.
Hopkins's mention of blades is confusing, as this is part of the traditional argument about what it means to be modern in the Palaeolithic. Blades struck from prismatic, conical or cylindrical cores are supposed to be one of hallmarks of Upper Palaeoalithic technological innovation in Europe. While blade technology is found in some Lower and Middle Palaeolithic contexts in Eurasia and Africa, such as in the Acheulo-Yabrudian in the Middle East, and the Kapthurin Formation in Kenya, none of the pieces illustrated in Brunn et al.'s article are blades,and were not described as blades by the authors of the associated article, just by Hopkins.
Posted by: Pamela Willoughby | June 1, 2006 09:21 PM
their are still are a family of these small people not more than 15 miles from your site.
Posted by: reg challis | June 5, 2006 09:21 PM
Flores Man is an interesting find. Most interesting is how poor anthropologists are at determining the important questions about their finds. For example, even the Neanderthal is now thought to be a different species from Modern Man. I find this ridiculous as I see vestiges of Neanderthals everywhere in the human population around us. I am sure they were not a separate species and were absorbed by Modern Man's gene pool. I even believe that changes in growth hormone levels may have caused the subtle differences between Moderns and Neanderthals. I am now going to bet that Flores Man is a small H. erectus. There is evidence that evolution can occur very rapidly, and size is no object. Had these Flores people been the height of the traditional H. erectus, they would have been consider H. erectus. Look at the size difference between pygmies and NBA basketball players. Same species? Yes, of course.
Posted by: Jeff Schnader, MD | June 6, 2006 07:25 PM
What persuades me that H. floriensis is a pygmy hominid is the way ventromedial prefrontal cortex appears to protrude from the brain. This is a highly important structure for social interaction and it seems at least plausible that dwarfization, leading to reduced brain size, could not reduce VMPF proportionately without sacrificing hominid-style sociality.
I also fail to understand Robert Martin's comment that to arrive at a brain this small, H. erectus would have to shrink to around the size of a cat. 400 cc is about the brain size of Australopithecines. They were small but somewhat bigger than a cat!
Posted by: Charles Whitehead | June 7, 2006 03:46 PM
I remember reading a number of years ago of a site on Java containing standard size Homo Erectus skeletons which were only about 25,000 years old, making them contemporaries of modern humans. I am rather surprised to see that none of the authorities debating the truth of the "hobbit" theory even make reference to this.
Certainly, if modern humans such as the present day inhabitants of Flores evolved into the very small people that they are, a homo erectus species could follow the same evolutionary path.
Also, if these "hobbits" co existed with modern humans, the tools that some scientists have suggested their brain size would not allow them to make could have been acquired through trade.
Posted by: Marc Russo | June 9, 2006 10:12 PM