PZ Myers. 2004 Oct 27. Homo floresiensis, Flores Man. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/homo_floresiensis/>. Accessed 2008 May 13.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Homo floresiensis, Flores Man
A long-lost cousin has been discovered, Homo floresiensis, or Flores Man. It's especially dramatic for a number of reasons. It's relatively recent, with the youngest specimen only 18,000 years old, but it is most closely related to Homo erectus. This species was also minute, only 3 feet tall, and tiny-brained. Here we have a group of small, specialized human relatives, living contemporaneously with Homo sapiens, on isolated islands in Indonesia. It's like discovering that Munchkins were real. You can read more here:
- Nature has special online section on Flores Man, with several articles on its discovery free to the public.
- Carl Zimmer has a summary of the significance of the discovery.
The LB1 cranium and mandible in lateral and three-quarter views, and cranium in frontal, posterior, superior and inferior views. Scalebar, 1cm.
A real pleasure of working in a historical science like biology is that sometimes you can be completely surprised by some unexpected, odd, and entirely accidental discovery. Flores Man is such a wild surprise.
A new human-like species - a dwarfed relative who lived just 18,000 years ago in the company of pygmy elephants and giant lizards - has been discovered in Indonesia.
Skeletal remains show that the hominins, nicknamed 'hobbits' by some of their discoverers, were only one metre tall, had a brain one-third the size of that of modern humans, and lived on an isolated island long after Homo sapiens had migrated through the South Pacific region.
"My jaw dropped to my knees," says Peter Brown, one of the lead authors and a palaeoanthropologist at the University of New England in Armidale, Australia.
The find has excited researchers with its implications—if unexpected branches of humanity are still being found today, and lived so recently, then who knows what else might be out there? The species' diminutive stature indicates that humans are subject to the same evolutionary forces that made other mammals shrink to dwarf size when in genetic isolation and under ecological pressure, such as on an island with limited resources.
Flores Man adds an interesting twist to our hominid phylogenies. As you can see in this diagram, we now have to add this slender thread from the great Homo erectus dispersal, a relic species that survived long after it's closest relatives.
Homo floresiensis in the context of he evolution and dispersal of the genus Homo. a,The new species as part of the Asian dispersals of the descendants of H. ergaster and H. erectus, with an outline of the descent of other Homo species provided for context. b, The evolutionary history of Homois becoming increasingly complex as new species are discovered. Homo floresiensis (left) is believed to be a long-term,isolated descendant ofJavanese H. erectus, but it could be a recent divergence. 1, H. ergaster/African erectus; 2, georgicus; 3, Javanese and Chinese erectus;4, antecessor; 5, cepranensis; 6, heidelbergensis; 7, helmei; 8, neanderthalensis; 9, sapiens; 10, floresiensis. Solid lines show probable evolutionary relationships; dashed lines, possible alternatives.
Cryptozoologists are going to have a ball. Henry Gee already has an article up, mentioning "that other species of recently extinct humans might be discovered on other isolated islands", and even mentioning the possibility of extant hominids.
The accompanying paper on the archaeology also shows the tools found with these little hominids; these weren't simple apes. They were making some wicked weapons and carving tools.
Despite its ability to make tools, though, Flores Man was small-brained, small even for its diminutive size.
The relative brain and body size of H. floresiensis. The dimensions of the skull and skeleton (LB1) described by Brown et al. fall well outside the extremes seen in H.sapiens and the ‘erectines’(a range of hominin species, of which H. erectus is the most familiar). LB1 is closer in size to, but even smaller than, the australopithecines, of which the best known example is Lucy. On various anatomical grounds,however, Brown et al. believe that LB1 represents a dwarfed H.erectus.
Look at that: 1m tall, with a 380 cm3 brain. And shaped stone tools. That is simply amazing.
There's also an article on Flores on the National Geographic site, including the nice reconstruction to the left.
National Geographic provided funding for the research, and are going to be airing a documentary on the subject next year.
They also summarize the little guy's life style:
The Flores people used fire in hearths for cooking and hunted stegodon, a primitive dwarf elephant found on the island. Although small, the stegodon still weighed about 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds), and would pose a significant challenge to a hunter the size of a three-year-old modern human child. Hunting must have required joint communication and planning, the researchers say.
Almost all of the stegodon fossils associated with the human artifacts are of juveniles, suggesting the tiny humans selectively hunted the smallest stegodons. The Flores humans' diets also included fish, frogs, snakes, tortoises, birds, and rodents.
Morwood MJ, Soejono RP, Roberts RG, Sutikna T, Turney CSM, Westaway KE, Rink WJ, Zhao J-x, vandenBergh GD, Rokus Awe Due, Hobbs DR, Moore MW, Bird MI, Fifield LK (2004) Archaeology and age of a new hominin from Flores in eastern Indonesia. Nature 431-435.
Brown P, Sutikna T, Morwood MJ, Soejono RP, Jatmiko, Saptomo EW, Rokus Awe Due (2004) A new small-bodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia. Nature 431:1055-1061.
Posted by PZ Myers on 10/27 at 02:53 PM
Science • EvoDevo • Organisms • 2 Trackbacks • Other weblogs • Permalink
Science • EvoDevo • Organisms • 2 Trackbacks • Other weblogs • Permalink
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18,000 years ago is like yesterday. It is breath-taking to think about this species existing so recently. One can almost imagine that a similar species could have existed into historic or near-historic times.
#: Posted by on 10/27 at 03:12 PM
- can you imagine how we'd have treated these guys if they had survived to say, Medieval Times? I wouldn't be surprised if we'd bred them like dogs into various breeds for slaves and pets; assuming we didn't hunt them to extinction for sport.
- I doubt that we'd be able to breed them: they were relatively intelligent. Like a lot of species, I suspect that they wouldn't cope well with captivity, and trying to raise them would be just another way to drive them into extinction.
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One thing I like about science is that, every now and then, it leaves me flabbergasted.
#: Posted by on 10/27 at 03:55 PM
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A pity Heuvelmans isn't alive to see this - the orang pendek in, well, not in the flesh, but the next best thing. There are reports of a dwarf hominid from the bigger Indonesian islands to the north of Flores, and some of them are quite recent - 20th century. It's a well-documented cryptid. So some of these dwarf hominids may have survived into historical times after all.
#: Posted by on 10/27 at 04:00 PM
- You're ruining my Baxterian fantasy here PZ. It is just fukcing amazing though eh? The creationists on couple of boards are just stumped as to how to spin it.
- Also gobsmacked, flummoxed, agog, thunderstruck, and discombobulated.
- Pretty darn nifty, really. I kinda wonder what the creationists will make of it -- probably just another round of denials, though. There's no convincing some people.
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sometimes you can be completely surprised by some unexpected, odd, and entirely accidental discovery. Flores Man is such a wild surprise.
Aha! You see? Darwinists were taken aback by this discovery! Therefore Evilooshun is false. It's false, I tell you!!! Wibble wibble, gibber, snark, wibble....#: Posted by on 10/27 at 04:07 PM - surely that can get some base pair sequences out of something this young?
- Have you read the article? The bones weren't even fossilized, they were so recent. Unfortunately, they were also found in a warm, damp tropical jungle -- they had the consistency of mashed potatoes. I suspect there's not going to be any DNA at all that's still intact.
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At least we know what happened to Smeagol. So did they find the One Ring too?
#: Posted by on 10/27 at 04:13 PM
- Yeah I read it...I'm still reeling from it though...this is bigger than Al-288.
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Nature should know better than to say things like this:
"The discovery that Homo floresiensis survived until so very recently, in geological terms, makes it more likely that stories of other mythical, human-like creatures such as yetis are founded on grains of truth."
Pretty spectacular stuff, though.#: Posted by on 10/27 at 04:31 PM -
I don't see the big deal. So, we found some ancient pea-brained midgets -- BFD. What can concrete knowledge can we learn from this that has any practical application?
#: Posted by on 10/27 at 04:34 PM
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PZ, just a word of thanks for a phenomenal post. I was blown away when I read about it on Yahoo! News and was hoping you'd have the bandwidth to address it ... stuff like this is why blogging was invented.
#: Posted by Jay Manifold on 10/27 at 04:36 PM
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It's a big deal to those of who care about science Bob, especially human evo. It was thought that H erectus evolved from H ergaster when the latter radiated into asia. There were some signs that descendants of H erectus survived until anatomically modern homo sapiens came into that region ~ 50,000 although it was far from clear what happened. It's also known that neanders were contemporary with modern Hsaps in europe. This find has two interesting insights into human evo:
1. H flor would be the most recent contempories with modern humans. Puch much further past the most recent specimen and you're knocking on the door of recorded history.
2. They appear to have become dwarves which indicate that human evolution is subject to the same kind of plasticity we see in dinos, mammoths, etc which become island bound.
Mostly it's just cool becuase learning new, and in this case very unexpected, almost sci-fi type things, is what humans delight in doing; for we've been carefully crafted by natural selection to do so. -
That's right Bob, just keep telling yourself, "It's no big deal.....It's nothing important.....Stay the course.....This can be ignored".
#: Posted by on 10/27 at 04:48 PM
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Sw33t!
#: Posted by on 10/27 at 04:49 PM
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Well, Yes, I presume that you science-geeks are going hog-wild over these ancient pea-brained midgets, but, explain to me what we, the unwashed masses, learn from this.
Maybe it supports the theory of evolution, maybe it doesn't, but Who cares?#: Posted by on 10/27 at 04:57 PM -
Bob -
The same sadness that religeous people when athiests (like me) fail to see the beauty of their beliefs - That's what I feel when I read your post.
This is an amazing, beautiful thing, in the way that a tree is an amazing, beautful thing, or a star is an amazing, beautiful thing. Who gives two shits if it leads to a new geegaw; we've got geegaws a'plenty. Spectacular new insites into the nature of humanity are few and far between.#: Posted by on 10/27 at 05:00 PM -
You really don't need to know anything about Bob beyond what's in that last post, do you?
What a dull, lifeless existence it must be.#: Posted by on 10/27 at 05:03 PM -
Simply put Bob, this is part of the history of mankind. The more we know and understand it, the better.
I wonder if this anti-knowldege, "who cares" attitude is as prevelant in other countries?#: Posted by on 10/27 at 05:04 PM -
Bob you may be operating under a false pretense. It's not real important to us if you're excited about it or not. Capeieche? If you're not, no problem. No one is claiming you should be. But you asked why we were and some of us have replied.
This thing could end up being a hoax. What you learn in science is to be skeptical, to look for supporting evidence, to let people take time to examine the facts, to allow experts to convene and weigh the evidence ... Pardon the shot, but if you support Iraq and GWB, all these things are foriegn to you, so it's not surprising to me that you don't understand how fun this new find is for us. - Do these papers have any evidence for the species living side by side with Homo Sapiens?
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Maybe, if you guys explained what's so beautiful about it, I'd be more interested. But, Gollygee Willikers, you found the bones of dead, short people, with small brains, who probably make the West Texan truck drivers of today look like effin' Nobel laureates. I just don't get all the fuss.
And, Darksyde, what on earth this has to do with Iraq war or GWB I have no idea.
But, by all means, enjoy - I ain't one to rain on people's parade.#: Posted by on 10/27 at 05:20 PM -
Bob, you can read the Carl Zimmer article on the significance of the find, located near the top of this article. But honestly, I find myself wondering you you think it's important that anyone else should explain that to you. It's exciting to me. What do I care what gets you interested?
#: Posted by on 10/27 at 05:24 PM
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Prashant: the only evidence is timing. The chronology of floresiensis's residence on the island overlaps with that of H. sapiens, but they have no evidence of direct interaction.
And everyone, could we please shun the pea-brained troll? -
Do we know everything? Not by half, gov, and I think that's neat.
Exhibit A: The Wollemi Pine (1994)
http://www.wollemipine.com/
(Trees thought to have become extinct about two million years ago, discovered growing outside of Sydney, Australia.)
Exhibit B: The Saola/Vu Quang Ox (1992)
http://www.ultimateungulate.com/Artiodactyla/Pseudoryx_nghetinhensis.html
(How often is it that science finds a new goat-sized land mammal species, anyway?)
I think stuff like this is amazingly cool. Live hobbit-sized humans would be cooler, but I can work with interesting skulls and contemporaneous stone tools.
Bob Flynn, if science bores you, you can go watch the Red Sox win the World Series. If you're not into baseball, there's also a lunar eclipse this evening that should be visible in N & S America. Failing that, there's always trolling message boards... -
I'm just upset that someone beat me to registering "www.ultimateungulate.com". I wonder if ultimateungulate.net is still available...
#: Posted by on 10/27 at 05:34 PM
- OK ok...I'm oficially turning my back on Bob on this thread with my arms crossed in classical Klingon exile mode. Mursctooouk!
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And everyone, could we please shun the pea-brained troll?
LOL! I think some of you uber-dorks would be better off, mentally, if you shunned my pea-brained, midget ancestors, too
#: Posted by on 10/27 at 05:55 PM -
It would be nice to have a firefox extension which would block the comments of previously-identified trolls. If all it did was filter out Charlie Wagner that would be worth the installation. Too bad I'm not a programmer.
I sat here thinking, why on earth would the kind of person who downplays the discovery of Homo floresiensis be at Pharyngula in the first place? It's a bit like if i went to a NASCAR site and said "Who cares about driving fast in circles?" And that's the obvious answer. He's just a creationist looking for an argument. So who cares what he says.#: Posted by on 10/27 at 05:55 PM -
"I doubt that we’d be able to breed them: they were relatively intelligent."
We need to remember how "other" the African slaves were as viewed by their "owners". We see their humanity, and the appalling cruelty of slavery, but the contemporary perspective was these were not human beings.
Bred in captivity, indeed.
What's exciting to me about the Flores people is how much further the definition must expand, of what it is to be human, like us, of us, what we are.
My hope is that soon that definition will lose all but its most pragmatic boundaries; that what we share with all life is exactly that - life. There is no real "other".#: Posted by on 10/27 at 06:08 PM -
Maybe, if you guys explained what’s so beautiful about it, I’d be more interested. But, Gollygee Willikers, you found the bones of dead, short people, with small brains, who probably make the West Texan truck drivers of today look like effin’ Nobel laureates. I just don’t get all the fuss.
I'm willing to bet that if USA Today featured a device that scratched your ass for you while you were simultaneously drinking beer and channel-surfing, you'd be ecstatic.
People get excited about different things. Many people, not just academics, get excited about things that increase human knowledge. Too bad for you if you don't. Time to start saving up for the AssScratch'O'Matic.
P.S. You're not, by any chance, a West Texan truck driver?#: Posted by on 10/27 at 06:13 PM -
“I doubt that we’d be able to breed them: they were relatively intelligent.”
Yeah...Look, you let me have one breeding pair, give me a supply of cattle prods, snickers bars, and maybe some methadone to get them nice and hooked so they won't run, and I'll give you a race of hobbits that are bred for everything from personal valets, to miniature house keepers good for getting in those hard to clean places, to professional midget gladiators in ten generations! -
I find discoveries like this to be both exciting and more than a little depressing. I mean, 18,000 years is nothing. They almost survived until today, but they're extinct and we'll never get to meet them.
I had the same feeling when I learned that dwarfed woolly mammoths survived on Wrangel Island at least until 4000 years ago. Crap! I'm a measly 3730 years too late to see a mammoth!#: Posted by on 10/27 at 06:48 PM -
It would be nice to have a firefox extension which would block the comments of previously-identified trolls.
You need a browser plugin for that? My eyeballs just do it automatically now. -
They almost survived until today - Nick
I wonder if any sci-fi series has touched on a present day scenario with multiple homonid species (from our own planet) living side by side. Hmm... - I'm telling you all sick satire aside, they're almost lucky they did not survive to present day given the proclivity our species has to subjogate our own kin to hopeless servitude. There would be gigantic versions of these guys out in a stall behind our all our houses with saddles on their backs.
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I wonder if any sci-fi series has touched on a present day scenario with multiple homonid species (from our own planet) living side by side.
Harry Turtledove wrote a series of short stories wherein North America was populated by Homo erectus when Columbus landed in 1492. The story that I read was an alternate version of Samuel Pepys diary that describes the enslavement of the H. erectus in 17th century London#: Posted by on 10/27 at 07:05 PM - There would be an ethical dilemma—if we did find an extant species in the genus Homo, would we have the will or the ability to protect them and set aside adequate habitat for them? If chimpanzees are any example…no.
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if we did find an extant species in the genus Homo, would we have the will or the ability to protect them and set aside adequate habitat for them? {/quote]
Depends how good they taste.....#: Posted by on 10/27 at 07:42 PM -
We have our first solid point by poi...buahahahahah! Ok seriously...we have our first creationist rebuttal courtesy of AOL and Jam1084, and esteemed follow of Harun Yayha
"What's funny is that it is easy to see through your attempt to play down this discovery which contradicts evolution totally. I was the FIRST to bring up this important discovery and to highlight how it disproves yet another version of the now debunked evolutionary tree/ladder!
Facts.
1. They lived 18,000 years ago about which totally turns evolution upside down yet again. ( Bring you the latest from harun yahya very soon ) Thats even more recent than Erectus, the supposed ancestor of magnon!
2. They are hobbit like which seems to conform to people described in various scriptures. It looks like there is a Middle Earth after all!
3. They are humans.
4. Dark's attempt to jump onto the story only shows his desperate confusion as to why more and more fossil discoveries turn evolution upside down. -
Bob says: "who probably make the West Texan truck drivers of today look like effin’ Nobel laureates."
Pal, I work with, and am friends with, an eighth-grade dropout West Texas truck driver named Delbert. Your posts here certainly make him look like a Nobel laureate - he's even a Bush supporter, too, but at least he has specks of curiosity and wonder at the world around him.
You arrogant..... never mind.#: Posted by on 10/27 at 08:06 PM -
You have to admire any people who had to deal with rats almost as big as they were.
#: Posted by on 10/27 at 09:31 PM
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Finback,
That's what I feel like everytime I deal with pea-brained unter-mensch like "bob." The right-wing rats of today make me tremble from their largess.
Left-Out#: Posted by on 10/27 at 11:20 PM -
Yeah, it totally turns evolution upside because we believe there's like this...um...ladder, and shit just climbs up it. So, if anything steps down the ladder, we know that Jesus Christ Almighty must have come down and constructed it personally from sand and fecal material. And then, he made me and now he's probably making a web page for when he floats out of the sky, in celebration of Bush's reelection.
Creationists are a bunch of Damn retards.#: Posted by on 10/27 at 11:51 PM -
To put it nicely, that is...
#: Posted by on 10/28 at 12:09 AM
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I have a question and a comment.
The question: I didn't read any of the articles on this yet, so I'm much less informed than any of the rest of you. The discovery sounds intriguing, but I'm thinking of a couple of parallels, and I'm not sure I can be excited about it just yet, based on what I've heard so far.
One parallel that comes immediately to mind is dog breeding. Considering that we have the huge range of dog body sizes and proportions after only a few thousand years of deliberate breeding, is it remotely possible that these little guys were actually humans? I mean, at least as much as chihuahuas are still dogs?
If you’d never seen a dog, and you came across the fossilized skull of a Great Dane and the fossilized skull of a chihuahua in the same rock stratum, would you classify them as different species? Possibly even place them each in a different genus?
Considering that we have Zulus and Pygmies on the same continent in the present time, I’m moved to wonder.
I’m interested in the thoughts of some of the rest of you.
The comment is: One of the religion chat rooms I frequent is sometimes occupied by an extraordinarily provocative little freak, X, who could make Mother Theresa scream four letter words. It occasionally happens that the entire chat room will suddenly move from the usual interesting mix of cross-talk to just Chat Room vs. X. 35 people will drop whatever they were talking about and begin responding only to him and the ridiculous things he says.
Even if you ignore him, so that he vanishes off YOUR screen, he still completely dominates the room by being the sole focus of all the other chatters. I finally learned to just leave and go do other things on the days when he was being his worst self.
Bob Flynn is a sometimes-amusing troll. And it occurs to me that, in a way, he brings out the best thought in some of you as you respond to him and his possibly-feigned perversity.
However, some part of me continues to believe there is something less-than-healthy in people who can never say anything positive or thoughtful, and live only to constantly needle others. Thinking of the example of X, it seems to me that some of these people get progressively sicker as they get greater and greater amounts of this type of reverse reinforcement.
Mainly, though, I think the day Pharyngula’s response pages become the Bob Flynn and His Dozen Angry Sidekicks Show, they will be a lot less interesting — at least to ME. -
Re: Prehumans side by side with us in the world.
There's a trilogy of SF novels named "Hominids," "Hybrids" and "Humans" (not sure I have them in the right order; the author might be Robert Sawyer) that's about a suddenly-established connecting link between our world and a parallel one where Neanderthals survived instead of us ... and went on to become as technologically-advanced as we humans.
There are some neat ideas in it about the shape of their culture, moral code, etc., based on their different physical attributes, brains, senses, dietary preferences and breeding mandates.
The necessities of their breeding cycle, for instance, demand not only gay partnering but simultaneous heterosexual marriage as well. They're highly civilized city-dwellers, but also hunter-gatherers who hunt woolly mammoths for meat, and have wolves as housepets. It sounds weird, but the author makes it all work.
There are also <sly grin> some racy scenes which delve into the love affair between a female human biologist and the cough*well-endowed*cough Neanderthal physicist who accidentally established the link.
Heh. They're all atheists, by the way. They think religion looks like mild mental illness. -
Well, as Stephen Jay Gould repeated to the point of tedium, "human equality is a contingent fact of history".
Seriously though, how confident can we be that this isn't a hoax?#: Posted by on 10/28 at 02:42 AM -
On the hoax question; while this appears legit, there is no way to know yet. It could be a clever hoax. But there's plenty of time to figure that out and no one is making even a 'provisional' final judgment on authenticity at this time. Paleoanthorpologists are as skeptical as any other group of scientists if not more so considering Piltdown, and I suspect that the first order of business on the mind's of reviewers will be to establish that.
Hank, On the morphology side and with the understanding that I have no line drawing nor am I a pro, and I'm just looking at the pic of the skull PZ provided, the photos suggest to me that there is a suite of traits evident which are far more diagnostic of H erectus/ergaster.
Cranial cap to body size ratio, the supra-orbital ridges, what looks like an occipital torri, the lack of a chin (and I assume a simian cleft), the swept back 'no forehead' profile, and
less clear from that pic but still suggestive are the flared zygomatic arches (cheekbones) and the prognathous face-that is the face is a bit more 'tucked under' than we see in classic erectus but still juts out more than we see modern humans. The shape of the browridges are suggestive of a certain 'kind' of erectus found in China in that they're less a single supraorbital bar and more distinct above each orbit giving a doubled arched look.
Each of those traits is highly indicative of erectus/ergaster and they're all well outside of the range of variance for modern humans.
You wouldn't expect to see that suite of traits concordant with erectus in a modern human offshoot that was 'scaled down' by evolution just by coincidence but you might certainly expect to see it in a scaled down version of an erectus. IOW, again just looking at that pic, there appears to be substantially less morphological 'distance' between an erectus/ergaster and the hobbit skull than from a modern human to the hobbit skull. From what I can gather of the little written about the post crania this concordance with erectus/ergaster is present to some degree there as well.
Here is a few pictures of erectus skulls and an anatomically modern human skull you can compare to the hobbit crania.
Having said that, the plasticity here-the amount by which it varies from the range of full sized hominids-is truly remarkable even if it were to turn out to be a highly derived modern h sap and enough to support it being a new species.
The comparison to a great Dane versus say a dachshund is apt; if the only dogs we ever knew of were all fossils of large wolfish sized canids with only one known extant member being a great Dane, and we suddenly found an adult skull of a dog the size of a dachshund, we'd be just as blown away by the plasticity there as well. -
I have been thinking about Flores Man and it makes me sad. It's sad that he's gone, and it's sad to think that he almost certainly could not have survived much longer in any event. We present-day humans have a pretty solid history of destroying species that don't provide any immediate benefit to us. We do it casually, almost without thinking about it, like swatting a fly. And then, when some of the more responsible among us do think about it and try to save some threatened species, some of the rest of us actively try to destroy them. They got in the way of a fishing boat, or they kept us from building a dam. Or we just get a thrill from killing them.
#: Posted by on 10/28 at 07:20 AM
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At least one professor I've read feels there is evidence the hobbit is a derived australopithicene rather than erectus. His opinion is mostly built around the cranial cap to body size ratio. It suonds less plausible on the surface, but to go from erectus to hobbit, you'd need to lose some significant brain capacity. The guys knows a hell of a lot more than I do, but seems to me that over perhaps 500,000 to 1,000,000 there would plnety of time to shed some brainage. Question would then, what was lost and how was the remainder arranged?
What might a small island dwelling erectus be able to jettison that his larger maninland dwelling cousins would need?
No endocasts out yet I take it?#: Posted by on 10/28 at 10:13 AM -
Hank and Nick,
Thanks for the SF pointers. The stories sound interesting... -
I have no line drawing nor am I a pro, and I’m just looking at the pic of the skull PZ provided, the photos suggest to me that there is a suite of traits evident which are far more diagnostic of H erectus/ergaster...
Are you sure you're not a pro? That was a very detailed assessment you gave there. I'd agree. It seems to be a miniature H. erectus skull.#: Posted by on 10/28 at 10:27 AM - One could argue that erectus is a derived australopithecine, you know.
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Are you sure you’re not a pro?
I'm sure. I know maybe just enough to be completely wrong.
One could argue that erectus is a derived australopithecine, you know.
Right. For that matter so are we, which illustrates that there's been plenty of time for substantial morphological change from the basal hominid whatever species it might be in both cases.
If I'm reading the Hawks comments right, he seems to be comparing rhe hobbit crania with the Java man type erectus and noting a few anamolies. His take seems to be that the hobbit could just as easily be a derived aussie as a derived Java erectus and that the brain cap leads him to suspect the latter. Looking at the Zhoukidan erectus though it seems to me superficially to be more concordant with that clade than with java and China's a hell of a lot closer than Africa.#: Posted by on 10/28 at 10:53 AM -
Sorry that was garbled. Hawks is suggesting a straight derivation from an aussie as an ancestor over a Java erectus as an ancestor.
#: Posted by on 10/28 at 11:06 AM
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<alternate reality>
Sorry folks, but this new discovery is just further support for creationism. I mean, how could those soggy bones possibly last for 18,000 years? It's obvious that they could only last for a much shorter time. What's more, any other hominid is either fully human or fully ape. There are no transitional forms.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2004/1028dwarf.asp
</alternate reality>
More seriously, how would a soggy, unfossilized bone last for thousands of years without being eaten or something?#: Posted by on 10/28 at 11:12 AM -
Wow. That guy wrote that the discovery attacks evolution, supports creationism, and provides evidence for YEC. These disphits would be funny, if I didn't personally know people who consider AiG a reliable scientific source.
#: Posted by on 10/28 at 11:16 AM
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I could sort of sympathize with ID as a religious (NOT SCIENCE)belief, albeit a goofy one showing a lack of faith, but any organization that still thinks the earth is only a few thousand years old is just plain nuts. Anyone who trusts AiG to be honest is beyond any hope, I think. They're just liars, as anyone who's bothered to look up one of their facts or quotes can tell you.
#: Posted by on 10/28 at 11:39 AM
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Yes indeed, about 30 years ago there was a movie about the discovery of a "less advanced" species, that were put into involuntary servitude (I think it was title "Trog" or something linke that). But the writing was weak and it did not do a very good job tackling the ethical questions.
Now, I wonder if the Flores Folks had lice? -
Mainly, though, I think the day Pharyngula’s response pages become the Bob Flynn and His Dozen Angry Sidekicks Show, they will be a lot less interesting ....
Sounds allright to me, Foxman -- but I was thinking Bob Flynn and His Dozen Pea-Brained, Midgets from the Paleozoic Age
If this turns out to be a fraud, y'all gonna look real, real, I mean, real dumb
But, again, I have no idea and con't care, and you boys don't wanna explain why this matters to normal people, so we're at an impasse.#: Posted by on 10/28 at 01:19 PM -
Knowing about Flores Man will not put gas in your tank, clear your complexion, pay your utility bill or find you a date. All it does is expand your intellectual horizons.
#: Posted by on 10/28 at 02:03 PM
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He just doesn't appreciate knowledge for knowledge's sake. I bet he's never even read a textbook unless it was needed for a class.
#: Posted by on 10/28 at 02:18 PM
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You guys know the one thing a troll can't stand? the one thing that drives them absolutely bonkers? It's to be ignored..
#: Posted by on 10/28 at 02:34 PM
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The AiG article is most interesting - it hardly goes after us Atheistic Pinko Babykiller Evilutionists at all, and saves up its vitriol for theistic folks that don't quite agree with The Truth(TM) as revealed to true KJV readers. Funny folks over there...
#: Posted by on 10/28 at 04:48 PM
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Teep - Please. The ability/willingness to marvel at Homo floresiensis is not mutually exclusive from the ability/willingness to marvel at the greatest comeback in sport history. Especially when it involves the baseball team one has followed from the crib, thru high school, college, grad school, to meaningless work in adult life. If Flores Man were alive today, I am certain he would have gladly sold his wicked looking tool A (see PZ provided chart above) to get a World Series ticket.
#: Posted by on 10/28 at 05:02 PM
- Although, given their location, they might be much more interested in the cricket world cup matches.
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About what Andy said (#61), how did the bones survive this long? It seems a valid point, no matter from what viewpoint the question comes. Dismissing a question because of the ideologies of the author is poor science.
On the other side of the argument, Carl Wieland's article at AiG, which Andy links to, suggests that Flores was a human like the rest of us. The human equivalent of the chihuahua, if you like. I don't see how the 5,000 years that Wieland (as a YEC) gives as the isolation time is anywhere near enough to give rise to the extent of change that is seen in this specimen compared to Hsap.#: Posted by on 10/28 at 05:43 PM - According to the article on the archaeology of the Lin Bua site, the skeleton was imbedded in a dark-brown silty clay, and the condition indicates that it was covered in fine sediment while still fleshed. While the bones were soft and fragile, they were also suspended in a soft matrix.
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I don’t see how the 5,000 years that Wieland (as a YEC) gives as the isolation time is anywhere near enough to give rise to the extent of change that is seen in this specimen compared to Hsap.
One of the Nature articles mentions the time it took the elephants to go from mammoth to morsel; I think it was on the order of 4-5,000 years. - I read another article that they believed to found hair from these creatures.. That will be interesting to get back info from dna samples of this all. Its overwhelmingly interesting.
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I knew Danny DeVito was related to erectus
#: Posted by on 10/28 at 10:20 PM
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I think this discovery is fantastic. I think the discovery of trolls is even better. I don't understand why bob is so against this. I am religious and know evolution to be a fact. Poor Bob. He is probably blogging somebody's page about gravity disputing that.
#: Posted by on 10/28 at 11:37 PM
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Whenever I ponder the possibility of trading my little Southern California condo for a mansion in a red state, all I have to do is read one of Bob Flynn's posts to appreciate the terrible price I'd have to pay for that mansion.
And Mr. Flynn --- You were able demonstrate your abject, willful ignorance of anything that postdates the enlightenment with your first post in this thread. So there's really no need for you for you to keep posting here.#: Posted by on 10/29 at 01:09 AM -
Clearly our preconceptions about brain size and intelligence, however reasonably achieved by the evidence we had, must now be discarded.
I picked up eagerly the phrase in the New Scientist Editorial: “.. local legend about Ebu Go GO, a small, waddling creature with a big appetite.” Perhaps the key to small but creative brain lies in that phrase. My hypothesis is based on the idea that large brains need lots of energy. But it must now be changed to thinking, creative brains need lots of energy.
Their diet is very different from the chimps, though they are larger. The feature article lists: juvenile dwarf stegodons, komodo dragons, fish, frogs, snakes, tortoises, birds other mammals including bats and rodents.#: Posted by on 10/29 at 04:11 AM -
I wonder how the brain physiology will turn out. A good question, assuming hobbits do turn out to be descendants of erectines, would be how much brain could you lose in their environment? What might an island dwelling erectus be able to do without brain wise that his larger brained cousins would retain? Did the tool making ability become much more hard wired, like a bowery bird?
#: Posted by on 10/29 at 06:45 AM
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We should've listened to the birds. Talking parrots, clever crows and all those avian-smarts packed into teeny, tiny skulls. Homo floresiensis shows us that mammals can do it too.
BTW the skull reminds me so much of ER1813. -
"this is really scary because it is a sign that satan is putting pretend fossils on the earth again -- just like he did in the nineteenth century when people stopped believing in the flood. i do though think it means that bush is going to win the election because he is the one who is supposed to be here when jesus comes back because he can bomb the bad people and make way for the temple to be rebuilt."
Just thought I'd share that with you folks. Spotted it on a Christian site.#: Posted by on 10/29 at 11:29 AM -
I wonder how the brain physiology will turn out. A good question, assuming hobbits do turn out to be descendants of erectines, would be how much brain could you lose in their environment? What might an island dwelling erectus be able to do without brain wise that his larger brained cousins would retain? Did the tool making ability become much more hard wired, like a bowery bird?
Part of a lecture I attended today was on Liang Bua. Interestingly for the australopith hypothesis, LB1 has maxillary pillars (which are a feature of the nasal region of the skull): something australopiths have but that Homo does not.
Obviously we brought up the brain size issue. One possibility is that LB1 is actually rather tall for the population. Another point that was raised is that these skeletons are associated with hafted tools, previously only ever associated with moderns. Now obviously a date of 18,000 years ago allows for a long overlap with moderns. So there's a lot of caution about what we can infer from all of this.#: Posted by on 10/29 at 11:32 AM -
LB1 has maxillary pillars (which are a feature of the nasal region of the skull): something australopiths have but that Homo does not.
Dayum, that is very suggestive. Aussies would have had to been spread out over Asia one would think for a pop to end up on Flores.#: Posted by on 10/29 at 11:39 AM -
Dayum, that is very suggestive. Aussies would have had to been spread out over Asia one would think for a pop to end up on Flores.
Yep, concensus is that <i>H. floresiensis<i> is derived from ancestral erectus population.#: Posted by on 10/29 at 11:52 AM -
Not to be a labler but the classical categories are all I have to work with tiger. My understanding, as poor as it is, is that asian/erectus were thought to evolve from ergasters that moved in into asia. If so, would LB1 be part of that linneage? Or would they perhaps be part of an earlier and at this time unknown migration to Asia from Africa of a rudolfensis/afarensis kind of critter or what?
#: Posted by on 10/29 at 12:05 PM
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My understanding, as poor as it is, is that asian/erectus were thought to evolve from ergasters that moved in into asia. If so, would LB1 be part of that linneage?
That's pretty much it, although there is a bit of an "or what" in that perhaps H. floresiensis may be related to a dispersal of a diminutive Homo species. There's apparently some small remains that have come out of the Dmanisi excavation in Georgia, and some very small remains associated with tool deposits in Olorgasailie in Africa (not sure exactly where that is). (Genus Homo more of a bush than a steady "progression", there).
Again, although these are some alternative hypotheses, AFAIK: concensus is that this is most closely related to Asian H. erectus and the close association with dwarfed island species makes similar ecological adaption a compelling argument.#: Posted by on 10/29 at 12:30 PM -
The Flores find shows that our evolution was not an unidirectional ascent from animal to man, as seen for example in Kubrick's film "2001", but a rather confused affair. From now on, no one can be certain that a more evolved Homo will be more sapiens ...
#: Posted by on 10/30 at 12:49 AM
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I am an "oridinary person", just a 6th grade math teacher with an MA in "Economics!", but I find this all extrememly fascinating! I have spent hours this morning following links till I found your discussion. Curiosity and interest can abound in all of us.
#: Posted by on 10/30 at 11:39 AM
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New Scientist 30th October 2004, p 43 explains (not in relation to H. Floresiensis) that small size is way of keeping cool in high humidity. Reduced body mass reduces heat production. That’s why pygmies are small. In the tropical rainforest there’s no wind to blow cool by sweating.
#: Posted by on 10/31 at 05:55 AM
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That birdbrained Flores woman refutes the idea of progress in human evolution, that intelligence has selective value.
John Hawk writes "LB1 must have undergone selection in favor of smaller brains." Obvious. "It is hard to imagine this kind of selection significantly affecting a primate." Not so obvious. Most of our brain activity takes place to impress people around. That feature loses its usefulness in a very small and isolated island. LB1 had to adapt to a limited social circle with no subject for conversation.#: Posted by on 10/31 at 10:35 AM -
Userfriendly has another artist's impression.
#: Posted by on 10/31 at 09:20 PM
- There's not necessarily "progress" in evolution, it's not linear! There are evolutionary dead ends. H.sapiens could actually be another.
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No los llamen prehumanos. Ellos son tan humanos como H. sapiens, solamente son otro genero H. floresiensis, posiblemente más inteligentes de lo que su pequeño serebro pueda hacer creer, así como algunos cuervos, loros, papagayos y demuestran un alto nivel de inteligencia. H. floresiensis probablemente fue sometido a presiones evolutivas que intensificaron la eficiencia de su cerebro que quizás sería más eficiciente por unidad de peso que el de H. sapiens, de igual forma que el de H. neandertalis posiblemente fuera más ineficiente aunque fuese más grande que el de H. sapiens.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 07:20 PM
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Haroldo, Por que el cerebro del floresiensis seria mas eficiente en terminos de inteligencia/peso que el del neanderthalis? Cual es la relacion tipica en el genero Homo?
#: Posted by on 11/03 at 12:14 AM
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Regarding the Ebu Gogo, it seems as if a number of folks are adopting the "Oh, how cute— hobbits" thing a little too whole heartedly. I mean, if your a herring, a frigging harp seal is as terrifying a monster as your likely to see. These guys used serious edged weapons on big game. Who's to say they wouldn't treat even smaller versions of them/our selves as Chicken McFlores? Why do we accord them automatic noble-savage status? What if they were nasty little bastards without the morality of your garden-variety serial killer? Maybe H. magnon did them in when possible because they were a pain in the food cache?
If they were around today, would the locals use rimfire or centerfire?
Early writings regarding the various pygmy populations strewn across the globe have one thing in common: ferocity (and probably with good reason). Is it remotely possible that modern (this question is both rhetorical/philosophical and open— I don't know enough about what makes a modern pygmies different in the DNA sense) pygmies are a cross? They exist in the same conditions and part of the globe, Malaya, Nicobar and the P.I.. Maybe Ebu Gogos bred in that ferocity as well as size?
As for time-to-morph, many Central American Indians (Olmecs?) already show signs of changing into the Uniform Tropical Human— full lips, darker skin, tightly curled hair, wide nose— after 12,000 years or less. Ditto the Dravidians, longer for Australasians/Melanesians. Speaking of which, has Jarod Diamond (Guns, Germs and Steel) written anything on this?
OK, so if they do turn up, don't have speech and can be bred, can we have a season?
#: Posted by on 11/05 at 04:43 PM -
I certainly don't give them noble-savage status. They were probably smart, vicious, ruthless...just like us.
And no, they aren't a cross. Pygmies are fully human, members of the species Homo sapiens. They are us. H. floresiensis has distinct skeletal morphology; they are not us. -
Is it remotely possible that modern (this question is both rhetorical/philosophical and open— I don’t know enough about what makes a modern pygmies different in the DNA sense) pygmies are a cross?
I suppose anything is possible. But it's unlikely that modern humans commingled genetic material with floresienis. We have a fair handle on recent human lineage's across the globe because of painstaking analysis of genetic material. We're all 100% h. sapien. Eskimos, African bushmen, and Australian aborigines, are genetically more closely related to one another than two random chimpanzees from neighboring troops are related to each other. Modern humans seem to have grown from a relatively small population in east Africa; perhaps 5,000 to 20,000 individual max. African bushmen, one group of what folks think of when they think of pygmies, are the oldest extant human population on earth.
We do share a geologially recent common ancestors with LB1 so we definitely share genetic material with them. How much we can't be certain of until, and if, we get some intact sequences with which ti compare and contrast. Where exactly that ancestor is in the pyhlogeny is something some of us have been speculating on. But it's likely no more recent than homo ergaster, roughly 1,000,000 years ago.
Indigenous populations are sometimes recorded as being ferocious in there first contracts with civilization. It's certainly possible they were at times. Paleo-Indian populations for example would have had their crazy and violent members just as modern populations do. But I wouldn't be surprised if one of the reasons indigenous populations were perceived as 'ferocious' by westerners was because westerners had a tendency to consider them animals and slaughter/enslave them, take their land, etc., not to mention it's easier to justify genocide when you advertise you adversary as a 'ferocious bloodthirsty savage'. -
Thanks to you who answered part of my questions, and for clarifying some things. I do disagree with the "lack of differences" idea. The "we're all pink underneath" pablum ignores very strong— and wonderful— differences between human forms. The Bushmens' stygiptia (sp?), the Inuits' sub-cutanious fat layer, the Altaians' dearth of pain receptors and the Bantus' suseptability to valor/hypnosis/hysteria/passion (all linked mental mechanisms). These differences tell a fantastic story of successful adaptation. Studying people's differences is fascinating and normal. Television is just a lazy form of "people watching" which my mother considered a perfectly normal and educational diversion.
I can picture an Ebu Gogo mother taking her children to the water hole and pointing out the variations of grooming, tools and use of materials used by other Ebu Gogos from friendly bands so that her children could know a source of refuge in times of want or danger.
As such identifying differences between groups and members of groups is a very important survival skill. In war, you strive to identify any group in the distance— especially those headed in your direction— as friend, foe or degrees of both. Every nuance of behavior, dress, weaponry and even the manner of walking is examined. H. sapiens is programmed to examine differences, and certainly so was the Ebu Gogo.
On reflection of Darksyde's comments, the documentation (propoganda?) of ferocity is probably a bit of all that you mentioned. Also, an earlier comment about the carelessness of our elimination of other species was chilling.
This discovery is truly marvelous as another chapter opening to us so that we may know ourselves a bit more intimately, to measure ourselves against the test of time and wonder what will become of us, and if it is not to be OUR descendants, then who will be examining our bones and wondering why WE came up short on the scale of evolution.
Religion and Science are both attempts to explain our world and we must remember that the first men who founded and developed the theories concerning evolution were deeply religious Christians who saw no conflict between the two.
That said, if we did have a season, I'd have my Ebu Gogo as a shoulder mount on the wall, flaked-chert spear in hand, posed alert and turning toward danger.#: Posted by on 11/05 at 06:16 PM -
There were "hobbits" in a sense in Europe until early 20th Century. The Swiss dwarves, mostly in the Grey Leagues, were acutely affected by lack of iodine and sunlight and became goitered, daft dwarves and married and had more of the same. Most were employed as shepards in the high, remote Alpen valleys. They ceased to exist when the Swiss government introduced iodine into salt. Poof (like a volcano). Gone.
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