Hobbits (Homo floresiensis)
loom | January 29, 2007
Could 2007 see some new hobbits? I certainly hope so.
In October 2004, a team of scientists announced they had found bones of a hominid from the Indonesian island of Flores. They came to the astonishing conclusion that the bones belonged to a new species, which they called Homo floresiensis, which stood only three feet tall, lived as recently as 12,000 years ago, had a chimp-sized brain, and could use stone tools to hunt.
That announcement launched an extraordinary debate, with scientists arguing in favor of tiny hominids (nicknamed Hobbits), or a dwarf with a birth defect, or an unusually…
loom | October 8, 2006Two years ago this month, I was taken aback by some explosive news. A team of Indonesian and Australian scientists reported that they had discovered fossils of what they claimed was a new species of hominid. It lived on the island of Flores in Indonesia, it stood three feet tall, and it had a brain about the size of a chimp's. Making the report particularly remarkable was the fact that this hominid, which the scientists dubbed Homo floresiensis, lived as recently as 18,000 years ago. I wrote up a post on the paper, and took note of some strong skepticism from some quarters. And since then, I…
loom | August 21, 2006The Sunday Times in the UK reported yesterday on an upcoming paper that claims that the ever-fascinating Homo floresiensis (a k a the Hobbit) is not a new species, as previously reported. Instead, it was a human with a genetic defect called microcephaly that gave it a small head.
This is a long-standing criticism, but only a couple papers based on it have been published since the Hobbit fossils were discovered almost two years ago. The article doesn't have a lot of details. When the new paper comes out (in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) I guess we'll get more.
For my…
loom | June 21, 2006It's been twenty months now since scientists reported discovering fossils on the Indonesian island of Flores belonging to a three-foot-tall hominid with a brain the size of a chimp that lived recently as 12,000 years ago. Homo floresiensis, as this hominid was dubbed, has inspired two clashing interpretations. Its discoverers declared it a separate species descended from another branch of hominids. In others words, the most recent common ancestor we share with Homo floresiensis lived two or even three million years ago. Skeptics argued that the fossils belonged to human pygmies. The one…
loom | June 9, 2006When we speak of the Hobbit, let us not forget her tools.
Last year, scientists reported discovering fossils of a three-foot-tall hominid that they named Homo floresiensis, and which I can't keep myself from calling the Hobbit. Its bones turned up in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, dating from 97,000 to 12,000 years ago. The scientists argued that the Hobbit represented an ancient lineage of hominids, perhaps descending from Homo erectus, a human-sized species that existed in Asia 1.8 million years ago, or perhaps belonging to even an older lineage, known as australopithecines.…
loom | May 18, 2006It's been a little over a year and a half now since scientists announced the disocvery of the most controversial fossil in the field of human origins: Homo floresiensis a k a the Hobbit. Scientists found bones of a dimunitive hominid on the Indonesian island of Flores, and estimated that it lived there as recently as 12,000 years ago. It stood about as high as a normal three year old human child and had a brain the size of a chimpanzee's. But its bones were also found with stone tools. The scientists declared the bones were not human. Instead, they belonged to a species of their own--one that…
loom | March 22, 2006Kate Wong, Scientific American's excellent paleo reporter has a two-parter on the latest dish on Homo floresiensis a k a the Hobbit. No cymbal crashes, I'm afraid, but interesting nonetheless.
loom | February 8, 2006Peter Brown, one of the discoverers of Homo floresiensis a k a the Hobbit (previous posts here), had a few interesting remarks in an article in today's Oregon Daily Emerald:
Though the hobbit people were very small -- the adult stood as tall as a 3-year-old human child and had a brain the size of a newborn human baby -- they had incredible strength, Brown said.
"Chimpanzees have an arm strength four times that of a human; the hobbits were similarly as strong, we think," Brown said. "You wouldn't want to arm wrestle one, that's for sure. It would probably snap your arm off."
Since the…
loom | October 27, 2005Well, here's an idea I haven't heard of before...
Last year scientists found the bones of what they recognized as a new species of hominid that lived as recently as 12,000 years ago. They named it Homo floresiensis, and its three foot stature earned it the nickname the Hobbit. All of the reconstructions I've seen until now have shown the Hobbit standing upright--which you might expect of a hominid that descended from upright ancestors (perhaps Homo erectus or even the more primitive Australopithecus).
But in the November issue of the Dutch science magazine Natuurwetenschap & Techniek,…
loom | October 14, 2005
Finally, more brains.
On Tuesday I wrote about how the second batch of Homo floresiensis bones had at last seen the scientific light of day. Today the critics who don't think the Hobbit is a new species are making their way into scientific journals as well. They're saying that the Hobbit brain looks an awful lot like a human brain.
Last year, as I described here, Dean Falk of Florida State University and her colleagues reported on a scan they had made of the braincase of Homo floresiensis. They compared it to the braincase of normal humans, of a human born with a congenital defect called…
loom | October 11, 2005Finally: more bones.
Last October the world marveled at the announcement of the discovery of a new species of hominid, Homo floresiensis, in a cave called Liang Bua on the Indonesian island of Flores. One conclusion was more shocking than the next. First, this hominid stood only three feet high, earning it the nickname The Hobbit. Second, it lived as recently as 18,000 years ago, which was some 30,000 years after our own species had already been in southeast Asia for 30,000 years or more. The scientists argued that Homo floresiensis was a separate species that might have descended from Homo…
loom | June 16, 2005In October 2004 Australian and Indonesian announced they had discovered a three-foot tall species of hominid, Homo floresiensis, that was still alive no earlier than18,000 years ago. As Ive detailed in previous posts, this claim has inspired a lot of debate, much which revolves around whether the fossils, found on the Indonesian island of Flores do in fact represent a new species, or whether they were human pygmies. This week a new study was published in the journal Biology Letters (link to come) that puts this debate in the proper evolutionary frame. The paper is not about hominids, however…
loom | June 15, 2005
So lets recap: Its been almost eight months now since scientists announced the discovery of Homo floresiensis, the diminutive people that some claim belong to a new branch of hominid evolution and skeptics claim were just small humans. We seem to have entered a lull in the flow of new scientific information about Homo floresiensis. The last thing we heard from its discoverers came in March, when they published scans of the Homo floresiensis braincase, which bolstered their case that the skull they found didnt happen to belong to someone with a birth defect. The skeptics have made various…
loom | April 29, 2005
The feud over Homo floresiensis, the little people of Indonesia, centers on whether they were an extinct diminutive species that evolved from some ancient hominid, such as Homo erectus, or whether they were just pygmy humans, perhaps suffering from some disease. The leading skeptic, paleoanthropologist Teuku Jacob, has claimed that there are pygmies living not far from where the fossils were found, on the island of Flores. I came across a short item at Japan Today about a scientific expedition to study the pygmies, which was based on an article in Kompas, an Indonesian publication. The…
loom | April 12, 2005I've been catching up on my online reading, and a couple days ago John Hawks offered this tantalizing hint that Homo floresiensis a k a the Hobbit may be a pathological specimen. Such claims have been made before based on the small skull of the hominid, but they've been pretty powerfully rebutted. But Hawks is claiming that the rest of the skeleton is sickly. He seems to be basing this contention on having seen the bones, and on research by others that will be coming out soon. Now, normally I wouldn't put much stock in this sort of off-hand remark, but Hawks has been so good on his blog that…
loom | March 3, 2005At 1 p.m. today I listened by phone to a press conference in Washington where scientists presented the first good look inside a Hobbit's head. The view is fascinating. While it may help clear up some mysteries, it seems to throw others wide open.
Last October, a team of Australian scientists declared that they had found a new species of hominid that lived as recently as 12,000 years ago. It was short--maybe three and a half feet tall--and had a brain they estimated to be about the size of a chimp's. Its bones were found along with stone tools, suggesting that it made good use of its scant…
loom | February 24, 2005The Sydney Morning Herald reports today that the bones of Homo floresiensis, aka the Hobbits, have at last been returned to the team that originally discovered them.
The team, made up of Indonesian and Australian scientists, discovered the bones on the Indonesian island of Flores. Last October they declared that they had found a new species of diminutive, small-brained hominid that existed just 12,000 years ago. Then, in November, the bones wound up in the hands (or, rather, the locked safe) of the Indonesian paleoanthropologist Teuku Jacob. Jacob claims that a member of the Hobbit team…
loom | January 18, 2005The Guardian has a long but disjointed report about the dispute over Homo floresiensis. Articles like these rarely give a very good picture of scientific disputes, since all parties involved only get a couple catchy quotes apiece. I've been particularly puzzled by Teuku Jacob, the elderly Indonesian paleoanthropologist who sparked the controversy by taking possession of the bones and locking them away from the Indonesian and Australian researchers who found them. So I was pleased when my brother, a linguistic anthropologist who does research in Indonesia, passed on this link to a translation…
loom | December 10, 2004The Australian media are doing a fantastic job of keeping up with the developments with Homo floresiensis. Here's the first three-dimensional reconstruction I've seen of the little hominid, made by an Australian archaeologist. It's published on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's web site. I'm sure that as more bones emerge, the image will improve, but this is still a wonderful first look.
loom | December 9, 2004Homo floresiensis update: The Economist weighs in on the "borrowing" of the fossils. They mention that when the bones were removed, they were simply stuffed in a leather bag. This is not exactly the sort of procedure you see in protocols for avoiding contamination of ancient DNA. In the Australian, the discoverers of "Florence" vow to return to the fossil site, and this time they'll put their discoveries in a really good safe. Wise move.