Hobbit" Human Ancestor Found in Asia - National Geographic News

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the discovery of a small human ancestor, nicknamed "Hobbit," found in Indonesia. Participants explore various aspects of this finding, including its implications for human evolution, comparisons to fictional characters, and the broader context of archaeological discoveries.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Technical explanation
  • Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants express excitement about the discovery of Homo floresiensis, noting its small stature and unique brain features.
  • Others draw humorous comparisons to fictional characters like Bigfoot and Gandalf, suggesting a playful engagement with the topic.
  • A participant mentions the potential for reviving the species through cloning, raising questions about the feasibility of such an idea.
  • Some contributions highlight the debate among scientists regarding the classification of the remains, with differing opinions on whether they represent a new species or a variant of existing human populations.
  • There are mentions of local myths about small people on Flores, suggesting cultural significance tied to the discovery.
  • Technical details about the brain size and cognitive abilities of the "Hobbit" are discussed, with some participants noting the implications for understanding human evolution.
  • One participant references a Nova episode discussing the survival of these hominids until a volcanic eruption, indicating ongoing interest in the topic.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

The discussion contains multiple competing views, particularly regarding the classification of the "Hobbit" remains and the implications of the discovery for understanding human evolution. There is no consensus on these points.

Contextual Notes

Participants reference various sources and reports, indicating that media portrayals may not fully capture the scientific nuances of the discovery. There are also mentions of the limitations of current understanding regarding the species' classification and the implications of their brain structure.

Who May Find This Useful

This discussion may be of interest to those engaged in anthropology, archaeology, evolutionary biology, and fans of speculative fiction.

  • #31
um, we have midgets, couldn't this just be the remains of a really old midget skeleton?

Apparently not. For one, they are half the size of a normal human but their brains are a third of the size. the shape of the skull is also very different from that of humans. Originally there was some conjecture about this being an isolated clan with genetic mutations or maladies, but this is also ruled out according to the scientists interviewed. The fact that their brains are so small makes this all very strange and intriguing. Evidence of a fire pit, tools, hunting, and even a dwarf elephant skeleton that was presumably killed for food, was found in the cave. Also, apparently some evidence suggests that they hunted Komodo Dragons, which 13,000 years ago - at nearly a 1000 Lbs - were twice the size that they are now. That must have been quite a fiece opponent for a guy three feet tall.
 
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  • #32
Inside Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, the bones of the hobbit rested undisturbed for 18,000 years.
But no longer.

In what is being called a true case of scientific skullduggery, the remains of the newly discovered human species have suffered irreparable damage since entering the care of paleontologists.

The damage to the bones of this diminutive being - named Homo floresiensis and nicknamed hobbit by scientists - is so extensive that it will limit scholarly research on the species, say members of the Indonesian Center for Archaeology-based discovery team.

Considered the most important discovery in human origins in five decades, the remains are marred by broken jaws and smashed bones.

"The equivalent in the world of art would be somebody slashing the Mona Lisa and then trying to fix it with chewing gum," says paleontologist Tim White of the University of California-Berkeley, who was not on the discovery team. [continued]
http://archeonet.nl/engels.php?itemid=6738&catid=112

Bad news aside, the Homo Floresiensis homepage
http://www.uow.edu.au/science/eesc/geoquest/hf/
 
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  • #33
Thats shocking! Even that they would transport{except to a final restore/study spot} wet bones is unheard of. They are so unstable, a meer touch can crumble them in some cases, let alone a casting!
 
  • #34
Further fossil finds from Flores

... Both mandibles share distinctive dental features, and they lack chins — a chin being a unique feature of all Homo sapiens regardless of their stature, including most microcephalics
(Fig. 1, overleaf).In addition, the new tibia and arm-bone fossils not only confirm that the Liang Bua hominids were short, about a metre tall, but also indicate that they had relatively long arms. In many ways, the LB1 skeleton’s body proportions are less like any adult human’s, including adult pygmies, than those of an australopithecine — an earlier hominid lineage, thought to have been confined to Africa. Another notable point is that the Liang Bua fossils come from a lengthy temporal span during which the cave’s inhabitants were hunting animals, producing stone tools and making fire. Although the original LB1 skeleton is estimated to be 18,000 years old, a child’s radius was found in deposits estimated to be 12,000 years old, and the new mandible is estimated to be 15,000 years old; other finds may be as old as 95,000 years2,3. The fossils also all seem to be similarly small, refuting the contention that the LB1 skeleton was simply an aberrantly dwarfed, pathological specimen. If they were pathological, then the Liang Bua fossils would have had to have come from a population of short, microcephalic humans that survived for a long time, or one that was susceptible to high frequencies of microcephaly and dwarfism [contnued]
http://www.uow.edu.au/science/eesc/geoquest/hf/docs/Lieberman.pdf
 
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  • #35
CBS) Little animals. Little people. Ms. Hobbit lived here, eating her dragons and elephants 18,000 years ago. But people living on the island today will tell you that her descendants were still here very recently.

In the hamlets under the volcano, villagers talk in a matter-of-fact way about very little people their grandparents told them about. They wore no clothes, had long arms, and lived in caves high up on the volcano. The village chief told 60 Minutes that the volcano is called Abu Lobo, and the little people were called Abu Gogo, which, literally translated, means “grandma who eats everything.”

..."They were very hairy and short, only about 3-feet high. The women have very long breasts, which they used to throw over their shoulders. They also had very wide mouths," says one team member. "If we think about them, they are not nice people at all. Abu Gogo means 'very greedy.' They used to eat everything."...[continued]
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/28/60minutes/main691775_page2.shtml

It is said that the village attacked the Abu Gogo and burned their cave, presumably killing most them, when a baby was taken and killed by the hobbits.

This may be the first paragraph in a new book of human history.
 
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  • #36
"Hobbit" Humans Were Diseased, Not New Species, Study Says

The "hobbit" humans that lived on the Indonesian island of Flores some 18,000 years ago were actually a population of modern humans stricken with a genetic disease that causes small brains, a new study says.

The argument is being made by a group of scientists who have analyzed all the scientific evidence presented so far about the evolution of the proposed species Homo floresiensis. [continued]
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/hobbit-1.html
 
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  • #37
  • #38
... In the new study, Dean Falk, of Florida State University, and her colleagues say the remains are those of a completely separate human species: Homo floresiensis.

They have published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [continued]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6311619.stm
 
  • #39
wow, what if this is an example of convergant evolution, not divergent. maybe we don't share a recent common ancestor at all, but the hominid structure offered advantiges for them.
Arent there pygmies that live on new zealand or somewhere?
wow, intense
 
  • #40
...Tocheri, an expert in the evolution of the human wrist, could see immediately that the hobbit's wrist bones looked just like those of a chimpanzee, or an early hominid such as Australopithecus, and had none of the specialisations for grasping that are seen in the wrist bones of modern humans. A careful statistical comparison gave the same conclusion.

"The modern human wrist hasn't looked like this for at least 800,000 years, and maybe much longer," says Tocheri. "It was immediately apparent to me that the hobbit is the real deal."

...the leading advocate of the microcephaly explanation, remains unconvinced. No one has studied the wrist bones of microcephalic humans, he notes, so it is pure conjecture to say they would not look like the hobbit's bones.[continued]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12667-hobbit-wrist-bones-suggests-a-distinct-species.html
 
  • #42
Bones of Archaic 3-feet tall humans discovered - some ONLY 900 years old!

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080310-palau-bones.html"

Some of the bones are ancient and indicate inhabitants of particularly small size, scientists announced today.

The remains are between 900 and 2,900 years old

The smaller, older bones represent people who were 3 to 4 feet (94 to 120 centimeters) tall and weighed between 70 and 90 pounds (32 and 41 kilograms), according to the paper.

According to Berger, the estimated brain size of the early Palauans is about twice the size of the hobbit brain.

Several other features, including the shape of the face and hips, suggest that the Palauan bones should be classified as Homo sapiens.

If the interpretation of the Palauan remains is correct, the find may add more fuel to the debate over whether the Flores hobbit is a unique species, Berger said.

Aside from being tiny, the Palauan bones show that some of these people lacked chins and had deep jaws, large teeth, and small eye sockets, according to the paper.

Some of these features were considered important in originally distinguishing the hobbit as a unique—and archaic—species, Berger said.

But the Palauan remains suggest these features may just be a consequence of insular dwarfism, a shrinking process that some scientists attribute to the stresses of a small island environment.
​

So, is the Hobbit really a different species or a variation within humans (given how we have found a hobbit-like group of humans in Palau)?
 
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  • #43
It sounds to me like a variation within humans. Humans, after all, do adapt to best fit their surroundings and being short and having such distinctive characteristics could be beneficial. I recently read an article of a different group of humans in Greenland (I believe) who were found to look human in structure, but they had thicker bones, longer hands, larger brains and skulls, et cetera. They are believed to have been some of the earliest people to have adapted to extremely cold weather.
 
  • #44
I've merged this with Ivan's thread. The answer is in post #41.
 
  • #45
...The hypothesis has been described as "sheer speculation" by some experts, including Professor Peter Brown of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, one of the original members of the team that discovered the remains.

"The conclusions in this paper are not supported by the facts," he said. "The authors have not examined the original fossil, have little and no experience with fossil hominids and depend upon data obtained by others." [continued]

Based on the first skull found, some skeptics were all but certain that it was a microcephalic human, until the team found more skeletons. When they were faced with an entire tribe of mycrocephalic midgets that lived for I think thousands of years, they abandoned the idea. So if the skulls are virtually identical to that of a microcecphalic skull, how does island dwarfing or malnutrition account for this? There is also a problem with the size of the brain and the complex skills that they apparently had, such as fire making, hunting, and tool making.
 
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  • #46


The latest on the Hobbits, from Nova
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/hobbit/program.html

It sounds like things are leaning heavily towards a new species.

I just noticed that earlier I said hydrocephalic, when I should have said microcephalic. :rolleyes: Just a bit of a difference there.
 
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  • #47


"The tiny humans, who had skulls about the size of grapefruits"

It's not a 'human' or a 'hobbit', its a monkey!
Look, we found live orangutangs and fondly call them 'the old men of the forest'. If there were no living 'tangs' some bright spark would probably have found a 'tang' skeleton and truly called it an old man from the forest, but its just a monkey!
 
  • #48


Apparently the evolution of our species isn't as cut an dried as some people would like to think. This tiny human has very few features in common with Neanderthals yet existed during the paleolithic. Nice find Ivan
 
  • #49


That is tremendous!

Very Interesting find, thanks!
 
  • #50
Hobbits 'are a separate species'

Scientists have found more evidence that the Indonesian "Hobbit" skeletons belong to a new species of human - and not modern pygmies.

The one metre (3ft) tall, 30kg (65lbs) humans roamed the Indonesian island of Flores, perhaps up to 8,000 years ago.

Since the discovery, researchers have argued vehemently as to the identity of these diminutive people.

Two papers in the journal Nature now support the idea they were an entirely new species of human...[video included]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8036396.stm

How many old legends are now called into question as potentially legitimate, in principle?

One really wild story comes from one of the original researchers on this who claimed to have seen a living hobbit, on Flores!
 
  • #51


Ivan Seeking said:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8036396.stm

How many old legends are now called into question as potentially legitimate, in principle?

One really wild story comes from one of the original researchers on this who claimed to have seen a living hobbit, on Flores!

I hadn't thought of that Ivan, this sub-species of human could easily have started a number of myths and legends.

If trade was relatively well established around the world much earlier than is currently reported (as it is beginning to look like), these little guys could easily have been brought along as trading trinkets or just as "branding" novelties that promoted the trader who brought them. Some could just as easily have escaped and stayed in regions from where "the little people" stories have harkened. Take Ireland for example.
 
  • #52


baywax said:
I hadn't thought of that Ivan, this sub-species of human could easily have started a number of myths and legends.

If trade was relatively well established around the world much earlier than is currently reported (as it is beginning to look like), these little guys could easily have been brought along as trading trinkets or just as "branding" novelties that promoted the trader who brought them. Some could just as easily have escaped and stayed in regions from where "the little people" stories have harkened. Take Ireland for example.

A couple of years ago I was discussing the idea that myths and legends often have a basis in truth, with a friend from Ireland. He laughed and demanded that I show him the little people, so I directed him to "Homo Floresiensis" as a possible explanation. The smile on his face suddenly disappeared. :biggrin:

When this story first broke, I started a thread about some of the legends and myths.
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=50855
 
  • #53


Ivan Seeking said:
A couple of years ago I was discussing the idea that myths and legends often have a basis in truth, with a friend from Ireland. He laughed and demanded that I show him the little people, so I directed him to "Homo Floresiensis" as a possible explanation. The smile on his face suddenly disappeared. :biggrin:

When this story first broke, I started a thread about some of the legends and myths.
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=50855

I think I smiled bigger when I heard the news.

The existence and occurrence of the Indonesian "homosapien minimus" (not a real name) holds a lot of promise in uncovering the origin of many stories that have lasted 1000s of years in various human folklore. The stories are not passed along with a date, no copyright, so when we find possible, probable or definite sources of their content this helps to date the story and perhaps the era of that story.

For instance, there is a version of the Santa Claus tale from northwestern europe about Cinder Claus and his little black elf. Cinder Claus would reward any good children and the little black elf would stuff the bad ones into Cinder Claus' bag and beat them with hammers... er... or like a broom or something (maybe a dash of waterboarding). Then they'd be abducted by the ruthless pair.

Looking at this tale with the knowledge of this Indonesian version of humans and with our knowledge of very early trading practices between Turkey and Scandinavia, (as early if not earlier than 300 AD after Scandinavians navigated the Dneiper River system through Russia to Istanbul) we can see that there may be a connection between the little black hellion and our Indonesian cousins. This is because once the Scandinavians got to Istanbul, they became privy to all of the blunders of the Turkish Empire and its outstandingly accurate navigational charts. On these charts are the Indonesian islands and their booty could have well included curious little "black" people that were perhaps collected and kept to breed during the previous millennia of Turkish history (of 23,000 yrs).

Thanks!
 
  • #54


baywax said:
For instance, there is a version of the Santa Claus tale from northwestern europe about Cinder Claus and his little black elf. Cinder Claus would reward any good children and the little black elf would stuff the bad ones into Cinder Claus' bag and beat them with hammers... er... or like a broom or something (maybe a dash of waterboarding). Then they'd be abducted by the ruthless pair.

The final chapter from the local lore on Flores tells of an "Ebu Gogo" that came into the village and stole a child [a baby, IIRC]. The villagers then attacked and ran the Ebu Gogo out of their cave, with fire [not sure if they killed them or just ran them off]. Less the rare anecdotal reports, they were never seen again.

All very interesting, Baywax!

Btw, did you mean to say "plunders" instead of "blunders"? :biggrin:

Late edit: Abu changed to Ebu.
 
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  • #55


Ivan Seeking said:
The final chapter from the local lore on Flores tells of an "Abu Gogo" that came into the village and stole a child [a baby, IIRC]. The villagers then attacked and ran the Abu Gogo out of their cave, with fire [not sure if they killed them or just ran them off]. Less the rare anecdotal reports, they were never seen again.

All very interesting, Baywax!

Btw, did you mean to say "plunders" instead of "blunders"? :biggrin:

It would be a lot more interesting if I had some more concrete evidence to back it all up.
The Vikings had a tremendous influence on Kiev and the Slavic people during the use of their this trade route. Many blundering plunders and oppression took place, as would suit the times.

Thanks Ivan!
 
  • #56


baywax said:
It would be a lot more interesting if I had some more concrete evidence to back it all up.

Sure, for now it is all speculation, but it is tantalizing and one has to wonder. It will be interesting to see if we find any distinctively similar bones in other locations - not on Flores. At this point I have to wonder if we don't already have other misidentified examples.
 
  • #57


Ivan Seeking said:
Sure, for now it is all speculation, but it is tantalizing and one has to wonder. It will be interesting to see if we find any distinctively similar bones in other locations - not on Flores. At this point I have to wonder if we don't already have other misidentified examples.

Is there no way to extract DNA from the specimens? There has been some, limited success getting it from Neanderthal remains. That would help.
 
  • #58


Given all of the controversy, I've been wondering about that myself.
 
  • #59


This is an old interview in which the local legends are discussed a bit.

Villagers speak of the small, hairy Ebu Gogo
Richard Roberts, discoverer of the Hobbit, says local tales suggest the species could still exist

When I was back in Flores earlier this month we heard the most amazing tales of little, hairy people, whom they called Ebu Gogo - Ebu meaning grandmother and Gogo meaning 'he who eats anything'. The tales contained the most fabulous details - so detailed that you'd imagine there had to be a grain of truth in them...
http://www.primates.co.uk/ebu-gogo/index.html
 
  • #60

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