Discovery of Ancient Artifacts Rekindles Debate on 'Hobbits'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/31/AR2006053102008.html

Scientists said yesterday that stone artifacts found with remains of ancient, tiny "Hobbit"-like people on a remote Indonesian island are similar to much older island artifacts, offering new support for the theory that the fossils represent a unique species of archaic human.

The Australian-Indonesian research team said in the journal Nature that its analysis "negates claims" by critics that only modern humans could have made such tools, and that the Hobbits, with grapefruit-size brains, were modern humans afflicted with microcephaly, a debilitating genetic condition.

"We don't know who made the earlier tools, but they are the same tools, using the same technology," said Australian National University archaeologist Adam Brumm, lead author of the study. "This doesn't support the idea that modern humans made the tools."
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Debate over the Hobbits began 1 1/2 years ago when discoverers announced they had found the remains of a three-foot-tall woman who had lived on the Indonesian island of Flores 18,000 years ago with several other individuals, who were equally small but clever enough to hunt wild animals with spears and butcher them with stone tools.

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When you think about it, how does a compatatively rare human condition (associated with birth defects) become so common that a whole society of humanoids would develop it?

Would they not fail to thrive after a few generations?

island off the coast of Alaska in the arctic area. Downsized mammoths from the small forage available.

Or so. I'm doing this by memory.

Can you remember the name of the island?

Species on islands tend to become more compact. The Indonesian versions of the elephant, rhino and tiger are all smaller than their mainland counterparts, but since the islands have not been severed from the mainland for very long in geological time, the differences have not become quite so pronounced. In fact, I'm not sure how long Sumatra has been an island. :)

http://www.nps.gov/chis/pygmy.htm



This Pygmy Mammoth was a fully grown adult.

It was the same size for 3 years till I moved it to a bigger tank, then it got bigger.

Why is this so hard to understand? If your environment is smaller, you (species) stay smaller to survive.

curious trivia - that same Oscar was dumped into the septic pond after a particularly hard winter when the tank froze solid. We thought it was dead. Two years later, we saw it swimming in the pond. cool!

n/t

Indonesia and Malaysia and say hmmmmmmm?

It isn't all about the nutrition... genetics are definitely involved.

It isn't uncommon here to see 9 and 10 year old kids who are taller than their maids...

Hmmmmmmm

and even your grandparents affects your stature.

There is nothing genetic in the smaller size of the chinese, for example.
A few generations of better feeding, particularly eating more protein, has meant that they are growing much taller than their recent ancestors did.

So there may have been a genetic mutation that made the "hobbits" short, but it may have simply been diet.

They were a different homonid speies living at the same time as homo sapien up to a few thousand years ago. Other folks say they were homo sapiens with very small stature or microencephaly.

I don't have a dog in the fight one way or the other but it is soooooo interesting whichever way it turns out.