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Location of Flores island in Indonesia. |
49. Relatives in Indonesia
by George Weber
Table of Contents 1. Homo floresiensis ("Hobbits") - Size, Anatomy, Ancestry and
Relationships - Cretins? - with a link to a
scientific sensation - Tools (other Indonesian subjects are in preparation)
- Location
1. Homo floresiensis ("Hobbits")
Location
Location of Flores island in Indonesia.
Excavations have been going on at Lia Buang cave since 1965 but it was not until September 2003 that the first human remains were found. They were named LB1after the cave and later turned out to belong to an extinct species of hitherto unknown and unsuspected human-like species, named Homo floresiensis. If ever there has been an unexpected anthropological and archaeological sensation, this was it.
It is still far from clear what Homo floresiensis really is, and whether and how the newly-discovered species is related to Homo sapiens or other hominids.
The shenanigans of one Teuku Jacob (1929-2007) greatly complicated matters after the discovery. Jacob, aged but still a politically influential hero of the struggle for Indonesian independence, was of the firm opinion that the Hobbits were diseased humans and of no great scientific interest. Above all, he had a problem with the media attention that the the young Indonesian discoverers and their Australian associates were receiving.
The location of the Liang Bua cave on Flores island where
the Homo floresiensis remains were found. The famous Kommodo Dragon National Park lies to the west
of the island. The huge monitor lizards are now limited to
the National Park, but when Homo floresiensis lived
on the island, the dragons must have been one of the chief
hazards of life there. There was another - now extinct -
monitor lizard species then living on Flores which was even
larger than the Kommodo Dragon.
Flores has been an island for millions of years and Homo floresiensis would have needed some kind of watercraft to make the crossing. We have no idea when the little people first entered Flores or where they came from. There must have been sea-going boats many tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago.
The discovery of Neanderthal man in the 19th century was a shock that took science and society a long time to absorb. Now we may have found an even stranger relative, if that is what the Hobbits are. The Hobbits are in some ways similar to us: they made and used stone tools, they made, used and controlled fire, they found shelter in caves, they went out to hunt and gather. But the Hobbits also differ from us and they do so much more fundamentally than Neanderthal man did.
The Ling Bua cave excavation. The first Homo floresiensis bones (individual LB1)
was found along the wall just visible on the extreme
right.
Excavation work has been going on at Liang Bua cave since 1965. Apart from stone tools, bones of stegodon, frogs, snakes, tortoises, monitor lizards, birds, rodents and bats were found. Some of the bones would have accumulated naturally on the cave floor without human or hobbitty help but some were charred which suggests the presence of fire-making humans. Forest fires would be unlikely to char material on a cave floor (ref. Morwood M.J. at al., 2004).
The skeleton was discovered when the Australian members of the team had already returned to Australia - such can be the luck of the draw in archaeology. Thomas Sutikna of the Indonesian Centre for Archaeology was responsible for the very difficult handling of the find. The remains were too young to have fossilized and the bones in the damp conditions of the cave were described as being like "mashed potatoes with the consistency of wet blotting paper". Less experienced excavators might not even have noticed the "mashed potatoes" . Securing and recovering the find was a difficult process but it was handled so well that it has inspired much justified national pride in Indonesia. (ref. Dalton R. 2004).
The great chance implicit in the relatively recent age of these bones is that they (unlike much older, fossilized remains) may still contain DNA that can be extracted and analysed. So far, however, no useable DNA has been found and it is feared that in the hot and humid climate of Flores, it may have decayed.
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The first humanoid remains (including a skull) at the Liang Bua cave were found in sector VII (marked red in the map to the left) in September 2003 and named "Lin Bua 1" (LB1). The askerisk in the slightly different.coloured area represents the part of the cave investigated by the earliest excavator, Verhoeven, in 1965. Excavations on sectors I to X were carried out in 1978 and 1989 by R.P. Soejono. Starting in 2001, work was continued on sectors I, III, IV and VII by an Indonesian-Australian team that included R.P. Soejono (ref. Morwood M.J. at al., 2004).
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The fateful find in sector VII: During the excavation it soon became clear that the arms of LB1 were missing. It was assumed (correctly as it later turned out) that they would be in the unexcavated area marked with red crosses in the graphic on the left (ref. Morwood M.J. at al., 2004). In 2004 the missing arms of LB1were indeed found precisely there. When the missing arms were finally located, there was yet another surprise: the arms were much longer, in relation to body height, than arms are among Homo sapiens. Clearly, Homo floresiensis , while human-like in many respects, was yet something new and different. There is evidence that the skeleton was still partially fleshed when it was covered by fine sediment, which could mean that it was bruried (ref. Brown P. et al., 2004). |
With the missing arms of the first Hobbit, he remains of up to eight additional Hobbits were also discovered. These were dated over widely different times but they all showed the same anatomical peculiarities that characterized the first specimen of Homo floresiensis. This discovery was the death knell for earlier speculations that Hobbits were merely diseased human individuals What was also uncovered were the remains of up to eight additional individuals, dated over widely different times but all showing the same anatomical peculiarities that characterize the first soecimen found of Homo floresiensis. This was the death knell for earlier speculations that Hobbits were merely diseased human individuals (see also "More evidence for Hobbit unearthed as diggers are refused access to cave". Nature, 437/13: 934-935).
Homo floresiensis seems to have become extinct only around 12,000 years ago which, coincidentally or not, rougly marks the transition from the Pleistocene ice age to the warmer Holocene present. The Hobbit remains at Liang Bua cave were dated to around 18,000 yearsbefore the present. At that time, Australia has had human inhabitants for at least 30,000 years and perhaps more. Hobbits and modern humans must have known of each other's existence and may well have met. This near-certainty gives an entirely new aspect to vague tales of "little people" among the modern inhabitants of Flores and elsewhere in island Indonesia. Such tales will now have be collected with a completely new sense of importance and urgency and studied with a completely new angle. It is much too early to say whether and how the two species interacted, whether they avoided contact or traded or warred. Nor we do have any idea when and under what circumstances these astonishing pygmy people have become extinct - if they did.
There is one tiny hint : the extinction of Stegodon coincided with volcanic tuffacious silts and thus may have been caused by a volcanic eruption that may also have spelt the end of Homo floresiensis.
There have long been vague and unsubstantiated stories of small people in the mountainous interiors of some of he many Indonesian islands. Nothing could be found out about them except that some seem engaged in a form of "silent trade" with the coastal population. This is a trade where one party leaves items at a traditional place and then withdraws, waiting for the other party to put something of equivalent value next to it. If the offer is not acceptable, one party would withdraws its goods or adds to it, making a new offer. Agreement was reached when one party took the other's offering away. In this way the two trading partners could exchange goods without ever meeting. It has not been possible to find out whether such trading is indeed going on in Indonesia.Indonesia outside Java is something of a black hole. At the Andaman Association we have, of course, always assumed that such unseen trading partners from the interior could be Negritos, like the Andamanese and similar groups. With the appearance of Homo floresiensis, another, utterly fantastic, possibility has appeared. Could it be... no!... never! On the other hand, why not?
In fairness, it must be said that the chances that there are Hobbits doing silent trade (or living hidden lives without any outside contact) in Indonesia or Papua-Newguinea is tiny. But it is not zero.
Size, Anatomy, Ancestry and Relationships
Below left: Reconstruction of a Hobbit face, based on skull LB1. Hair form and skin colour must remain guesswork, but facial forms are predetermined by the underlying structure of the skull and can be stored with considerable confidence.
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A reconstruction of what a Hobbit's face could have looked like. Hair form and hair colour as well as skin colour can only be guessed at. |
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A returning Hobbit hunter |
The one thing about Homo floresiensis that strikes all observes first and foremost is their tiny size.
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Comparative body heights of three adult modern Homo sapiens (yes, one of them is the author of this article, no prizes for guessing which) and a restoration of an adult Homo floresiensis. |
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Homo floresiensis differs considerably from modern human populations and from modern chimpanzees (ref. Morwood M.J. et al. 2005. "Further evidence for small-bodied hominins from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia." Nature 437/3:1012-1017) |
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The remains of LB1 were dated to 18,000 years before the present by C14 and thermoluminescence. The speculative and invevitably controversial tree of the genus Homo. black: Africa 1 Homo ergaster/African Homo erectus |
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A modern Homo sapiens studies her ancient and much smaller possible relative, illustrating the difference in size between the two species. Homo floresiensis had a body height of ca. 1 m and a endocranial volume of 380 cubic cm. A modern American woman has an average endocranial volume of around 1500 cm3 and a body height of 160-173 cm. Size reduction is a predictable and well-known evolutionary trend among isolated populations on islands (see also Palau). It is a slow process that may take many thousands of years to develop among an entire population and thus indicates a long residence of Homo floresiensis on Flores (ref. Brown P. et al., 2004). |
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The skull LB1 from various angles. |
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Occlusal and lateral views of mandibles of LB1 and LB6/1 (ref. Morwood et al, 2005. "Further evidence for small-bodied hominins from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia". Nature, 437/13:1012-1017). |
Homo floresiensis is not a "miniaturized modern Homo sapiens". Small-statured humans (African pygmies, Negrito) reach their small size through curtailed growth during puberty when the brain has already reached full size, giving a completely different ratio between brain size and stature from the unique ratio found in the Hobbits (ref. Lahr M.M. et al., 2004; Brown P. at al., 2004)). Like Homo sapiens, Homo floresiensis was an obligatory biped, i.e. their normal way to walk was on two legs just as it is among humans. The thickness and proportion of the skull, shape of the teeth, flexion evident at the skull base, are all traits of the genus Homo. Unfortunately, we do not know how they communicated with each other, i.e. whether they had language or not.
The discoverers of Homo floresiensis at first thought that their finds were dwarfed descendants of Javanese Homo erectus and part of an endemic island fauna. The species' relative brain/body size is extreme - even outside the range of the Australopithecines - and a result of their extreme miniaturization.
While it is relatively easy to say what the "Hobbits" are not, it has proven very difficult to say what they are. There is material here for decades of scientific feuding.
Homo floresiensis differs considerably from modern human populations and from modern chimpanzees (ref. Morwood M.J. et al. 2005. "Further evidence for small-bodied hominins from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia." Nature 437/3:1012-1017)
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Limb proportions (humerus/ulna to femur) of Homo floresiensis compared with other human, pre-human and ape populations: 1 (green): global sample of modern human population 2 (grey): modern African pygmies 3 (yellow): Andamanese negrito 4 (orange): chimpanzee (Pan paniscus) red asterisk: Homo floresiensis black cross: Australopithecus afarensis (extinct, lived in Africa 5 to 1 million years ago) |
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Femur and humerus shaft robusticity in Homo floresiensis compared with other human, pre-human and ape populations: |
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Endocranial range (brain size) 1. Homo sapiens 2. Erectines (Homo erectus etc.) 3. Australopithecines 4. Homo floresiensis (Chart adapted from Lahr M.M. et al., 2004).
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The shape and highly convoluted frontal lobes of a Homo floresiensis brain (below left shown superimposed on the skull) indicate advanced cognition. Not a trace of microcepahly. The Hobbits were intelligent, but to judge from the shape of the brain, it was a non-human intelligence.
The two brains on the right below show the difference in shape between the Floresian brain and a microcephalic (pathologically small-brained, cretinous) Homo sapiens. They have very little in common (ref. Balter M., 2005). Followers of the "Hobbit Cretin cult" please note.
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When Neanderthal Man was discovered in 19th century Europe, there were not a few earnest scholars denouncing the new species as merely a group of iodine-deficient human cretins. Then as now, such a claim, if nothing else, got the claimant into the papers. That the Neanderthal "cretins" had survived for as much as 300,000 years right through the depth of the ice age and that they had spread over an area from western Siberia and the Near East to the Iberian Peninsula, all this the early researchers could not know. When the error became apparent, the cretinous idea was quietly dropped and it has not been heard from since.
But now iodine-deficiency as an argument to "explain" what appears to be a weird new species has returned and is flourishing mostly in Australia where it provides welcome publicity to otherwise obscure researchers. Some claim that the Hobbits were iodine-deficient cretins that were dumped in Liang Bua cave by their non-cretinous group members. According to tthis school of thought, the cave was a sort of prehistoric human rubbish dump.
Unfortunately, evidence on the Hobbits is lamentably limited and that has been a spur to wild theorizing. But what little evidence there is - e.g. the simple comparison between a truly microcephalic human brain and the brain of a Hobbit (see above Brain form) - suggests that the Hobbits were not microcephalic.
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Additional information on allegedly microcephalic Hobbits from Falk D. at al. 2005 ("The Brain of LB1, Homo floresiensis", Nature 308:242-245 and added Added 17 April 2005: Summary: In this article the brain of Homo floresiensis was assessed by comparing a virtual endocast from the type specimen (LB1) with endocasts from great apes, Homo erectus, Homo sapiens, a human pygmy, a human microcephalic, specimen number Sts 5 (Australopithecus africanus), and specimen number WT 17000 (Paranthropus aethiopicus). Morphometric, allometric, and shape data indicate that LB1 is not a microcephalic or pygmy. LB1 brain/body size ratio scales like that of an australopithecine, but its endocast shape resembles that of Homo erectus. LB1 has derived frontal and temporal lobes and a lunate sulcus in a derived position, which are consistent with capabilities for higher cognitive processing. Quote: "Our data show that LB1's well-convoluted brain could not have been a miniaturized version of either Homo sapiens or Homo erectus. Nevertheless, its similarities with Homo erectus strongly suggest a phylogenetic connection, although its australopithecine-like brain/body size ratio and morphology of the femur and pelvis are not expected in a miniaturized descendant of a larger-bodied Homo erectus (which, instead, would be expected to scale allometrically along the ontogenetic curve predicted for Homo erectus). Although it is possible that Homo floresiensis represented an endemic island dwarf that, over time, became subject to to unusual allometric constraints, an alternative hypothesis is that Homo erectus and Homo floresiensis may have shared a common ancestor that was an unknown small-bodied and small-brained hominin." |
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A spectacular scientific discovery in the Pacific Republic of Palau wes reported by PLoS ONE on March 2008: see our Chapter 53: Palau with links to the original article by Prof. Lee R.Berger of the Institute for Human Evolution and the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontology, School of GeoSciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. |
A whole range of artefacts associated with Homo floresiensis were found in Liang Bua cave (ref. Morwood M.J. et al., 2004). These artefacts occurred down to a depth of 5.8 m with an oldest date of around 74,000 years. There is also a "big game" series of artefacts that appears only in connection with Stegodon (a miniature elephant) and that lasts from the oldest dated cultural horizons, between 95,000 to 74,000 years ago until its disappearance 12,000 years ago. The extinction of Stegodon coincided with volcanic tuffacious silts and thus may have been caused by a volcanic eruption that may also have spelt the end of Homo floresiensis.
It may be that the Liang Bua cave was not so much a permanent home base but an occasionally used camp for selective hunting of Stegodon.
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Liang Bua stone tools |
Tools found in layers dated to more than 12,000 years
before the present and left at the Liang Bua cave by Homo
floresiensis. No trace of a Homo sapiens presence before 12,000
years has been found at the site (ref. Hopkin M., "The Life
of a Hobbit", Nature 437/13: 935)
The island of Flores is littered with large numbers of stone tools, some possibly dating back 840,000 years. Unfortunately, most are not associated with human remains so the question of what sort of human or other creature made them cannot be answered until further finds are made that can link tools to tool-makers.
Mentioned as sources in the above text on Homo floresiensis are:
Brown P., Sutikna T., Morwood M.J., Soejono R.P., Jatmiko, Wayhum Saptomo E., and Rokus Awe Due. 2004. "A new, small-bodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia." Nature 1055-1061
Bowler J.M. et al. 2003. "New ages for human occupation and climatic change at Lake Mungo, Australia." Nature 421:837-840
Dalton R. 2004. "Little Lady of Flores forces rethink of human evolution." Nature 431:1029
Dalton R. 2005. "More evidence for hobbit unearthed as diggers are refused access to cave." Nature 437/13: 934-935
Lahr M.M., and Foley R. 2004. "Human Evolution Writ Small." Nature 431:1043-1044
Morwood M.J., Soejono R.P., Roberts R.G., Sutikna T., Turney C.S.M., Westaway K.E., Rink W.J., Zhao J.-X., van den Bergh G.D., Rokus Awe Due, Hobbs D.R., Moore M.W., Bird M.I., and Fifield L.K. 2004. "Archaeology and age of a new hominin from Flores in eastern Indonesia." Nature 431:1087-1091
Morwood M.J., Brown P., Jatmiko, Sutikna T., Wahyu Saptomo E., Westaway K.E., Rokus Awe Due, Roberts R.G., Maeda T., Wasisto S., and Djubiantono T. 2005. "Further evidence for small-bodied hominins from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia." Nature 437/13:1012-1017
O'Connell J.F., and Allen J. 2004. "Dating the colonization of Sahul (Pleistocene Australia-New Guinea): a review of recent research." Journal of Archaeological Science 31:835-853
Roberts R.G., Jones R., and Smith M.A. 1990. "Thermoluminescence dating of a 50,000 year-old human occupation site in northern Australia." Nature 345:153-156
Turney C.S.M. et al. 2001. "Early human occupation at Devil's Lair, southwestern Australia 50,000 years ago." Quaternary Research 55:3-13
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Search for the ancestor of Homo floresiensis on Java The search for more specimens of the Homo floresiensis, first discovered in Liang Bua cave on Flores and nick-named "Hobbits," has now been extended to Song Gupuh cave on Java. Still more caves are being investigated as likely targets for excavation. The main aim now is to find the ancestors of Homo floresiensis and to establish why, where, when and how its tiny stature developed. The relationship of Homo floresiensis to Homo erectus at the moment is merely conjectural (ref. Dalton R. 2005. "Looking for the ancestors." Nature 434:432-434, 24 Mar 2005). The Excavations at Song Gupuh cave on Java. The cave would have been as attractive for early
hominins as was Liang Bua on Flores. The
interesting difference is that during ice ages with
low sea levels, Java could be reached easily by
walking across dry land. Flores, on the other hand,
is surrounded by deep-sea trenches and for millions
of years has been an island. The earliest Florean
pre-humans must have had some way of crossing the
narrow but nevertheless formidable passage. Homo erectus is thought to have survived on Java
until perhaps 50,000 years ago while on Flores what
was possibly a form of Homo erectus, Homo
floresiensis survived until 12,000 years ago.
The search at Song Gupuh and other caves in
Indonesia may answer the question (and no doubt
throw up countless new ones). But no new evidence
has so far been forthcoming. |
Some relevant Links:
- http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/flores/#weblinks
- http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/teuku-obit/
- http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1027_041027_homo_floresiensis.html
- http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/photogalleries/homo_floresiensis_1/
- http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/homo_floresiensis/
- http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/teuku-obit/
- http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2008/03/were-hobbits-cretins.html
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Last change 31 March 2008
