 is one of the leaders of the excavation of the cave that yielded the skeleton.)
Strange skeleton from Flores, Indonesia, calls into question which human ancestor was the first to leave Africa—and when. Archaeologist Thomas Sutikna (left) is one of the leaders of the excavation of the cave that yielded the skeleton.
Image: Djuna Ivereigh
In Brief
- In 2004 researchers working on the island of Flores in Indonesia found bones of a miniature human species—formally named Homo floresiensis and nicknamed the hobbit—that lived as recently as 17,000 years ago.
- Scientists initially postulated that H. floresiensis descended from H. erectus, a human
ancestor with body proportions similar to our own. - New investigations show that the hobbits were more primitive than researchers thought,
however—a finding that could overturn key assumptions about human evolution.
In 2004 a team of Australian and Indonesian scientists who had been excavating a cave called Liang Bua on the Indonesian island of Flores announced that they had unearthed something extraordinary: a partial skeleton of an adult human female who would have stood just over a meter tall and who had a brain a third as large as our own. The specimen, known to scientists as LB1, quickly received a fanciful nickname—the hobbit, after writer J.R.R. Tolkien’s fictional creatures. The team proposed that LB1 and the other fragmentary remains they recovered represent a previously unknown human species, Homo floresiensis. Their best guess was that H. floresiensis was a descendant of H. erectus—the first species known to have colonized outside of Africa. The creature evolved its small size, they surmised, as a response to the limited resources available on its island home—a phenomenon that had previously been documented in other mammals, but never humans.
The finding jolted the paleoanthropological community. Not only was H. floresiensis being held up as the first example of a human following the so-called island rule, but it also seemed to reverse a trend toward ever larger brain size over the course of human evolution. Furthermore, the same deposits in which the small-bodied, small-brained individuals were found also yielded stone tools for hunting and butchering animals, as well as remainders of fires for cooking them—rather advanced behaviors for a creature with a brain the size of a chimpanzee’s. And astonishingly, LB1 lived just 18,000 years ago—thousands of years after our other late-surviving relatives, the Neandertals and H. erectus, disappeared [see “The Littlest Human,” by Kate Wong; Scientific American, February 2005].
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20 Comments
Add CommentShe might not have been able to run very fast but I bet she was a pretty good swimmer. With feet like that she could propel herself and a log or something to hide behind and carry weapons on just by kicking.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAvery thought provoking articlr. Has anyone considered that the Hobbits and the modern Pygmies might have had a common ancestor?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI hope that these discoveries keep on coming. It seems that the story of life on Earth keeps getting better and better. How the "Hobits" fit into the story of Sapient beings is still not clear. Thirty years ago the texts seemed clear with the evidence that was on hand. Those text are no longer valid as more and more sites are discovered and more pieces of the puzzle are uncovered. Lucy's discovery changed everything and the changes keep on coming. I am sure more sites will be found in this area of the world. I just hope it is my life time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAfter looking at the reconstruction included with the print version I have to ask, was the Hobbit even human? That is, a member of the genus Homo.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm thinking more Australopithecine. Maybe even a different genus altogether. The animal just looks too ape-like to be human.
Of course, based on what I know I have to say I consider the animal sometimes referred to as Homo georgicus is more an australopithecine itself, with its immediate descendent Homo ergaster the first species we can call human.
Using my nomenclature, Australopithecus Rudolfensis migrates out of Africa. One branch migrates into South Asia, and after a long series of migrations one descendant ends up on Flores Island in Indonesia as Australopithecus Floresiensis.
At the same time another branch arises in the Dmanansi region as Australopithecus georgicus, which in turn gives rise to Homo ergaster. It is H. ergaster from which H. erectus evolves, one population of which migrates back into Africa where H. rhodensis and H. sapiens evolve.
Meanwhile back in Eurasia another H. ergaster line migrates into Europe which is ancestral to H. antecessor, H. heideldergiensis, and H. neanderthaliensis.
All this subject to revision of course.
I would find that surprising since modern pygmies are the same species as you and me. They do not have tiny chimp brains, but big human brains. I would find it very hard to believe that different races of humans evolved from different species, and there's no indication that the "hobbits" weren't another dead end in the genus Homo completely unrelated to Homo sapiens. Futhermore, even if this were possible, 17,000 is almost certainly far too little for such radical changes to have occurred.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen again, I'm convinced there are still many things to be discovered that will upend our understanding of evolution.
What I can't believe is that so many supposed scientist think it's a deformed human. It's obviously not homo-sapian.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNor can I believe that a small brained homo couldn't be smart. I know fully grown people under 3' tall, small headed proportionally, thus brained, and they are very smart.
An island constrained poulation can fairly quickly evolve smaller body size, as a benefit to survival. Perhaps the most studied case of this is the pygmy mammoth. It'd be beneficial to understand how their brain case size compared to 'normal' mammoths before making judgements about viability of small bodied, small brained hominoids.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen why not people living in small islands today are not small?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can only guess that size adaptation occured when a population is somewhat confined and isolated on an island for long periods of time. That seems to be how the pygmy mammoth developed. As I understand, some islands with pygmy mammoth populations also had contemporaneous smaller populations of ‘normal’ mammoths.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe idea that the ancestors of the hobbits left Africa much earlier than homo erectus is possible if it can be proven the climate and environment at that time is viable for the ancestors of the hobbits to travel. To predict where the next fossil sites, will have to answer the former first.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe reason Floresienses is Homo is because of the many stone tools found at the site... they found stone tools going back to 780,000 ya. You left out H. habilis Alan, the first tool maker and current definition of human.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor jtdwyer, the dwarfed brain of a pygmy elephant is properly proportioned... the dwarfed brain of H. floresenienses is disproportionately small. Yet, the evidence points toward human behaviors like tool-making, hunting and fire.
Floresiensis is Homo (human) because of all the stone tools associated with the find. While the single skull dates from 70,000 to 38,000 ya, some of the stone tools were dated back to 780,000 years ago. You forgot Homo habilis Alan, who basically defined being human as the "toolmaker".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor jtdwyer, the brain of a pygmy elephant (or mammoth) which has gone through the process of "island dwarfism" is proportionally sized with its larger ancestors. The brain of H. floresienses seems disproportionally small.
On a more curious note, it seems that elephants are very adept swimmers, who have swam very long distances for unknown reasons just to get to some of these islands.
Today an article appeared that could mean the hobbit's large feet would be an advantage for sprinting: GOOGLE for the article: "Long toes may give sprinters more speed" on CBC or Vancouver Sun. Here is the opening statements: "Research on sprinters suggests that runners with long toes and short heel bones could have an advantage over other athletes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSabrina Lee, a biomechanics researcher at Simon Fraser University, and Stephen Piazza of Penn State University compared ultrasound images of 12 college sprinters and 12 non-athletes.....
Finn Schmidt-Hansen
Darwin didn't say a whole lot about human evolution, but neither he, nor modern scientists postulate that humans evolved from chimps. Instead the idea is that humans and chimps derive from a common ancestor.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd that ancestor may have been very different from either chimps or humans. Have you been reading the news about "Ardi" lately? And there are many other fossils that could be said to be intermediate between apes and humans, so certainly there are many "missing links".
May I suggest, with all due respect, that your understanding of evolution is limited. If the subject interests you, by all means continue to study it
fb36, because people living on small islands today are not subject to the same environmental pressures as in the prehistoric past- i.e., today there are McDonalds and Starbucks located on these small islands. In the past, food sources would have been very constrained, therefore those individuals who needed lower caloric intakes would have survived more often, been more successful and left more offspring.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfb36, because people living on small islands today are not subject to the same environmental pressures as in the prehistoric past- i.e., today there are McDonalds and Starbucks located on these small islands. In the past, food sources would have been very constrained, therefore those individuals who needed lower caloric intakes would have survived more often, been more successful and left more offspring.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHobbits, the Irish Wee People, the Hawaiian menahune, the pygmys are all examples of humans shrinking to fit the resources in their environment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy some organisms shrink and others turn into giants is a puzzle. Both happen. The Komodo dragons and the Samoans turn into giants. The hobbits, the hawaiian menehune, the Irish wee people, the dwarf mammoths went the other way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's not about climate or environment. It's simply that small groups of Austalopithecines just walked over to the next valley to get food ... then the next valley, then the next, etc. We already know the climate and the environment 3.8 million years ago was such to provide livable areas from Africa to Indonesia. Remember, they don't have to make it in one trip or one generation. They could have taken 10,000 years or more. There have been fossils found at Dmasi in Georgia (the country) that are transitional between Habilis and Erectus: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/d2700.html So it is feasible that Australopithecines also walked out of Africa. However, it's a huge area (since it can be anywhere between Africa and Indonesia) to look at and we need the strata from the appropriate time period to be at the surface and we need the Australopithecines to have stopped there and be fossilized. Getting all of those together in one place is very difficult.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, since pygmies are H. sapiens (us), then of course there was a common ancestor between us and H. floriensis back in the Austalopithecines. But if you mean a DIRECT evolutionary ancestor, that does not make pygmies H. sapiens, then no. Pygmies are just very small members of our species.
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