Pushing the Mini-Me Nonsense
Homo TomThumbus
The discovery of the skeletal remains of hobbit-size humans on a remote island in Indonesia has set anthropologists atwitter. The bones appear to belong to a new and unexpected species of humans, little more than three feet high, who lived among giant rats and pygmy elephants on the island of Flores until at least 13,000 years ago. That would make these miniature people contemporaries of our own human ancestors for tens of thousands of years, though no one knows if they ever met.
If the findings hold up, the partial skeleton of a 30-year-old woman and bone fragments from six other individuals suggest that Homo floresiensis, or Flores man, is a descendant of the Homo erectus line that left Africa some 1.8 million years ago. Scientists speculate that full-size members of the line reached Flores more than 800,000 years ago, were marooned and evolved in isolation. With scant food and few predators, large size became a disadvantage. That favored the evolution of smaller humans and smaller elephants, which needed far fewer calories to live. A surprising byproduct of this downsizing was that the brain of Flores man shrank to become smaller than a chimpanzee's. Even so, these humans were no dummies, given the evidence that they used fire, made stone tools and hunted cooperatively.
The Floresians may have been wiped out, along with the pygmy elephants, by volcanic eruptions some 12,000 years ago, although local lore speaks of "little people" living in remote caves on the island right up to the 1500's, when Dutch traders arrived. Speculative minds raise the possibility that even today, in some remote corner of Earth, a primitive line of humans remains to be discovered.
That's probably pushing it. But the new discovery chips away at our smug notion that human evolution is a steady march toward bigger and brainier. In a tough environment, smaller may fare better. Meanwhile, our long reign as the sole human species on Earth appears to be shorter than we thought.
The discovery of the skeletal remains of hobbit-size humans on a remote island in Indonesia has set anthropologists atwitter. The bones appear to belong to a new and unexpected species of humans, little more than three feet high, who lived among giant rats and pygmy elephants on the island of Flores until at least 13,000 years ago. That would make these miniature people contemporaries of our own human ancestors for tens of thousands of years, though no one knows if they ever met.
If the findings hold up, the partial skeleton of a 30-year-old woman and bone fragments from six other individuals suggest that Homo floresiensis, or Flores man, is a descendant of the Homo erectus line that left Africa some 1.8 million years ago. Scientists speculate that full-size members of the line reached Flores more than 800,000 years ago, were marooned and evolved in isolation. With scant food and few predators, large size became a disadvantage. That favored the evolution of smaller humans and smaller elephants, which needed far fewer calories to live. A surprising byproduct of this downsizing was that the brain of Flores man shrank to become smaller than a chimpanzee's. Even so, these humans were no dummies, given the evidence that they used fire, made stone tools and hunted cooperatively.
The Floresians may have been wiped out, along with the pygmy elephants, by volcanic eruptions some 12,000 years ago, although local lore speaks of "little people" living in remote caves on the island right up to the 1500's, when Dutch traders arrived. Speculative minds raise the possibility that even today, in some remote corner of Earth, a primitive line of humans remains to be discovered.
That's probably pushing it. But the new discovery chips away at our smug notion that human evolution is a steady march toward bigger and brainier. In a tough environment, smaller may fare better. Meanwhile, our long reign as the sole human species on Earth appears to be shorter than we thought.
posted by R7 | 10/29/2004 10:42:00 AM
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