Topic 4: The "Hobbit": New Species or Disfigured Prehistoric Human?
"A male Homo floresiensis may have looked
something like this"
(Image: National Geographic)
-- BBC
Sunday's Minneapolis Star-Tribune / The New York Times reported:
Bones may be from distinct species:
Scientists say the "little people" of Indonesia aren't humans with a disorder
(23 September 2007, p. A17)
(This item/article will probably appear in the Duluth News Tribune sometime this week.)
Some say the "Hobbit," as the Indonesian Homo floresiensis finds are called, were one of the most important finds ever made in the area of Prehistoric Cultures. Since the announcement of their discovery in 2004 there has been much debate as to whether they are a small, pygmy-like species of prehistoric human (and a descendent of Homo erectus), or whether they were just a type of modern human with some sort of physical disorder. (Some say LB1, one of the eight people found, was a microcephalic modern human, for example.)
The skull of what may be a new human species top, compared to a"modern" human skull.
Homo floresiensis ("Hobbit")
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The brief article from Sunday, 23 September 2007:
By John Noble Wilford, New York Times
Last update: September 22, 2007 – 11:56 PM
In the continuing debate over the origin of the extinct "little people" of Indonesia, a team of scientists says it has found evidence in three wrist bones that these people were members of a distinct species rather than humans with a physical disorder.
The researchers describe the new findings in a report published recently in the journal Science. Critics disputed the interpretation, saying this was not clear evidence for the existence of a separate species, known as Homo floresiensis.
The discovery, in a cave on the island of Flores, of skeletal remains of the diminutive people with unusually small heads was a sensation when it was announced three years ago. Some scientists contended that these were more likely to be modern humans who suffered a developmental disorder that causes the head and brain to be much smaller than average.
In the new study, scientists led by Matthew Tocheri, an anthropologist of human origins at the Smithsonian Institution, examined wrist bones from the skeletons and found them to be primitive and shaped differently than the wrist bones of modern humans. For example, the trapezoid bone connected to the index finger was wedge-shaped, not boot-shaped, as in modern humans. The scientists said these wrist bones were closer in shape to those of apes.
This evidence, the scientists wrote, indicated the individuals were not modern humans "with an undiagnosed pathology or growth defect." Rather, they represented a species that descended from an ancestor that branched off from the human lineage at least 800,000 years ago, the scientists concluded. The specimens from the Flores cave lived at various times from 120,000 to 10,000 years ago.
NEW YORK TIMES
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The "Hobbit's" "family tree"
See the class page on the "Hobbit"
at <www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/troufs/anth1602/pchobbit.html#title>
and read two or three of the articles that you find there
Questions:
1. What information is important to look at to determine whether not The "Hobbit" is a new prehistoric species of human?
2. Do you think The "Hobbit" is a new species or a deformed version of modern humans? Why?
3. If The "Hobbit" is a new species, why would that probably make it the most significant prehistoric discovery of your lifetime (so far)?
P.S. The real Hobbit's birthday was last Friday. The Hobbit was first published on September 21, 1937, by J. R. R. Tolkien. |
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