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<< News >> 'Hobbits' in Indonesia

Submitted by Anonymous on Thursday, 25 January 2007  Page Views: 16520

Other ArchaeologyCountry: Indonesia Scientists have discovered a new and tiny species of human that lived in Indonesia at the same time our own ancestors were colonising the world. The new species - dubbed "the Hobbit" due to its small size - lived on Flores island until at least 12,000 years ago. The fact that little people feature in the legends of modern Flores islanders suggests we might have to take tales of Bigfoot and the Yeti more seriously. .

"The whole idea that you need a particular brain size to do anything intelligent is completely blown away by this find."
Dr Henry Gee, Nature

Australian archaeologists made the discovery while digging at a site called Liang Bua, one of numerous limestone caves on Flores.
The remains of the partial skeleton were found at a depth of 5.9m. At first, the researchers thought it was the body of a child. But further investigation revealed otherwise.

Wear on the teeth and growth lines on the skull confirm it was an adult, features of the pelvis identify it as female and a leg bone confirms that it walked upright like we do.

"When we got the dates back from the skeleton and we found out how young it was, one anthropologist working with us said it must be wrong because it had so many archaic [primitive] traits," said co-discoverer Mike Morwood, associate professor of archaeology at the University of New England, Australia.

The 18,000-year-old specimen, known as Liang Bua 1 or LB1, has been assigned to a new species called Homo floresiensis . It was about one metre tall with long arms and a skull the size of a large grapefruit.

The researchers have since found remains belonging to six other individuals from the same species.

LB1 shared its island with a pony-sized dwarf elephant called Stegodon, a golden retriever-sized rat, giant tortoises and huge lizards - including Komodo dragons.

More at BBC News on the links below

Note: Clearance has been achieved to further investigate the environment of Homo Floriensis. See link in comment.

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Re: 'Hobbits' in Indonesia by Condros on Wednesday, 29 September 2010
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It seems that some of the "orthodox paleoanthropologists" discontent with the idea that their straight single line "evolutionary" theory was challenged by the "Hobbits" which did not fit in their theories, has had another challenge laid at it's door. This time in re-examining the skulls the orthodox scientists have determined that the hobbits are really homo sapiens that suffered from an Iodine Deficiency. This of course did not seem to take into account other more "primitive" aspects of the skeletal remains. So I guess the argument will go on with new insights like so many others in the "evolutionary theories" without ever coming to a truthful conclusion.
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For additional stories .... by bat400 on Friday, 23 April 2010
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For other news posts on the Flores Hobbit, see Stones Forum.
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Early Humans May Have Been Hobbits, Scientists Say by bat400 on Wednesday, 09 December 2009
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Submitted by coldrum --

In a strange case of science imitating art, one hobbit has again become the center of a heated and ongoing conflict. Since its 2003 discovery on the Indonesian island of Flores, the Homo floresiensis has caused scientists across the world to debate whether the find is a new species or simply a variation of the modern human. The difference could signal a major paradigm shift in the study of primitive humans.

Although several partial H. floresiensis skeletons have been identified, the majority of the attention has been given to a specimen called LB1 because it is the most complete skeleton and the only one that has an entire cranium.

The earliest known hobbit lived approximately 18,000 years ago, although archaeological records of ancient tools suggest that hobbits may have been alive as early as 12,000 years ago. Until the discovery of LB1, scientists had widely believed that the last non-modern humans were the Neanderthals, which became extinct around 24,000 years ago. If hobbits are indeed a new species, they will replace Neanderthals as the most recent non-modern humans.

Aside from its unusually short height, H. floresiensis was believed to have a very small brain. For many scientists, the brain size has become a focal point of the argument on whether H. floresiensis deserves to be classified as a new species. Opponents of hobbits as a new species contend that LB1 is simply modern human with a smaller stature and brain due to some pathological abnormality. Among the disorders proposed are Laron Syndrome (insensitivity to growth hormones), cretinism (stunted growth due to thyroid problems), and microcephaly (abnormal brain growth that results in a small head).

Prof. Dean Falk, anthropology at Florida State University and one of the main proponents of H. floresiensis’ identity as a new species, was at Cornell on Friday to explain her position and place hobbits — which she referred to as “lightning rods for controversy” — in the history of other paleontology discoveries.

Falk focused on the work of Raymond Dart. “I view 1925 as the beginning of the modern era of anthropology,” she said, referring to the year that Dart discovered his famous Taung baby. The Taung baby, estimated to be 2.5 million years old, is today seen as one of the critical factors in developing the theory that humans evolved out of Africa. At the time of its discovery, however, the specimen was rejected because it contradicted an earlier specimen called “Piltdown Man.”

It took until 1953 for the scientific community as a whole to realize that Piltdown Man was a hoax. The rejection of the Piltdown Man paved the way for Dart’s Taung baby to get another look from scientists.



In Falk’s view, the current situation with H. floresiensis is analogous to the situation faced by Dart’s Taung baby. She and her colleagues have spent much of their time since descriptions of the LB1 remains were published (2004) doing research that has led them to reject the various “sick hobbit” theories proposed by other scientists. Some of the most convincing evidence came in a 2007 study when Falk compared the LB1 brain to several normal brains and several microcephalic brains. In every instance, the LB1 brain sorted with the normal category.

Even now, the debate on H. floresiensis has not yet reached a decisive conclusion, but Falk remains optimistic that there could be one in her lifetime. “What will settle this will be what settled the others,” she said. “They have to find more fossils.”

For more, see the Cornell Sun.
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'Hobbits' are a new human species -- according to the statistical analysis of fo by Andy B on Saturday, 05 December 2009
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Researchers from Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York have confirmed that Homo floresiensis is a genuine ancient human species and not a descendant of healthy humans dwarfed by disease. Using statistical analysis on skeletal remains of a well-preserved female specimen, researchers determined the "hobbit" to be a distinct species and not a genetically flawed version of modern humans. Details of the study appear in the December issue of Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society.

In 2003 Australian and Indonesian scientists discovered small-bodied, small-brained, hominin (human-like) fossils on the remote island of Flores in the Indonesian archipelago. This discovery of a new human species called Homo floresiensis has spawned much debate with some researchers claiming that the small creatures are really modern humans whose tiny head and brain are the result of a medical condition called microcephaly.

Researchers William Jungers, Ph.D., and Karen Baab, Ph.D. studied the skeletal remains of a female (LB1), nicknamed "Little Lady of Flores" or "Flo" to confirm the evolutionary path of the hobbit species. The specimen was remarkably complete and included skull, jaw, arms, legs, hands, and feet that provided researchers with integrated information from an individual fossil.

The cranial capacity of LB1 was just over 400 cm, making it more similar to the brains of a chimpanzee or bipedal "ape-men" of East and South Africa. The skull and jawbone features are much more primitive looking than any normal modern human. Statistical analysis of skull shapes show modern humans cluster together in one group, microcephalic humans in another and the hobbit along with ancient hominins in a third.

Due to the relative completeness of fossil remains for LB1, the scientists were able to reconstruct a reliable body design that was unlike any modern human. The thigh bone and shin bone of LB1 are much shorter than modern humans including Central African pygmies, South African KhoeSan (formerly known as 'bushmen") and "negrito" pygmies from the Andaman Islands and the Philippines. Some researchers speculate this could represent an evolutionary reversal correlated with "island dwarfing." "It is difficult to believe an evolutionary change would lead to less economical movement," said Dr. Jungers. "It makes little sense that this species re-evolved shorter thighs and legs because long hind limbs improve bipedal walking. We suspect that these are primitive retentions instead."

Further analysis of the remains using a regression equation developed by Dr. Jungers indicates that LB1 was approximately 106 cm tall (3 feet, 6 inches)—far smaller than the modern pygmies whose adults grow to less than 150 cm (4 feet, 11 inches). A scatterplot depicts LB1 far outside the range of Southeast Asian and African pygmies in both absolute height and body mass indices. "Attempts to dismiss the hobbits as pathological people have failed repeatedly because the medical diagnoses of dwarfing syndromes and microcephaly bear no resemblance to the unique anatomy of Homo floresiensis," noted Dr. Baab.

http://www.physorg.com/news177828426.html
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Hobbit species may not have been human by coldrum on Thursday, 01 October 2009
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Hobbit species may not have been human

AFTER five years of arguments over the so-called hobbits, the University of New England paleoanthropologist who formally described the tiny new hominin species from the Indonesian island of Flores is facing another wave of controversy.

This time, Peter Brown could raise the ire of some of the scientists who supported him in an academic debate that degenerated into an international scandal.

Brown, who initially placed the species in the human genus Homo and named it Homo floresiensis, is considering stripping the hobbits of their human status.

More remains have been found, and the species is now represented by six to nine individuals, depending on how the partial skeletons are put together. The skeletons range in age from 17,000 to 95,000 years.

And a big body of research, including Brown's own, since the publication of the first papers on the find has forced a rethink of his initial classification.

In a paper accepted for publication in an upcoming special Homo floresiensis edition of the Journal of Human Evolution, Brown and colleague Tomoko Maeda, also of UNE, say the hobbits' lineage left Africa "possibly before the evolution of the genus Homo". (The root of the human family tree stretches back about two million years to Homo habilis, or Handy Man, in Africa.)

Brown says assigning the Flores hominin to a different genus would worry some scholars. "They will think it somehow marginalises Homo floresiensis; that it's a clear statement that it is not a member of our genus, and it's extinct, so we don't have to worry about it any more," he says. "That's nonsense, because it's part of the broader evolutionary story of our species."

The hobbit drama started when an Australian and Indonesian team led by archeologist Mike Morwood, now of the University of Wollongong, and Radien Soejono of the Indonesian Centre for Archeology published details of the discovery of the 18,000-year-old partial skeleton, LB1, in the British journal Nature in 2004.

The 1m-tall hominin, discovered at the Liang Bua cave site in 2003, had a low, receding forehead and no chin. Its brain capacity was well under the 500cc of the typical chimp, yet it had stone tools, had possibly tamed fire and had hunted the dwarfed elephant-like stegodon and giant rats.

Brown initially argued that the hominins had evolved on Flores from Homo erectus, then thought to be the species that had left 840,000-year-old stone tools at another Flores site. Like many island species, the hobbits had dwarfed under evolutionary pressure in an environment with limited food and few competitors.

The classification struck at the heart of the debate over two competing models of human evolution, the "out of Africa" and multiregionalist theories.

The out of Africa model states that modern humans, Homo sapiens, evolved in Africa up to 200,000 years ago. Our species then dispersed across the globe, replacing the descendants of earlier migrants, classified variously as Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis, who left Africa more than a million years ago. The modern human wave washed through southeast Asia, reaching Australia about 50,000 years ago.

Multiregionalists contend that our species evolved in various regions from the earlier African migrants. Interbreeding pushed the species in the same evolutionary direction.

In this scheme, the Africanists' different Homo species are lumped together. Multiregionalism cannot accommodate two different human species in the same region concurrently. The Flores hobbit had overlapped with modern humans, at least in the region, so Brown's assignment of it to Homo challenged the multiregionalist model.

Rival researchers led by veteran Indonesian paleoanthropologist Teuku Jacob, a multiregionalist, "borrowed" the Liang Bua excavators' LB1 specimen in 2004, causing a storm in the international scien

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Humans, Flores 'hobbits' existed together: study by coldrum on Thursday, 01 October 2009
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Humans, Flores 'hobbits' existed together: study

They were just one metre tall with very long arms, no chins, wrist bones like gorillas and extremely long feet.

In 2003, archaeologists excavating in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores made a discovery that forced scientists to completely rethink conventional theories of human evolution.

They reported the discovery of a new species of human, one that lived as recently as 12,000 years ago, at the same time as modern humans.

But others disagreed, arguing the one-metre-high skeleton was a modern human that suffered from a deformity known as microcephaly.

The debate has raged ever since. But Debbie Argue, a PhD student from the ANU's Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, believes she has settled the question by comparing bone fragments from the hobbits to other hominids.

"We compared them to almost every species in our genus, as well as Australopithecine, which was a genus before Homo evolved," Ms Argue said.

"Of course, we included Homo sapiens.

"We discovered that Homo floresiensis ranged off the family tree almost at the beginning of the evolution of our genus, Homo.

"So that would have been over two million years ago, and as such a very, very primitive being."

'Paradigm shift'

Ms Argue's work was published recently in the Journal of Human Evolution.

She describes the work as a paradigm shift in archaeology, overturning the notion that Homo sapiens were the only hominids on the planet after the extinction of Homo erectus and the Neanderthals.

"This is science, so maybe [it's] not the definitive proof but a very, very solid hypothesis," she said.

"This is the first time such a huge and comprehensive set of characteristics about the whole of the body of Homo floresiensis has been but into one analysis."

Ms Argue says her work challenges another major cornerstone in the theory of human evolution.

"This means that something very, very primitive came out of Africa," she said.

"Previous to this we thought that what came out of Africa had modern body proportions and an expanded brain case, but this is a much more primitive being.

"We know that Homo floresiensis was, in Flores at least, from 100,000 years ago to about 12,000 years ago. And at that time, or at least from 40,000 years ago, we had modern humans in Asia and New Guinea and Australia.

"So here we were sharing the planet where we thought we'd been the only people that survived after the end of the Neanderthals."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/02/2643415.htm
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Re: A Tiny Hominid With No Place on the Family Tree by Anonymous on Wednesday, 30 September 2009
So much for the "Evolution Out of Africa" theory, now they're claiming that H. Floriensis actually went back to Africa,
And the scientific community is considering to remove this remarkable discovery from the genus "Homo" altogether. because it didn't fit with accepted "evolutionary theories".

Who knows, just maybe, someday, they'll discover that various groups of Homo came out of many areas of the world, Not just Africa.
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A Tiny Hominid With No Place on the Family Tree by coldrum on Wednesday, 17 June 2009
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A Tiny Hominid With No Place on the Family Tree

Six years after their discovery, the extinct little people nicknamed hobbits who once occupied the Indonesian island of Flores remain mystifying anomalies in human evolution, out of place in time and geography, their ancestry unknown. Recent research has only widened their challenge to conventional thinking about the origins, transformations and migrations of the early human family.
Indeed, the more scientists study the specimens and their implications, the more they are drawn to heretical speculation.

¶Were these primitive survivors of even earlier hominid migrations out of Africa, before Homo erectus migrated about 1.8 million years ago? Could some of the earliest African toolmakers, around 2.5 million years ago, have made their way across Asia?

¶Did some of these migrants evolve into new species in Asia, which moved back to Africa? Two-way traffic is not unheard of in other mammals.

¶Or could the hobbits be an example of reverse evolution? That would seem even more bizarre; there are no known cases in primate evolution of a wholesale reversion to some ancestor in its lineage.

The possibilities get curiouser and curiouser, said William L. Jungers of Stony Brook University, making hobbits “the black swan of paleontology — totally unpredicted and inexplicable.”

Everything about them seems incredible. They were very small, not much more than three feet tall, yet do not resemble any modern pygmies. They walked upright on short legs, but might have had a peculiar gait obviating long-distance running. The single skull that has been found is no bigger than a grapefruit, suggesting a brain less than one-third the size of a human’s, yet they made stone tools similar to those produced by other hominids with larger brains. They appeared to live isolated on an island as recently as 17,000 years ago, well after humans had made it to Australia.

Although the immediate ancestor of modern humans, Homo erectus, lived in Asia and the islands for hundreds of thousands of years, the hobbits were not simply scaled-down erectus. In fact, erectus and Homo sapiens appear to be more closely related to each other than either is to the hobbit, scientists have determined.

It is no wonder, then, that the announcement describing the skull and the several skeletons as remains of a previously unknown hominid species, Homo floresiensis, prompted heated debate. Critics contended that these were merely modern human dwarfs afflicted with genetic or pathological disorders.

Scientists who reviewed hobbit research at a symposium here last week said that a consensus had emerged among experts in support of the initial interpretation that H. floresiensis is a distinct hominid species much more primitive than H. sapiens. On display for the first time at the meeting was a cast of the skull and bones of a H. floresiensis, probably an adult female.

Several researchers showed images of hobbit brain casts in comparison with those of deformed human brains. They said this refuted what they called the “sick hobbit hypothesis.” They also reported telling shoulder and wrist differences between humans and the island inhabitants.

Even so, skeptics have not capitulated. They note that most of the participants at the symposium had worked closely with the Australian and Indonesian scientists who made the discovery in 2003 and complain that their objections have been largely ignored by the news media and organizations financing research on the hobbits.

Some prominent paleoanthropologists are reserving judgment, among them Richard Leakey, the noted hominid fossil hunter who is chairman of the Turkana Basin Institute at Stony Brook University. Like other undecided scientists, he cited the need to find more skeletons at other sites, especially a few more skulls.

Mr. Leakey conceded, however, that the recent research “

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Island find stirs Hobbit debate by coldrum on Wednesday, 21 May 2008
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Island find stirs Hobbit debate

The discovery on South Pacific islands of ancient bones thought to belong to a tribe of tiny humans has raised new anthropological questions.

Radiocarbon dating suggests the little people lived on the islands of Palau a few thousand years ago.

Scientists believe they were true humans who shrank, perhaps because of a genetic disorder or lack of food.

The find fuels new debate over the "Hobbit", a tiny human that lived on the island of Flores, 2,000km away.

Some experts believe the Hobbit was a distinct species of human, Homo floresiensis, rather than Homo sapiens like us.

But others think the Hobbit's strange features, such as its particularly small brain, cannot be reconciled with our present knowledge of the origins of modern humans.

They believe the remains are of true humans who were diseased in some way.

Chance find

The latest twist in the Hobbit story concerns the discovery of the bones and skulls of 26 individuals in caves on small islands in the Pacific nation of Palau. The fossils have been radiocarbon dated to between 1,400 and 3,000 years ago.

One male individual weighed around 43kg (94lb) while a female weighed 29kg (64lb). They would have grown to about 4ft (120cm) tall.

However, while small, their skulls had many human-like features.

Professor Lee Berger from the University of the Witwaterstrand, South Africa, made the discovery while kayaking around the islands on holiday. He thinks the people were true dwarfs rather than a separate human species.

They simply grew smaller, perhaps because of the pressures of island life or a genetic disorder, he says.

Writing in the journal PLoS One, Professor Berger and colleagues argue that the features seen in the Hobbit fossil in Flores may also be an adaptation to island life, "regardless of taxonomic affinity".

He said: "Under any circumstances the Palauan sample supports at least the possibility that the Flores hominins [modern humans, their ancestors and relatives since divergence from apes] are simply an island adapted population of H. sapiens, perhaps with some individuals expressing congenital abnormalities."

Chris Stringer, lead researcher in the human origins programme at London's Natural History Museum, who was not part of the study, thinks it is a plausible explanation.

The phenomenon, known as island dwarfing, has been seen in many animals, including extinct mammoths and elephants.

"It shows the plasticity of the human skeleton - modern humans certainly can be subject to the island dwarfing mechanism," Professor Stringer told BBC News.

He believes the new find has limited relevance to the Flores story, because the Hobbit was a "distinct and primitive species, not a human pathology".

Others, though, take an opposing view.

He added: "Some people just cannot accept that it [the Hobbit] is what it claims to be. It's a very challenging find."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7290090.stm
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Micronesian Islands Colonized by Small-Bodied Humans by coldrum on Tuesday, 20 May 2008
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Micronesian Islands Colonized by Small-Bodied Humans

Since the reporting of the so-called “hobbit” fossil from the island of Flores in Indonesia, debate has raged as to whether these remains are of modern humans (Homo sapiens), reduced, for some reason, in stature, or whether they represent a new species, Homo floresiensis. Reporting in this week’s PLoS ONE in a study funded by the National Geographic Society Mission Programs, Lee Berger and colleagues from the University of the Witwatersrand, Rutgers University and Duke University, describe the fossils of small-bodied humans from the Micronesian island of Palau. These people inhabited the island between 1400 and 3000 years ago and share some – although not all – features with the H. floresiensis specimens.

Palau is situated in the Western Caroline Islands and consists of a main island of Babeldaob, with hundreds of smaller rock islands to the south west, colloquially known as the ‘‘rock islands.” These rock islands contain caves and rock shelters, in many of which, fossilized and subfossilized human remains have been found. The specimens described by Berger and colleagues came from two such caves, Ucheliungs and Omedokel, which appear to have been used as burial sites. In both caves, they found skeletons of individuals who would have been small even relative to other such populations and are approximately the size of H. floresiensis or small members of the genus Australopithecus. These fossils were radiocarbon dated to between 1410 and 2890 years ago. The entrance to Omedokel cave also contained the remains of larger individuals dated to between 940 and 1080 years ago.

These two caves have provided and will continue to provide a wealth of specimens, which will need more intensive study. However, preliminary analysis of more than a dozen individuals including a male who would have weighed around 43 kg and a female of 29 kg, show that these small-bodied people had many craniofacial features considered unique to H. sapiens. These include: a distinct maxillary canine fossa, a clearly delimited mandibular mental trigone (in most specimens), moderate bossing of the frontal and parietal squama, a lateral prominence on the temporal mastoid process, reduced temporal juxtamastoid eminences and an en maison cranial vault profile with the greatest interparietal breadth high on the vault. Thus, these individuals are likely to be from a human population who acquired reduced stature, for some reason.

It is well established that populations living on isolated islands often consist of individuals of smaller stature than their mainland cousins – a phenomenon known as island dwarfism. This is true not just for humans but for many animals including extinct mammoths and elephants from islands off Siberia, California and even in the Mediterranean. Alternatively, the island may have been colonized by a few small individuals, between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago who, through extensive inbreeding, and other environmental drivers, produced a small-bodied population, which continued to inhabit Palau until at least 1400 years ago.

As well as having characteristics of H. sapiens, the Palau fossils also have features seen in H. floresiensis, such as their small bodies and faces, pronounced supraorbital tori, non-projecting chins, relative megadontia, expansion of the occlusal surface of the premolars, rotation of teeth within the maxilla and mandible, and dental agenesis. Berger and colleagues do not infer from these features any direct relationship between the peoples of Palau and Flores; however, these observations do suggest that at least some of the features which have been taken as evidence that the Flores individuals are members of a separate species, may be a common adaptation in humans of reduced stature.

Detailed analysis of the Palau specimens is unlikely to settle arguments over the status of H. floresiensis as there are features of Flores man, such as small brain size, not found in t

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'Hobbit' wrists 'were primitive' by coldrum on Wednesday, 17 October 2007
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'Hobbit' wrists 'were primitive'

Careful study of the "Hobbit" fossil's wrist bones supports the idea that the creature was a distinct species and not a diseased modern human, it is claimed.
Matthew Tocheri and colleagues tell Science magazine that the bones look nothing like those of Homo sapiens; they look ape-like.

The announcement in 2004 detailing the discovery of Homo floresiensis caused a sensation.

Some researchers, though, have doubted the interpretation of the find.

These individuals - including the Indonesian palaeoanthropologist Teuku Jacob - have argued that the remains are probably those of a pygmy with the brain defect known as microcephaly.

But the new analysis by Tocheri, from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, US, and co-authors will add further weight to the original assessment.

Their study shows that the wrist bones of the Hobbit are primitive and shaped differently from the bones of both modern humans and even their near-evolutionary cousins, the now extinct Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis).

The creature's wrist lacks a modern innovation seen in both these other human species - a wrist that distributes forces away from the base of the thumb and across the wrist for better shock-absorbing abilities.

"What was very clear from my perspective looking at the Hobbit's wrist bones is that it does not belong in the group that includes modern humans and Neanderthals. It basically has the same type of wrist that we see in [the ancient hominid] Homo habilis, that we see in Australopithecus (the famous 'Lucy' fossil) and that we see in living chimps and gorillas today," Matthew Tocheri told BBC News.

The 18,000-year-old bones of the Hobbit were unearthed on the Indonesian island of Flores, in a limestone cave at a site called Liang Bua.

Researchers found one near-complete skeleton of a female, which they designated LB1, along with the remains of at least eight other individuals.

The scientists believe these 1m-tall (3ft), small-brained people evolved a short stature to cope with the limited supply of food on the island.

The specimens were nicknamed Hobbits after the tiny creatures in JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Subsequent detailed study of LB1's brain case and the tools found with the bones also support the position that H. floresiensis was a species distinct from modern humans.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7004525.stm
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Re: 'Hobbits' in Indonesia by ryszard on Sunday, 28 January 2007
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Maybe here were Little People in Ireland too?
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Re: 'Hobbits' in Indonesia by cropredy on Thursday, 25 January 2007
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They just HAD to be in a cave?
I hope they watch out for a hole appearing at the back of the cave.
Perhapr Mr Tolkien was merely recounting a previous life episode?
Kevin, good at invisable things
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Re: 'Hobbits' in Indonesia by TimPrevett on Thursday, 25 January 2007
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Archaeologists who found the remains of human "Hobbits" have permission to restart excavations at the cave where the specimens were found. More at the The BBC
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Hobbit like humans show Indonesia was "middle earth" by coldrum on Sunday, 21 January 2007
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In a world first, a book detailing the discovery of a lost species of hobbit-like people who lived on a remote tropical Indonesian island less than 20,000 years ago was launched in Armidale in northern NSW on Saturday.

According to research completed by University of New England Professor, Mike Moorwood, the artefacts his group unearthed during a 2003 archaeological dig on Flores Island suggest a kind of "middle earth" existed there, with metre-high humans hunting miniature elephants, giant rodents and Komodo dragons.

Professor Moorwood wrote "The Discovery of the Hobbit" about the Liang Bua limestone caves on Flores Island in consultation with colleague Penny Van Oosterzee. The Armidale-based project included a team of Australian and Indonesian specialists and was facilitated through the local Flores community.

The book details the existence of an ancient group of people, "a previously unsuspected, tiny species of human living on a remote island in east Indonesia, and overlapping considerably in time with us," and explains the modern day politics that have surrounded the breakthrough.

The near complete preserved skeleton found by the team was affectionately known as "The Hobbit" because it bore striking similarities to JRR Tolkien's famous characters in Lord of the Rings.

The bones are thought to be those of a Homo Floresiensis, a hairless adult female about one metre in height with a head the size of a grapefruit, long neck and arms, a flat nose, large teeth and no chin, a previously unknown human species.

Homo Floresiensis was a major international evolutionary find, sending shockwaves through the scientific community across the world with far reaching potential historical, religious, social and biological implications.

The international media response was frenzied with Professor Moorwood and his colleagues fielding hundreds of calls for interviews daily, gaining coverage across the globe.The authors describe the flurry of media activity in the book; "This was a scientific discovery being talked about in villages, towns and urban centres everywhere. It was a topic of conversation in beauty salons and barbershops, school and university staffrooms and every type of workplace imaginable."

The revelation of a human with small brain and dwarfed feature was made more groundbreaking by the complex tools found in the same area of the excavated site. The existence of these implements suggested the species was able to hunt, use fire and even developed a language many years before the characteristics of modern human civilisation.

Professor Moorwood said the implications were "far-reaching" and "staggering" because if correct they showed brain size may not be the predicator of intelligence.

The find was not without controversy and the legitimacy of the claims was put into question by scientists around the world. The evidence flies in the face of much accepted research into the evolution of the modern human.

Claims that a group of Indonesian academics hijacked and sabotaged the bones to conceal the truth of the discovery are all documented in the book along with the arguments of many of the critics.

The authors welcome the response of the cynics but have used the book to reveal their first-person account of the discovery.

"Skepticism and rigour in assessing new findings and claims are fundamental in science, but so are objectivity, an open mind and the capacity to take on board the unexpected," Professor Moorwood said.

moora.yourguide.
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Re: Hobbits in Indonesia by TimPrevett on Thursday, 01 June 2006
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"The hobbit-like human was smart enough to make stone tools despite its small brain, according to research" published in Nature magazine, and detailed on the BBC News Website
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Re: Hobbits in Indonesia by Anonymous on Tuesday, 11 October 2005
Again hobbits found;

http://news.indahnesia.com/item.php?code=200510114
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    Re: Hobbits in Indonesia by Thorgrim on Tuesday, 11 October 2005
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    If they have now found bones from more than one individual then that would strengthen the case for a new species rather than a diseased and stunted individual of our own species.
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Re: Hobbits in Indonesia by Anonymous on Tuesday, 11 October 2005
once i heard of Hobbits i went striaght to find out what was going on! I have read the book "The Hobbit" by J.R.R Tolkien and a big fan of his so this is very interesting I'm really happy i heard of this or else i wouldn't be typing this well thx.
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Re: Hobbits in Indonesia by TimPrevett on Friday, 04 March 2005
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More developments on this story on the BBC.

Tim
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Re: Hobbits in Indonesia by Anonymous on Saturday, 30 October 2004
Third reflection on the discovery.I wonder how much credence this story would have been given had it not been the result of the work of professional archeologists.Anyone else may have been considered a crank,the remains fake etc.Local legends just the result of wishful thinking etc.Nur.
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    Re: Hobbits in Indonesia by Anonymous on Thursday, 04 November 2004
    I cannot agree more Nur. Professional archaeologists who seem to spend their lives in armchairs (around here) seem to think they are an aurhority on everything we amateurs discover after much hard work, and if it does not compare with artefacts in their books it does not exist?. After all pre-historic man did not have a book to work from. Arthur, Burbage, Leicestershire.
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Re: by Anonymous on Saturday, 30 October 2004
A very interesting discovery and unexpected.Perhaps this underlines the importance of retaining an open mind in relation to human origins and not assuming ether that we have the whole picture or for that matter could ever have.Perhaps we should expect the unexpected?Nur
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