Real Liliputians Discovered

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Source: National Geographic

Published: October 27, 2004 Author: Hillary Mayell

Scientists have found fossil skeletons of a hobbit-like species of human that grew no larger than a three-year-old modern child. The tiny humans, who had skulls about the size of grapefruits, lived with pygmy elephants and Komodo dragons on a remote island in Indonesia as recently as 13,000 years ago.

Australian and Indonesian researchers discovered bones of the miniature humans in a cave on Flores, an island midway between Asia and Australia.

 

Scientists have determined that the first skeleton they found belongs to a species of human completely new to science. Named Homo floresiensis, after the island on which it was found, the tiny human has also been dubbed by dig workers as the "hobbit," after the tiny creatures from the Lord of the Rings books.

 

The original skeleton, a female, stood at just 1 meter (3.3 feet) tall, weighed about 25 kilograms (55 pounds), and was around 30 years old at the time of her death.

 

The skeleton was found in the same sediment deposits on Flores that have also been found to contain stone tools and the bones of dwarf elephants, giant rodents, and Komodo dragons.

 

Homo floresienses has been described as one of the most spectacular discoveries in paleoanthropology in half a century—and the most extreme human ever discovered.

 

The species inhabited Flores as recently as 13,000 years ago, which means it would have lived at the same time as modern humans, scientists say.

 

"To find that as recently as perhaps 13,000 years ago, there was another upright, bipedal—although small-brained—creature walking the planet at the same time as modern humans is as exciting as it was unexpected," said Peter Brown, a paleoanthropologist at the University of New England in New South Wales, Australia.

 

Brown is a co-author of the study describing the findings, which appears in the October 28 issue of the science journal Nature. The National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration helped sponsor the research.

 

"It is totally unexpected," said Chris Stringer, director of the Human Origins program at the Natural History Museum in London. "To have early humans on the remote island of Flores is surprising enough. That some are only about a meter tall with a chimp-size brain is even more remarkable. That they were still there less than 20,000 years ago, and [that] modern humans must have met them, is astonishing."

 

The researchers estimate that the tiny people lived on Flores from about 95,000 years ago until at least 13,000 years ago. The scientists base their theory on charred bones and stone tools found on the island. The blades, perforators, points, and other cutting and chopping utensils were apparently used to hunt big game.

 

In an accompanying Nature commentary, Marta Mirazón Lahr and Robert Foley, both with the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies at the University of Cambridge, England, describe Homo floresiensis as changing our understanding of late human evolutionary geography, biology, and culture.

 

The discovery shows that the genus Homo is more varied and more flexible in its ability to adapt than previously thought. (The genus Homo also includes modern humans, Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and Neandertals—all of which are marked by relatively large braincases, erect posture, opposable thumbs, and the ability to make tools.)

 

"Homo floresiensis is an addition to the short list of other human species that lived at the same time as modern humans. I think people will be surprised to learn that not so long ago, we were not alone," said Brown.

 

Lost World of Tiny People

 

Despite its smaller body size, smaller brain, and mixture of primitive and advanced anatomical features, the new species falls firmly within the genus Homo. The researchers speculate that the hobbit and her peers evolved from a normal-size, island-hopping Homo erectus population that reached Flores around 840,000 years ago.

 

"Physically, they were about the size of a three-year old Homo sapiens [modern human] child, but with a braincase only one-third as large," said Richard Roberts, a geochronologist at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and one on the co-authors of the research paper. "They had slightly longer arms than us. More conspicuously, they had hard, thicker eyebrow ridges than us, a sharply sloping forehead, and no chin."

 

"While they don't look like modern humans, some of their behaviors were surprisingly human," said Brown, the study co-author.

 

The Flores people used fire in hearths for cooking and hunted stegodon, a primitive dwarf elephant found on the island. Although small, the stegodon still weighed about 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds), and would pose a significant challenge to a hunter the size of a three-year-old modern human child. Hunting must have required joint communication and planning, the researchers say.

 

Almost all of the stegodon fossils associated with the human artifacts are of juveniles, suggesting the tiny humans selectively hunted the smallest stegodons. The Flores humans' diets also included fish, frogs, snakes, tortoises, birds, and rodents.

 

"The hobbit was nobody's fool," Roberts said. "They survived alongside us [Homo sapiens] for at least 30,000 years, and we're not known for being very amiable eco-companions. And the hobbits were managing some extraordinary things—manufacturing sophisticated stone tools, hunting pygmy elephants, and crossing at least two water barriers to reach Flores from mainland Asia—with a brain only one-third the size of ours.

 

"Given that Homo floresiensis is the smallest human species ever discovered, they out-punch every known human intellectually, pound for pound."

 

Both the tiny humans and the dwarfed elephants appear to have become extinct at about the same time as the result of a major volcanic eruption.

 

Mingling of the Human Tribes

 

There is no evidence of modern humans reaching Flores before 11,000 years ago, so it is unknown whether the hobbit intermingled with modern humans. The researchers found hobbit and pygmy stegodon remains only below a 12,000-year-old volcanic ash layer. Modern human remains were found only above the layer.

 

Still, rumors, myths, and legends of tiny creatures have swirled around the isolated island for centuries. It's certainly possible that they interacted with modern humans, according to the researchers.

 

"Looked at from a regional perspective, we definitely have modern humans in Australia from at least 40,000 years ago, and in Borneo from at least 43,000 years ago," Roberts said. "So there was temporal overlap between the hobbits and ourselves from at least 40,000 years ago until at least 18,000 years ago—more than 20,000 years minimum. What was the nature of their interaction? We have absolutely no idea. We need more sites and more hard evidence, and that's the next phase of our investigation."

 

Island Dwarfing

 

Researchers are also anxious to investigate how and why the hobbits came to be so small. When scientists discovered the hobbit fossil, they thought it was the skeleton of a child. There was no record of human adults that were that small. Modern pygmies are considerably taller at about 1.4 to 1.5 meters (4.6 to nearly 5 feet) tall.

 

"H. floresiensis presents an intriguing problem in evolutionary biology," Brown said.

 

The most likely explanation is that, over thousands of years, the species became smaller because environmental conditions favored smaller body size. Dwarfing of mammals on islands is a well-known process and seen worldwide. Islands frequently provide a limited food supply, few predators, and few species competing for the same environmental niche. Survival would depend on minimizing daily energy requirements.

 

But there is no absolute proof that this is what in fact happened with this small human.

 

"While there are stone tools dated as far back as 840,000 years ago, no fossils of large-bodied ancestors have ever been found" on Flores, Brown said. "There is some possibility [Homo floresiensis] arrived on the island small-bodied."

 

"I could not have predicted such a discovery in a million years," said Stringer, of London's Natural History Museum. "This find shows us how much we still have to learn about human evolution, particularly in Southeast Asia."

 

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Source: bbc

Published: October 27, 2004 Author: bbc

'Hobbit' joins human family tree

 

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.

 

Details of the sensational find are described in the journal Nature.

 

The discovery has been hailed as one of the most significant of its type in decades.

 

Australian archaeologists unearthed its bones 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.

 

King of the swingers?

 

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 golden retriever-sized rat, giant tortoises and huge lizards - including Komodo dragons - and a pony-sized dwarf elephant called Stegodon which the "hobbits" probably hunted.

 

Chris Stringer, head of human origins at London's Natural History Museum said the long arms were an intriguing feature and might even suggest H. floresiensis spent much of its time in the trees.

 

"We don't know this. But if there were Komodo dragons about you might want to be up in the trees with your babies where it's safe. It's something for future research, but the fact they had long arms is at least suggestive," Professor Stringer told BBC News Online.

 

H. floresiensis probably evolved from another species called Homo erectus, whose remains have been discovered on the Indonesian island of Java.

 

Homo erectus, may have arrived on Flores about one million years ago, evolving its tiny physique in the isolation provided by the island.

 

What is surprising about this is that Homo erectus must have made it to Flores by boat. Yet building craft for travel on open water is traditionally thought to have been beyond the intellectual abilities of this member of the human family.

 

Legendary creatures

 

Even more intriguing is the fact that Flores' inhabitants have incredibly detailed legends about the existence of little people on the island they call Ebu Gogo.

 

The islanders describe Ebu Gogo as being about one metre tall, hairy and prone to "murmuring" to each other in some form of language. They were also able to repeat what islanders said to them in a parrot-like fashion.

 

"There have always been myths about small people - Ireland has its Leprechauns and Australia has the Yowies. I suppose there's some feeling that this is an oral history going back to the survival of these small people into recent times," said co-discoverer Peter Brown, an associate professor of archaeology at New England.

 

The last evidence of this human at Liang Bua dates to 12,000 years ago, when a volcanic eruption snuffed out much of Flores' unique wildlife.

 

Yet there are hints H. floresiensis could have lived on much later than this. The myths say Ebu Gogo were alive when Dutch explorers arrived a few hundred years ago and the very last legend featuring the mythical creatures dates to 100 years ago.

 

But Henry Gee, senior editor at Nature magazine, goes further. He speculates that species like H.floresiensis might still exist, somewhere in the unexplored tropical forest of Indonesia.

 

Textbook rewrite

 

Professor Stringer said the find "rewrites our knowledge of human evolution." He added: "To have [this species] present 12,000 years ago is frankly astonishing."

 

Homo floresiensis might have evolved its small size in response to the scarcity of resources on the island.

 

"When creatures get marooned on islands they evolve in new and unpredictable courses. Some species grow very big and some species grow very small," Dr Gee explained.

 

The sophistication of stone tools found with the "hobbit" has surprised some scientists given the human's small brain size of 380cc (around the same size as a chimpanzee).

 

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

 

Because the remains are relatively recent and not fossilised, scientists are even hopeful they might yield DNA, which could provide an entirely new perspective on the evolution of the human lineage.