New Hominid Species Unearthed in Indonesia

Radical Rad writes "ABC News is reporting that anthropologists have found the skeletal remains of seven hobbit sized hominids. The population may have been wiped out by a volcanic activity 12000 years ago or according to local legend may have lived up until the 1500's living on in caves and eating food the villagers would leave out for them. Also found were bones of giant lizards and miniature elephants. CBS also has the story." National Geographic and the BBC have good stories.

Comments

New species explaination

[fembots]

The current explanation for these "hobbits" is they somehow got to this 31-square-mile island, and because of the habitat/food source limition, they grew smaller so that they cooled off more easily, and used less energy.

However, if they were smart enough to find a way to this island, couldn't they just do another island-hoping to a bigger island like Sumantra, or even Australia?

The article also mentioned "many anthropologists have argued that in recent years, scientists have been adding too many new species to the human evolutionary tree. They say scientists have become too quick to call what may simply be an unusual individual a member of a whole new species."

Maybe these tiny people have some kind of sickness (or just look tiny), and were therefore exiled from the main(is)land?

Re:New species explaination

[mikael]

The current explanation for these "hobbits" is they somehow got to this 31-square-mile island, and because of the habitat/food source limition, they grew smaller so that they cooled off more easily, and used less energy.

That's the argument used for living in extreme cold. We were told that ethnic cultures such as the Zulu's were tall because that was the best way to radiate heat (taller == more elongated == more surface area/volume), and that the Innuit were short and round due to the extreme cold (shorter == more spherical == less surface area/volume).

For reptiles, warmer temperatures usually leads to larger body sizes, while colder temperatures leads to smaller sizes.

So, maybe the climate went the other way, and everything became colder?

Re:New species explaination

[werfele]

It's also possible they had a way on to the island, but not off, once the resources contraints began. Look at the case of Easter Island, whose inhabitants had the technology to travel hundreds of miles from Polynesia, but so thoroughly depleted their resources that they could no longer build boats to leave once the problems began.

Super Volcano?

[Gogela]

I recently watched a discovery channel program about super volcanos ( Super Volcano info here)that might explain the demise of the Hobbits. Apparently, there was a bottleneck sometime in human history that limited our genetic diversity. According to Discovery, that bottleneck might have been caused by a volcano many thousands of times the power of any volcano we have seen to date. The biggest one they know about is in Yellowstone National Park, and is set to go off again anytime within the next 200,000 years. The theory goes that one of these volcanos erupted and wiped out all but 15-20,000 humans, almost wiping us off the face of the earth. Maybe it killed the Hobbits... and the Orcs... and the Gobblins...

Menehune

[ziegast]

I'm surprised that the article didn't mention Menehune which are "little gods" that frequent Hawaiian and Polynesian folklore and mythology. When the settlers of the Pacific Islands were traveling around settling different islands thousands of years ago, they learned from little natives that seems gifted in surviving on the islands.

little walls, little bridges

[Doc Ruby]

Hawai'i is full of stories about the "Menehune", the "little people" who lived in the islands before Polynesians arrived and took over. I have seen some of the walls they say were built by the Menehune, and they are different from the walls built by Polynesians and Europeans (and other "globals" following European arrival). The walls are fitted together more closely, with a technique that more resembles the Egyptian and Mayan walls that I've seen, though much smaller in scale. Perhaps we don't have the first global culture?

Bayan Kara-Ula - Dropa and the Han

[UnkyHerb]

This immediatly reminded me of the Dropa and the Han from the Bayan Kara-Ula regin near Tibet. Heres a Picture of them. Look around on the web and you can find more information. They were small people. "The Bayan Kara Ula, or Bayan Har Shan, area of China is where the source of Yangtze River is located and where the Mekong River turns south toward Vietnam. It's said to be very isolated and the people there still live in rather primitive conditions, although this is changing very quickly. In January of 1938, a Chinese archaeologist named Professor Chu Pu Tei led a rather routine expedition into these mountains. However, what they discovered in a group of caves shunned by the superstitious local natives was far from routine. In the caves, the expedition discovered a series of graves lined up in rows. On the walls of the caves there were stick-figure drawings of men with elongated heads and representations of the sun, moon, and stars. When they excavated the graves, the archaeologists found skeletons of less than four feet in length with abnormally large skulls." link