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More Evidence For Hobbit Sized Species
GogglesPisano writes "CNN.com reports that scientists digging in a remote Indonesian cave have uncovered a jaw bone that they say adds more evidence that a tiny prehistoric Hobbit-like species once existed." From the article: "The discovery of a jaw bone, to be reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, represents the ninth individual belonging to a group believed to have lived as recently as 12,000 years ago. The bones are in a wet cave on the island of Flores in the eastern limb of the Indonesian archipelago, near Australia."
It could have just been a young kid? I'm sure the hobbit idea is much more interesting though...
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
And, at least two groups of opponents have submitted their own studies to other leading scientific journals refuting the Flores work.
"This paper doesn't clinch it. I feel strongly that people are glossing over the problems with this interpretation," said Robert Martin, a biological anthropologist and provost of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
I, for one, welcome our new hobbit-sized overlords!
Wow! Eastern limb of the Indonesian archipelago, near Australia, which is close to New Zealand, which is where LOTR was shot.
the jawbone was placed there by satan to test your faith
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We know things like that exist because the Bibl^WLord of the Rings tells us so! What do you mean "just because it's in a book doesn't mean it's true"?
http://www.cbc.ca/story/science/national/2005/10/1 1/hobbit-flores051011.html
I hear Peter Jackson found a whole town of them there.
I guess the eldars took off, though.
Shouldn't the first thing in studying these remains to be to eliminate this possibility (along with full explanations as to why). I admit I've not delved too deep into this, but it is something which has always bothered me in the back of my mind.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Please stop APK.. you're only hurting yourself.
Forget the hobbits - show me the mithril!
Or a G-nome.
A Golem is a mythical creature from Judaism which is very unlikely to have known of the existance of J.R.R. Tolkien's mythology. You're looking, it seems, for Gollum.
How to use coral cache: http://slashdot.org.nyud.net:8090/~oscartheduck
Frodo Lived!
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
Dick Cheney is rumored to own the "ONE RING" tm in a secure and undisclosed location.
In DC where the shadows lie.....
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
...their dead Jim, but not as we know it...
First thing a a golem would say, of course, is nothing. Golems can't speak, according to folklore. Sure would have made it more difficult for Andy Sirkis to get an award...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Did the hobbits appear before or after Moses? I'm confused..
-- jimmycarter
http://lunaticangelic.shackspace.com/mordor.gif
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
WOW, you should be ashamed of yourself.
You are obviously not a true nerd, merely a wanna-be nerd. Nevertheless, this is WAY to simple for even a wannabe to get wrong. I mean, come on! At least try some!
Your comment should have read;
WE hates Hobbitsses
sheesh!
Thiss preciousss twelve thousands of yearses olds jawsbone... found in dark deep dripsy cave... thiss iss not ssomethings that's coming from tricksy hobbitses!
(AP) -- Scientists say they have found more bones in an Indonesian cave that offer additional evidence of a second human species -- short and hobbit-like -- that roamed the Earth the same time as modern man.
I thought the Hobbit reference was thrown [gratuitously] into the summary to grab the attention of the
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
When they the jaw bones of some Orcs and Trolls THEN I'LL BE IMPRESSED!
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
There is a pygmy like species in parts of Asia and Africa. Although they are off the species Homo Sapien, they are much shorter because they do not have a growth spurt. Scientists are really interested in them because they wonder what genes cause growth and if they can be influenced. I went to a bio conference in Atlanta with my AP Biology class to listen to one. Extremely interesting. Linkage here
t ml-16837http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy>
ahref=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmyrel=url2h
Seems from the news that Smurf Village has been bombed and will feature in a UNICEF ad in Belgium next week.
it was probably done by president gargamel...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
now if it was only /. member then it would be a first for science
Amazing the scientific dogma involved. Apparently if you believe the naysayers there was a plague of identical birth defects on Flores. The problem is it's more than size alone. The "hobbits" have quite a number of primative features and if you look at the general shape of the skull it looks far more like Homo Erectus than a modern human. It the skeletons were dated at 500,000 years instead of 12,000 years there would have been no debate which in of itself should end the debate. The flat earthers won't accept the new species because it doesn't fit into their narrow view of history. It has nothing to do with the facts. Even if DNA is found that is not from a modern human it won't end the debate. I doubt finding a live one would completely end the issue.
"the jawbone was placed there by satan to test your faith"
Unfortunately the wrong ass was dug up.
If only they could find some DNA sound like a clone of these little fellas would make some great servants being established tool makers and all. On a serious side it would be interesting to see what the development of the nominal human code of ethics (ie thou shall not kill) would have been if there were some creatures alive today positioned between modern humans and chipanzees in terms of intellect.
The scientist who found the jawbone became increasingly irritable while hunching in a corner stroking the jawbone and repeating the words, "My...preciousssssss".
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
This is a little too late--the trilogy has already been through the theaters and passed on to DVDs.
Ben
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Everyone knows there's no such thing as hobbits. This jaw bone must be some wizard's trick.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
In Soviet Russia Hobbit sized species bones YOU!
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http://financialpetition.org/
I guess "The Hobbit" really is going to be made after all!!!!
sig here
More thoughts:
-Couldn't is be a case of a syndrome we know now (achondroplasia) that disables some hormones that are needed to make the body grow? Or something similar?
-E.g. Pygmy people are much smaller than most earthlings. Therefore, this particular finding could have been an individual of a small tribe where all members were offspring of a couple of very small individuals... Without being a new species or whatever. Hell, I'm more than 1 foot taller than my GF. And I can assure you we're the same species.
Ever thought about the actors in LOTR that played the hobbits? Those guys had very short stand-ins for some scenes. Those stand-ins were not hobbits or Flores people, they're just normal people talented with a very small body, making them an ideal stand-in for some fantasy movies.
Those guys really want to be on national geographic soon with their "scientific" article on "hobbits"
--Use ant to make
Until you reach Middle Earth!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Part of the controversy is due to the fact that there are other 'small' animal bones which have been found on the island, such as miniature elephants. In conjunction with the finds or other mini-species, the 'hobbit' people becomes a more likely conclusion than if you only consider the 'hobbit' bones by themselves. Not only that but on other islands in the archipelago, they have found bones of apparently human-related giants who were much larger than people today. Only the hobbit-folk get any press though.
Very interesting Wikipedia article. They species name is their location.
s isrel=url2html-11801http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H omo_floresiensis>
ahref=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresien
Even a picture of the skull
They're taking the hobbits to Isengard!
...there is only more of the same information. Those who thought that the remains were of pathological anomalies continue to think the same. I think there was some difference in the stratas that the new jawbone was found, actually an older instance.
What the microcephaly proponents fail to recognize that a stable population of pathological anomalies can't exist, once the pathology is widespread in a population it would cease to be an anomaly, at least among that population.
Microcephaly as we know it medically is kind of a self-cancelling thing, most who suffer from it would be unlikely to procreate, or compete for same even in our current society, much less so in hunter gatherer societies. No reason to think that prehistoric microcephaly wouldn't be accompanied by similar deficits as is the case today. I am not an anthropologist or paleontologist though, so I'll just stand back and watch the fur fly, so to speak.
So far it doesn't appear to be a human. The shape of the skull doesn't match that of any known pygmy, dwarf, midget or diseased human. It is far more simular to Homo erectus than Homo sapian. The time range over which they appear to have existed also suggests that they evolved from Homo erectus, not from Homo sapian (although the two may have co-existed latter on).
Of course there is still a ton more to be studied, such as DNA, and so this is certainly not a closed case by any means. But so far it is different from anything else we have seen - different enough that it is tenatively being concidered a seperate species.
That's a nice link. Hallellujah brother! Of course the author of this incisive essay fails to take into account the fact that there is enough evidence of simple geological strata location to debunk any claim that dinosaurs lived only 20,000 years ago.
First it was "the dinosaurs didn't really exist!" then it was "the dinosaur bones were put there to test our faith!" and now it's "the dinosaurs are not really that old!"
Pathetic.
Please place all obligatory anti-religion posts under this parent. Ho hum.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Don't tell anyone, but 20 years ago, I was hobbit-sized. I know, you wouldn't think it by looking at me, but it's true.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
How are these "ancient" remains different from modern small folk
Well IANAB but:
Number 1: They aren't homo sapiens. They are a species almost as different from you as apes. Our common ancestor may only be a few million years removed.
Number 2: This isn't a deformity. This is just the way they are. A pair of midgets can have a full-size child. These people had children the same size as they were.
Funny, I was just reading about floresiensis last night. I was greatly intrigued by the fact that the islanders' oral history includes stories about monkey-like men that closely fit the description of floresiensis man. They maintain that they were still around after the Dutch arrived in the 16th century, until about 300 years ago when they got fed up with their hijinks and set out to kill them all. Apparently there were still sightings up until the 19th century.
The most likely explanation seems to be that a population of h. erectus found itself on the island and, through island dwarfing, ended up at their diminutive height. I find the thought of sub-human hominids suriving until that recently both creepy and fascinating. More reading at wikipedia
[.../ap_on_re_eu/bombed_smurfs;_...]
But all 'little men' fun arguments aside, I can't see why there couldn't have been species parallel to Homo sapiens sapiens (other than the popularly accepted ones) at one evolutionary point or another. Heck, for all we know there could have been species of semi-sentient gorillas at any point. We just don't know.
Does this mean that The Lord of the Rings will become the new Bible?
I have a website. It's about Macs.
You may be correct about this, but I'm referring to something that they found in a cave, not something that was buried quickly by a mud slide. There is no way that something up in a cave could be up in there and get buried quickly enough by dust and other stuff that just happened to waft in with the air.
They know because they found a cave painting nearby that said "F1rst P0st!"
Traditionally, yeah, I guess the inability to produce viable offspring is the gold standard of speciation. However, Canis Lupus and Canis Familiaris can interbreed successfully, yet they each get a species name and most people distinguish dogs and wolves as separate species. My point is that the people attempting to cast doubt on this discovery aren't disputing the facts of what was discovered (a population of "humans" who seem related to H. Sapiens, but who all share a genetic difference from that species), but rather what to call that group. Inheritable genetic "diseases" that confer an advantage to the "sufferer" are the basis of natural selection. Whether you call the offpring of those individuals a "diseased population" or a "new species in the making" is like arguing whether Pluto should be considered a planet; you think you're arguing about Pluto, but you're really arguing about the definition of the word "planet", which is arbitrary and not very interesting, at least to most people.
Don't get me started about the pirates ...
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
They found it in a *wet cave*...
It *shrunk*.
Here are some interesting links that tell more about how carbon dating works. The link you posted is just creationist talk and not even the best of its kind. You need to know more about the intrinsics of the method before you can judge the scientific merit.
l
science.howstuffworks.com/carbon-14.htm
230nsc1.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nuclear/cardat.htm
www.c14dating.com/int.html
see a Text Widget
It's pathetic to assume something and then prove it with more assumptions.
Strata locations are dated just like anything else, since nobody alive today was around millions of years ago. Often, different dating methods provide contradictory results. How's that for scientifically "proving" how old something is?
I'm not a scientist with a degree yet, so do the research yourself, but in the world of evolution people jump to conclusions and make assumptions all too easily because of their predispositions, be they pro or con.
The people coming from the angle that these 'hobbit-like' creatures either HAVE TO be a different species or CAN'T be a different species have their own motivations based purely on speculation. Why not take a look at the facts and wait and see what else we can dig up?
He's channeling Gollum. He wantsss sssmilesss, he doessss. But not from nasssty little hobbitsesss!
...don't put it on. Seriously. Bad things would happen.
There was an episode of Horizon about a month ago covering the Flores debate. I'll sum up what they said:
- Modern native Flores islanders are themselves a pigmy / small stature population.
- Elderly people there (with less genetic mixing with outsiders) are even smaller.
- Microcephaly, abnormally small skull size, bears very well with the data of the finds.
- The bones found are modern humans of abnormally small size, perhaps dwarf pigmies?
There was a bunch of skull comparison, brain volume and other scientific arguments on the show - which I mostly missed! (Bad timing) They managed to confuse one of the key supporters of the separate species argument when they showed him 3d models of two brain casts. One was from the Flores bones, and the other was a dwarf microcephalic brain. He was surprised how similar they were in detail.
Of course, they had to question just how an apparent *group* of such physically abnormal people could have lived on Flores. But questioned whether they were reproducing, or indeed there was ever more than a single handful of them.
How about "proving" your claim with some citations.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Jaws have teeth. Jaws are one of the easiest parts of a skeleton to age. Even if the teeth are missing, dental buds, or their lack, root canals, and other features make them highly indicative of the individual's age.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
If it didn't take 6 years for my comment to reach the forum, maybe this wouldn't have been redundant. Needless to say, there were 0 comments when I submitted this. By the way, did anyone ever consider that this species may have been a child or a dwarf? yes, sarcastic...
I once heard of a theory that the book of Job actually preceeded the genisis story. Which coincidentaly accounts for prehistoric type species. example being Laviathon.
I googled the below link
http://www.bibarch.com/Perspectives/3.1.htm
apes!
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
...they're tricksy and false!!
Well, I'll be modded down as a 'troll' again I'm sure, but I'll lay it out for you in the simplest possible way.
Geological strata are not 'dated', you dumbass. They are the dating system. All you need is to find a well-known layer (like the famous K-T one) to use as reference and bob's your uncle. Completely unambiguous. No mythical creatures or faith involved.
That's it. Thanks for playing.
They prefer to be called 'little people'!
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
Strata "can" be used that way if geological upheavels are taken out of the picture. Otherwise, they are as fallible as anything can be.
That's what I'm Tolkien 'bout!
RP
The interesting bit is that this island is uninhabited as South American slavers came in the mid-1800s and captured all the males off the island. The King then had the women and children rescued and declared the island off limits. When I was there we tried to go to the island for a scientific survey but King Tupou Fa refused. The place is only visited by occasional fishermen.
I am not a robot. I am a unicorn.
But what about the pirates?
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
"What is the religious answer to this?"
There are as many theories about this kind of thing as there are religious people. One thing about people of faith is they seldom acknowledge the value of things that might test their faith, such as science. Most would call this either A) typical anti-creation mainstream science B) human kind's way to justify its actions by 'sciencing' all traces of their faith from reality.
My personal take is that this is probably over-eager biologists trying to get in the history books for finding a 'missing link.' From what I've read in this story and others, there is very credible findings that dispute these remains being a separate species.
If it turns out after futher testing that they ARE a separate species, it doesn't really put a thorn in my faith. My personal belief is that what we perceive as 'time' is completely contextual and is not part of the nature of the universe such as something like gravity or nuclear forces. Given this, this species is just another part of God's creation. Nothing in the Old or New Testament says that God only created one species of humans. It is possible.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Then how do they know how old the strata are? By the fossils in it?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
You meant to say "regardless". Irregardless would mean regarding.
argumentum ad fallacium: Fallacy of defining a fallacy which allows one to dismiss the argument in question.
No one knows who they were
Or what they were doing
But their legacy remains.
I find your lack of faith....disturbing.
-- The Genesis project? What's that?
I've been wondering how scientists are capable of building histories of entire species given only one or two examples. Imagine if 100,000 years from now an archaeologist found the fossilized remains of Verne Troyer and Shaquille O'Neal. If he based his theories about ancient man on the same amount of evidence as we do today he would probably assume that there we two distinctly separate forms of man on the planet at the same time.
How can we find a couple of bones in a cave and surmise an entire branch of evolution based upon them?
I stole this sig from a more creative user.
That and other questions answered on my FAQ about the Flores fossils.
--JohnCould there be any possibility of finding any preserved DNA after 12,000 years (not very long, geologically speaking)? I wish this had happened in a colder climate, where there was some possibility of preservation by ice. I think it would be a singularly awesome occurance, perhaps a turning point for modern society, if a scientist took a cell from an extinct but SENTIENT primate species and cloned it, either with a gorilla or human mother.
/. have been "infected" at one time or another. But for these people, anti-depressants such as Prozac and Zoloft are prescribed for the SOLE purpose of supressing sexual desire. Oh sure, that's not what it's officially for, but staff openly talk about the real goal of putting a client on that med. The "depression" doesn't really exist until the client gets too horny for our director's taste, and the doctor mysteriously does NOT prescribe one of the many antidepressants out that have a lower impact on sexual function. And of course, no one is ever prescribed the antidepressant Wellbutrin, which has been shown to increase sexual desire and pleasure (as I can personally attest to) and would be otherwise appropriate for many of our more lethargic clients.
Call me cruel or evil if you must, but if I was a scientist presented with that opportunity, I would do it in a heartbeat. The moral, religious, and political rammifications would be tremendous... another creature besides ourselves capable of lucid communication, capable of abstract thought and rational logic. Likely less intelligent (on average) than Homo Sapiens and possibly possessing other differing desires and abilities, but unquestionably emotional and intelligent. How the hell would mainstream Christianity react? I would think that "mainstream" would have to be redefined, as many people would cling to old notions of humanity being special, unique, and alone while just as many would be unable to treat another intelligent being as a mere animal.
Of course, the exact level of intelligence would be very important. Just how intelligent are they, as compared to us? As compared to chimps? What if they possess roughly same communication skills and intelligence as a chimp or gorilla, yet they look like us, have the same facial expressions as us, and possess the vocal cords necessary to form words? Gorillas and chimps are quite intelligent, and capable of significant levels of communication via sign language. I'm willing to bet that the major reason why they haven't been granted any legal rights is because they seem so unhuman. Give them a human looking body and the power of speech, and suddenly the situation for many people will not seem so cut and dry. Lord knows where our morality would go from there--maybe given a hundred years, those "freaks" over at PETA will get their wish and the entire animal kingdom will have rights, perhaps based on intelligence. I'm not saying I necessarily support such an idea, but it's mind-blowing to consider.
Perhaps it's fascinating for me specifically because for the last 4 years I've worked extensively with the (moderately) mentally handicapped. It's very interesting to watch how they're treated by parents, doctors, coworkers, and fellow clients. In many respects they are given a high degree of self-determination, yet there are always more subtle attempts to change them into what we want them to be. The aspect I have the most problem with is prescribing medication for the sole purpose of surpressing libido. Ok, if the client is attacking women and fondling them that's one thing, but if wacking off too much and getting caught staring at women's chests and cutting out pictures of underwear models or even, heaven forbid, having consentual sexual relations with one another is a disease, I suspect that many of us here at
I guess what I'm saying is that if we were forced to deal with a less intelligent and more primal version of ourselves, we would be forced to confront our more animalistic urges in a saner and more consistan
But did they have hair on their feet? Or perhaps scales or feathers?0 7/1548224&tid=14
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/
My other SIG is a Sauer.
"Almost all civilizations have oral or written records of giants and dwarves (trust me, LOTR is not a new idea). These, as most other legends, must have some sort of factual origin"
And almost all civilizations have some undead in their mythology. E.g., vampires. What's your theory about the factual origin of those? Are you telling me that the dead actually rose from their graves and preyed upon the living?
Now seriously, at least the giants are actually _very_ easily explained by exaggeration. It's like the hunters' or fishermen's tales of catching one "I swear it was this big" and increasing every year. Well, the same happened in wars. Defeating a particularly fearsome or important opponent is gradually inflated to having bested someone Goliath sized and with various demonic features or super-powers.
You don't even have to look too far back to see exactly that. During at least one of the crusades, one of the archers on the walls is described as pretty much a giant with a siege weapon in his hand. (A saracen version of Terry Pratchett's Detritus, if you will.)
You'd think that if one of the soldiers in the garrison actually had those proportions, it would get mentioned in more places than just that battle. It's something deviating that far from the norm that you'd just have heard about it. Merchants and travellers passing through the city would have mentioned something.
So, anyway, I wouldn't take mythology as a source of factual data for anthropology or human evolution.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Hey, wait a minute.
Where were these bones found again?
...ruled them all.
"The tiny bones have enchanted many anthropologists who accept the interpretation that these diminutive skeletons belonged to a remnant population of prehistoric humans that were marooned on Flores with dwarf elephants and other miniaturized animals, giving the discovery a kind of fairy tale quality." No one seems to be mentioning that they didn't only find small humans on the islands... but also found small elephants and other small animals!
Tolkien HAD a time machine!
Scott McNealy to Michael: "Suck my Sun!" Michael Dell to Scott : "Lick my Dell!"
Americans generally know very little about Orthodoxy, other than that it is old and traditional. Then again, Americans are quite ignorant about almost everything that isn't common in American culture or media.
The size of the bone found implies a Hobbit-sized race, not a Hobbit-like culture. The only thing we know so far is the size of those hominids. They did not live in a nice miniature village like the Shire; most probably they were primitive hunters, without even knowledge of agriculture.
I don't see the big deal over their size, though. Have we forgotten that there are already very short tribes around the world (pigmeys, for example)? what makes the 'Hobbit' one different?
Given how asians tend to be smaller in the first place, I don't see how this is all that exciting news. On top of that, nutrition and disease plays a huge part in height, so its entirely possible that these were not all that healthy of a group.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
my grandpa told me this story when i was on holiday in devon. He said though, that he wasn't lying at all, whether i believed it or not. This was at least 20 years ago, can't remember the date. He was in London, in the underground waiting for a tube to come. It was rush-hour at the time, and could see a old, blind man with a walking stick waiting as well. My grandpa thought, there's a no way this guy's going to get on, as soon as it arrives people are just gonna flood into it, it'll be difficult for him. So he aproached the guy and said that he'll help him on. They started talking, and the guy said that he wasn't always blind, he gradually lost his eye sight over the year from, some condition. The train arrived and he helped him on, though because it was way too busy they jumped into the first class section, and my grandpa thought they might as well just sit in the first class compartments to save hassle. The man went on to say through conversation that he was once at a digging site in Penzance, Devon. They came across a burial site, which had 2,000 fully grown adults and children, except they were only about 3 and a half foot tall. They were told at once to put the site back at it was.The buried the bones and what the found and put it back as it was. There was no news coverage at all about this. This happened at least 50 years ago or so.
It would be interesting if this is where the recessive gene of modern dwarfs come from.
Why does "religion" need an answer to this? "Religion" is rife with stories like David and Goliath, depicting distinctions between populations. When populations are not terribly mobile and tend to procreate within a fixed population, specializations and population distinctions occur.
Every region in the world has historical distinctions that physically differentiate its people from other populations. (The English have bad teeth. Canadians are genetically programed to say "eh" a lot...) I don't think "religion" has a problem with that. Some *people* may have a problem with that. But maybe you should be asking what their answer to this is.
As for the failed first prototype of early man, I think we can all agree that intellectual propery lawyers are the decendents of the failed first prototype of early man. Based on that experiment, it was decided that common sense and compassion would be added to the next iteration.
And almost all civilizations have some undead in their mythology. E.g., vampires. What's your theory about the factual origin of those? Are you telling me that the dead actually rose from their graves and preyed upon the living?
:-)
It's easy to create a zombie, at least in the context of a legend. Vampire and werewolfs can also be constructed; their legends are left as an excercise for the reader.
Without further ado, here's how to create a zombie of legend!
Step 1): Start with a culture limited notion of the concept of being "unconcious", as opposed to being "dead".
Step 2): Accidentally bury some unlucky bastard who's just been knocked cold, but not actually dead.
Step 3): Have the poor guy wake up just before he suffocates, either in a very shallow and loosely packed "grave", or worse yet, in the process of being buried alive by his "friends". Odds are, the guy will be very woozy and uncoordinated from the bump on the head, frantic about not suffocating, tend to groan in pain a lot, and will emerge from the grave feeling *very* pissed off at the people who buried him.
Add some superstition, and in a few retellings, and you don't just have a pissed off guy with a lump on his head about to kick the ass of his "buddy" who burried him; instead, you've got a filthy undead monster clawing it's way out of the grave, and shambling off in an angry rage to prey upon the living, moaning like a fiend from hell.
It's all in the writing.
So, anyway, I wouldn't take mythology as a source of factual data for anthropology or human evolution.
Nope. It's certainly influenced by anthropology -- for example, the reason the ancient greek gods "cuckolded" so many other gods was that in the old religion they *killed* the gods of other civilizations; only to re-adopt them when they culturally assimilated the new population. The sexual politics mirrored the battlefield politics without making the legends so unpalatable to the conquered nations.
The vocal skeptics (for which we should be grateful, that is what real science is all about) could put forward this theory based in the existence of one unique specimen.
If several specimens with similar characteristics show up then such theory becomes terribly weak since microcephaly is extremily rare, and thus the odds a many individuals in the same group having the same rare desease would be too unlikely.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
But you will be none the wiser because you obviously don't about ejaculating falsehoods and half truths.
Nobody has provided an easy explanation because none seems to exist.
IN the one hand we have people saying this is a new species, a theory strengthened by todays findings.
ANother theory claims that these were sick individuals of our species. But if 20 are found then theior theory is completely unrealistic.
You see? Some time there are no easy answers, no matter how much we wish to have one.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There are several morphologic characterisitics that clearly make your "point" laughable., conceding that Asians may be smaller (I venture you have not been to certain parts of China or Kashmir, but what the heck, not everybody can or want to see the wider world) the craneal capacity and morphological characterisitics of all humans are roughly the same.
Now, having clear the idiotic ignorant point, lets get on with speculation: The fossils of this small hominid have a noticeable smaller craneal capacity and one of the tooth shows roots not found in any other known hominid.. Th likelyhood of a full group of humans all having the same degenerative disease is quite small, to say the least.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
These people spend years looking at bones, how they interact, how they work togetehr.
I you would find two sekletons in 1000000 years (one very short, one very small) of modern humans, they would see that both specimens have mosstly the same bones, and interconnect basically in the same way, that the craneal capacity of both is roughly the same and ahtat in general, bar the difference in size, they are practically identical.
So they woul most likely reach the correct conclussion: that they have found two memebers, of different size, of the same species.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Furthermore, the Intelligent Design hypothesis is just as compatible with Flying Spaghetti Monsters and Space Aliens as it is with monotheism. It is even compatible with macro evolution. The point of disagreement between ID and traditional macro evolution is whether "chance plus selection" by themselves can create "information" (defined as intelligently chosen configurations of matter).
Even this conflict is a philosophical one. If the "blind watchmaker" model is right, then there is no such thing as meaning or intelligence in reality. What we perceive as such is simply a finely tuned and complex response to our environment. In that case, of course, what seems to be moral outrage over whether ID should or should not be taught as a mainstream model is also just an "interesting psychological phenomenon".
In any event, (returning to the implicit assumption that intelligence is real, since otherwise this discussion is meaningless), portraying ID as opposed to "evolution" is deceptive (even if most adherents see it that way). ID is only opposed to the "blind chance" aspect of traditional evolution. Mechanisms like chance and selection are not ruled out at all, and have been used by human intelligence to accomplish some impressive designs. If you believe there is really such a thing as intelligence (literally, the power to choose between), then you can recognize intelligent choice both intuitively and statistically. If you believe that no configuration of matter is any more significant than any other configuration, then both sides are equally interesting phenomena, and which prevails in the next century is a question of survival of the fittest rather than truth.