Ancient Bones of Small Humans Discovered In Palau

seattle-pk writes to let us know about the discovery in the Pacific island nation of Palau of thousands of human bones, some quite diminutive. The find is likely to rekindle the debate about how to classify the remains found on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003. "Some of the bones are ancient and indicate inhabitants of particularly small size, scientists announced today. The remains are between 900 and 2,900 years old and align with Homo sapiens, according to a paper on the discovery. However, the older bones are tiny and exhibit several traits considered primitive, or archaic, for the human lineage."

Comments

Remnants

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

From the third age...

So...

[Corpuscavernosa]

... midgets (or little people if you prefer) existed many years ago?

Re:So...

[Drooling Iguana]

Of course. They were created along with the mountain and the trees.

alpha build..

[rucs_hack]

Silly everyone.

These are just the pre-alpha build humans that god made while he was in the preliminary human creation development cycle. Height wasn't increased until Homo-Sapiens RC-1.

I mean really, if you're going to go poring over dev code, you've got to expect some pretty weird stuff.

No word in the article...

[jd]

...as to whether there's any effort to use archaeological DNA extraction techniques to solve the mystery. Earlier Slashdot stories have covered extracting DNA from bones, teeth and (best of all) hair. If the DNA is roughly human and includes evidence of the genetic defect causing the suspected form of dwarfism, then the bones are human. If the DNA can't be sequenced that thoroughly, but the mtDNA shows bones definitely human are direct descendents of bones of uncertain origin, then the bones of uncertain origin cannot be a distinct species. I can understand there being concern over DNA extraction (which tends to be very destructive) when there's very little material, but that's no longer the case. I can also understand concern when there were very few labs capable of the work, but there is such a glut of DNA companies these days that many are barely surviving and are cutting jobs.

Yes, the work costs money and research grants tend to be minimal, but if the researchers in either camp really wanted answers, they'd find the money. Complicating things further, research funding tends to be proportional on papers published and/or cited. Arguing over the facts gets multiple papers published. Getting hard data gets one paper published. Ergo, it not only costs money now to get hard data, there are costs in the form of reduced funding later. The "best" outcome, from the perspective of the various departments and groups, is therefore to never resolve anything but to continually discover just enough to be able to keep publishing. Vroomfondle would be proud.

Re:Not new

[ScentCone]

Look up the Bog people

They a e the Bo g. esistance is futile.

(there was a serious "R" shortage back then)

Re:how small?

[lucabrasi999]

How small, you ask? Why are we soooo focused on size? Size doesn't matter. Ask my wife.......oh wait..........uh....strike that.

Re:Not new

[Dr Caleb]

"(there was a serious "R" shortage back then)"

Ahh, the time before Pirates.

it's long been known in zoology

[circletimessquare]

island flora and fauna undergo size changes to either gigantic sizes not seen on the continent (for example, the komodo dragon), or to diminuitive sizes (the pygmy rhino, for example). it's called the island rule

there's no reason then to be surprised that this effect works on human beings as well. as it is, modern malay and austronesian peoples living on southeast asian islands are generally a little smaller than people from the mainland (generally... the dayak people of borneo are quite tall). and their migrational wave is very recent in human history. so this size change tirck is very easy and quick to pull off

many people who find news of these hobbit sized archeological fossils in flores and now in palau (just a quick jump from mindanao in the philippines) will be even more suprised to find out that tiny ancient remnant people are very much alive in the philippines: the aeta

in the big islands of the philippines and other big southeast asian islands there are remnants of melanesian peoples like you see on papua new guinea, deep in the mountains, in tiny, nearly extinct groups that fiercely resist contact and integration into modern society. these people were there long before the austronesian people overwhelmed the coast and eventually everywhere else except the isolated mountains where they cling to existence

the aeta on luzon. these people are quite tiny

and yes, you can find still living remnants and historical recollections of these ancient tiny dwarf peoples even on japan, taiwan, thailand, and mainland china

Very similar groups of Black people in Asia reside in relative small numbers in the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean north of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and in northern Malaysia and southern Thailand in Southeast Asia. In Thailand they are commonly called Sakai. In Malaysia they have been called Orang Asli (Original Man). Pejoratively they are known as Semang, with the connotation of savage. It is very unfortunate that the contributions of these small Black people to monumental high-cultures characterized by urbanization, metallurgy, agricultural science and scripts remain essentially unexamined.

The presence of diminutive Africoids (whom Chinese historians called "Black Dwarfs") in early southern China during the period of the Three Kingdoms (ca. 250 C.E.) is recorded in the book of the Official of the Liang Dynasty (502-556 C.E.). In Taiwan there are recollections of a group of people now said to be extinct called "Little Black Man."

"They were described as short, dark-skinned people with short curly hair....These people, presumably Negritos, disappeared about 100 years ago. Their existence was mentioned in many Chinese documents of the Ching Dynasty concerning Taiwan."

Similar groups of Black people have been identified in Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia, and it seems almost certain that at one time a belt of Black populations of this type covered much of Asia.

so if one were to extrapolate to even smaller islands, to even further back in time, it is not surprising at all to imagine entire islands of hobbit sized people on islands all over southeast asia. really not surprising at all. all since wiped out though, a long time ago. if one studies the history of the haast eagle or the moa on new zealand (island giants) after the maori arrived, one gains an appreciation for how fragile island ecosystems are that most every zoologist possesses. and, by extension, how fragile island peoples are, culturally and genetically (disease and such) when contact with the wider world is established

however, this whole notion of separate species is rather doubtful. they probably were entirely homo sapiens. if one understands that smallness in size is not a very hard trick to pull off genetically for any creature to evolve quite quickly and comprise very little genetic change, then one can see tiny island people in man's recent past is not very strange at all

Re:Not new

[fitten]

Or right after... as the pirates had used up the supply and it took some time to get more.

Re:Not new

[residieu]

Must have been really hot back then

Cave featured in upcoming "Bone Detective" episode

[snowwrestler]

I was just visiting some friends who are living in Palau and we went right by this cave on a snorkeling trip. One of the friends is a PA (physician's assistant) and recently served as the medical support for a crew shooting an episode of the Discovery show "Bone Detective." One of their sites was this cave.

The archaeology and anthropology of Palau is poorly researched and there is little known about the ancient cultures that lived there. My wife is an anthropologist who works at the Smithsonian and had trouble finding much material on Palau to read before travelled there.

The archaeology may also be endangered. On a sea kayaking trip in Nikko Bay, off the island of Babeldaob, we visited another cave that was known to have bones in it. But the bones were gone, and there was evidence of a hasty digging project in the floor of the cave. It was definitely not a research dig--no gridlines, no brushes or sifts, just a big hole that had clearly been dug with a shovel. We speculated that the recent attention had inspired some people to collect antiquities to sell. Hopefully that does not accelerate.

Re:Perhaps...

[paganizer]

Thats just barely more weird than what they have found in the area. I mean seriously, that is a totally freaky-deaky area.
One of the lesser things is Palau money beads; they have found these beads, which were used as currency by the islanders, in burial sites that are from 600-900AD. The Exact Same type of bead can be found in Roman Jewelry of the Republican period.
Other finds of these beads on surrounding islands gives a little validity to the idea that there was an ancient Micronesian Kingdom that had Pohnpei as it's capital, and included Flores (um, Bree to slashdotters).
Some of the big stone disc money found on yap has been proven to have come from from Palau. It was on Yap that evidence was first found of an ancient Alphabet & writing system; examples of it have since been found on The Marianas, Palau, Pohnpei & Kosrae.
And Pohnpei is perhaps the freakiest place of all. out in the middle of nowhere there are gigantic ruins of an immense stone city called Nan Madol, built out of gigantic magnetized crystalline basalt and carbon dated to at least 200BC. There are man-made tunnels honeycombing the area.
After that you get into the areas influence on HP Lovecraft, Japanese Platinum Coffins, underwater cities at the end of some of the tunnels, etc.
But hearing that there are remnants of an unknown subspecies of man, or even a separate branch, in that area isn't very surprising.
Finding an actual yellow brick road there wouldn't even surprise me that much.