Hobbits' Brains Shrank Due To Remote Home

Hugh Pickens writes "The 'hobbits,' dubbed homo floresiensis, caused a worldwide sensation when they were discovered five years ago, when some scientists claimed that the 18,000-year-old human-like fossils found on the Indonesian island of Flores represented an entirely new species. Now researchers at the Natural History Museum in London believe that the creatures' small brains could have developed to reduce the creatures' energy needs, crucial for surviving in an isolated area with limited resources. 'It could be that H. floresiensis' skull is that of a Homo erectus that has become dwarfed from living on an island, rather than being an abnormal individual or separately-evolved species, as has been suggested,' says palaeontologist Eleanor Weston. 'Looking at pygmy hippos in Madagascar, which possess exceptionally small brains for their size, suggests that the same could be true for H. floresiensis, and the result of being isolated on the island.' Although the phenomenon of dwarfism on islands is well recognized in large mammals, an accompanying reduction in brain size has never been clearly demonstrated before."

Comments

Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFS:

Now researchers at the Natural History Museum in London believe that the creatures' small brains could have developed to reduce the creatures' energy needs, crucial for surviving in an isolated area with limited resources.

Sorry, but evolution is not a goal-oriented process. Evolution is just the hindsight path that got us from "there" to "here."

Yes, the small brains may have provided a small competitive advantage due to their lower energy needs, but that doesn't really say anything about how that actually translated into the evolutionary path that was taken.

It's all just bullshit and mental masturbation if we make conjectures about why group A won out over group B. Maybe group A just liked having sex a lot. We'll never know, and it really doesn't matter.

Re:18,000 - amazing

[Kozz]

An 18,000 year old specimen of Homo Erectus would indeed be an amazing find if true.

That seems like kind of a leap of interpretation. Dr. Weston's statement acknowledges that the "hobbit" is H. floresiensis, so when she says "could be that of H. erectus" (considering the 18,000year date) I think we're talking about the former being a descendant of the latter, not a sub-species.

not a new species?

[BigHungryJoe]

""It could be that H. floresiensis' skull is that of a Homo erectus that has become dwarfed from living on an island, rather than being an abnormal individual or separately-evolved species, as has been suggested," says palaeontologist Dr Eleanor Weston.

Could someone explain why this wouldn't be a new species, even if it is an adapted homo erectus? isn't that how new species are formed? where is the "species" line drawn?

i think the aeta are pretty interesting

[circletimessquare]

while they aren't hobbits, they are similarly ancient, diminuitive peoples of southeast asia whose history may be instructive of how succeeding waves of human and proto-humans competed with and replaced each other. based on the experience of the aeta, i wouldn't be surprised if the last flores hobbit died at the sharp end of a homo sapien's stick

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negrito

The term Negrito refers to several ethnic groups in isolated parts of Southeast Asia.[1] Their current populations include the Aeta, Agta, Ayta, Ati, Dumagat and at least 25 other tribes of the Philippines, the Semang of the Malay peninsula, the Mani of Thailand and 12 Andamanese tribes of the Andaman Islands of the Indian Ocean.

Negritos share some common physical features with African pygmy populations, including short stature, natural afro-hair texture, and dark skin; however, their origin and the route of their migration to Asia is still a matter of great speculation. They are genetically distant from Africans at most loci studied thus far (except for MCR1, which codes for dark skin). They have also been shown to have separated early from Asians, suggesting that they are either surviving descendants of settlers from an early migration out of Africa, or that they are descendants of one of the founder populations of modern humans.[2]

essentially, ancient remnant isolated melanesian populations in largely malay and thai areas across indonesia, malaysia, the philippines, and thailand. the malays took over the coastal areas over time, and now the aeta live in tiny mountain tribes. they also existed in china until recently. han and malay peoples just either outright exterminated them, outcompeted them, or genetically intermarried and swamped them out of existence

http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-hercules/the-black-african-foundation-of-china-honouring-the-aboriginal-black-people-of-china/

Chinese historians called them "black dwarfs" in the Three Kingdoms period (AD 220 to AD 280) and they were still to be found in China during the Qing dynasty (1644 to 1911). In Taiwan they were called the "Little Black People" and, apart from being diminutive, they were also said to be broad-nosed and dark-skinned with curly hair. After the Little Black People -- and well before waves of Han migrations after 1600 -- came the Aboriginal tribes, who are part of the Austronesian race. They are thought to have come from the Malay Archipelago 6,000 years ago at the earliest and around 1,000 years ago at the latest, though theories on Aborigine migration to Taiwan are still hotly debated. Gradually the Little Black People became scarcer, until a point about 100 years ago, when there was just a small group living near the Saisiyat tribe. The story goes that the Little Black People taught the Saisiyat to farm by providing seeds and they used to party together.

in the philippines, the aeta famously came to light after the eruption of mount pinatubo, and this isolated group of peoples, probably living on the mountain isolated for hundreds if not thousands of years, were suddenly driven into the modern world

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/11/11/MN206799.DTL

the island of negros in the philippines gets its name from the spanish who found large numbers of aeta who lived there, at one time. now the island is almost completely malay

the dutch hurried along the process of the supplanting of the aeta with more cooperative malay slaves by genocidally emptying some strategic spice islands because the aetas proved uncooperative in the profitable nutmeg trade:

Could someone explain the "brain case" argument?

[scorp1us]

I took Human Evolution in college. I really liked it. But there is some phallic fascination with brain case size as being a important factor in approximating intelligence.

We have parrots that are as intelligent as 4-year olds. We have bears that are dumber. We have cephalopods that have a lot of intelligence in a few cm^3. Brain case volume to me, does not seem to have a determining factor in intelligence.

The density of brain matter would seem to be relevant as we look at brain function in terms of neural complexity. As density increases required volume decreases. And since to soft tissue survive, we have no idea of neural density. It seems that neural density would be a much better proxy for intelligence - particularly when looking in the same genus. (As opposed to cephalopods which have an entirely different brain morphology)

Re:Evolution Determines Intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you from Africa?

"The apologists claim that African poverty is to solely to White and Japanese oppression."

"Africa is a failure society due to the lower intelligence of the African people."

evolution is effectively goal-oriented

[r00t]

That goal is survival. OK, it's anthropomorphizing to call it a "goal", as if there were thought or desire involved, but that's of no importance. Survival (long term Nth generation) is effectively the goal.

The relevant error is to think that the survival goal of evolution must somehow coincide with the qualities that we humans desire or respect. No way! If passionate religion or inability to comprehend birth control make it more likely that you have surviving descendents in the Nth generation, then those traits get selected for. It's perfectly valid, and even likely, that evolution selects against people who accept evolution. :-)

Note that modern society could allow the island effect to apply worldwide. After all, the Earth itself is a sort of island in space.