A new discovery in Indonesia is showing how little we know about human ancestors
Written by Evan Cooper
Back in 2003, a stunning discovery was made. The parts of a human-like figure, adult features, though only about three and a half feet in stature, was discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores. The bones dated back to between 90,000 and 50,000 years ago, but they didn’t appear to be from any branch of the human species discovered before. After discovering more remains, the new branch of humans was dubbed Homo floresiensis, popularly known as “the Hobbits.”
Still, given that only a few specimens were found, we knew almost nothing about their origins and how they became miniaturized versions of Homo erectus. There were a host of theories, from those who thought they were their own spate species to those who argued they suffered from insular dwarfism.
Now, thanks to an exciting new archeological discovery outside of the same Indonesian cave were the hobbits were first discovered, a massive missing chunk of the intriguing story has been filled in.
Researchers from Australia’s University of Wallongong published papers that describe their finding of three fossilized Homo floresiensis specimens that date back 700,000 years. The implication: about a million years ago, a group of Homo erectus somehow got stuck on the island of Flores. Within 300,000 years they had shrunk in to half sized versions of their ancestors.
How the band of Homo erectus came to find themselves on Flores remains a mystery, given their limited ability with tools and no evidence of boat building, with some strange potential answers. According to Gizmodo, some popular theories include a group being swept from the nearby mainland by a tsunami or that Homo floresiensis didn’t descend from H. erectus but rather were there before H. erectus found its way to the island.
Though the origin of Homo floresiensis remains a mystery, the finding by the Australian researchers is amazing for what it demonstrates about how little we know about our human ancestors. To think that it is one perfect linear branch from Homo habilis to Homo sapiens is clearly incorrect. Though the there is a high chance that Homo floresiensis developed their unique stature from insular dwarfism, which occurs when a species gets smaller due to interbreeding among an isolated population, usually on an island, it begs the question of whether there are other human ancestral cousins that remained undiscovered. Though it may have been Tolkien that captured our imagination of little people living extraordinary lives, thanks to the these new findings, we know now that Hobbits were a lot closer to reality than we previously imagined.
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