The Little People that changed Middle Earth, Hobbits are real

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New 'Hobbit' disease link claim

Scientists are to present new evidence that the tiny human species dubbed "The Hobbit" may not be what it seems.
The researchers say their findings strongly support an idea that the 1m- (3ft-) tall female skeleton from Indonesia is a diseased modern human.

Their claims have been aired in a BBC Horizon programme screened on Thursday.

The Hobbit's discoverers are adamant it is an entirely separate human species, which evolved a small size in isolation on its remote island home of Flores.


It showed that we really could demonstrate with a specimen that [microcephaly] could explain the Hobbit's small brain
Ann MacLarnon, Roehampton University

The bones were unearthed during a dig at Liang Bua, a limestone cave deep in the Flores jungle. The discovery caused a sensation when it was announced to the world in 2004.

Analysis of the 18,000-year-old remains showed the Hobbit had reached adulthood, despite her diminutive size.

Long arms, a sloping chin, and other primitive features suggested affinities to ancient human species such as Homo erectus .

And Homo floresiensis , as science properly calls the creature, seems to exhibit other oddities, such as lower premolar teeth with twin roots. In most modern humans, the lower premolars have a single root.

Ancient roots

Australian anthropologists Peter Brown, Mike Morwood, Bert Roberts and others involved in the find, proposed that the Hobbit was a descendent of erectus or some other ancient species that reached Flores just under a million years ago.

Cut off from the rest of the world on this island, the species evolved small stature, much like the pygmy elephants it is thought to have hunted.

Sophisticated stone tools found nearby suggest they were not lacking in intelligence, even though the Hobbit specimen's brain was no larger than a chimpanzee's.


But it was not long before some scientists began to ask serious questions about the discovery team's conclusions.
Indonesian anthropologist Teuku Jacob controversially took possession of the remains and declared them to be those of a modern human with the condition microcephaly.

This disorder is characterised by a small brain, but it can also be associated with dwarfism, as well as abnormalities of the face and jaw. For this reason, some scientists believe the condition could cause a modern human to look primitive in evolutionary terms.

Jacob was soon joined by a handful of researchers in the belief that the discovery team had happened upon nothing more than a member of our own species with a rare disease.

Professor Bob Martin, one of the team that is set to publish new evidence challenging the discovery team's original interpretation, says the Hobbit's brain is "worryingly" small and contradicts a fundamental law of biology.

"What this law says in simple terms is that if you halve body size, brain size is only reduced by 15%," he told the BBC's Horizon programme.

"So if you halve body size you don't halve brain size, the brain is reduced far less than that."

Biological laws

Working under the assumption that the Hobbit was basically a shrunken form of Homo erectus , Professor Martin used this law to find out how big the Hobbit's brain should have been.

Starting with a height of 1.75m and a brain size of 990 cubic centimetres for Homo erectus , Professor Martin used the standard scaling formula to calculate that, given a height of 1m, the Hobbit's brain size should have been about 750 cubic centimetres.


In fact, it was a mere 400 cubic centimetres.
"You can calculate what body height the Hobbit would need to get its brain down to this size, and the answer is... about the size of a meerkat," he said.

However, researchers who carried out the excavation at Liang Bua argue that island isolation can play strange evolutionary tricks.

"If they'd been isolated on this island for 800,000 years by themselves, genetically cut off from the rest of the world, where very few other animals could get to, we'd expect strange things," Mike Morwood of the University of New England, Australia, told Horizon.

But another piece of evidence challenging the discoverers' claims has come from one of the oldest anatomical collections in the world.

More remains

Ann MacLarnon of Roehampton University, UK, has discovered the skull of a microcephalic in the vaults of London's Royal College of Surgeons with a brain that matches that of the Hobbit for size.

"It showed that we really could demonstrate with a specimen that [microcephaly] could explain the Hobbit's small brain," she told Horizon.

But there's a problem with the sceptics' version of the story. The Hobbit team has found more human remains. These include a lower jaw with the same unusual features as the original find (including twin roots to the molars).

"Let's buy into [the sceptics'] argument just for a bit of fun," said Professor Bert Roberts of the University of Wollongong, Australia, a member of the discovery team.

"We've got a complete lower jaw that's identical to the first so there we have a situation where we've now got to have two really badly diseased individuals.

"We've got a diseased population like some sort of leper colony, living in Liang Bua 18,000 years ago. The probabilities have got to be vanishingly small."

The Hobbit team is now looking in other caves on Flores for more evidence of this ancient population.

The sceptics intend to publish their concerns in a scientific journal.

Horizon: The Mystery of the Human Hobbit was shown on Thursday, 22 September, 2005 on BBC Two at 2100 BST.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/4268122.stm

Published: 2005/09/23 12:30:10 GMT

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Here is another article:

http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146411898

'Hobbit' joins human family tree
Scientists have discovered a new and tiny species of human that lived in Indonesia at the same time our own ancestors were colonising the world.
The new species - dubbed "the Hobbit" due to its small size - lived on Flores island until at least 12,000 years ago.

The fact that little people feature in the legends of modern Flores islanders suggests we might have to take tales of Bigfoot and the Yeti more seriously. .

"The whole idea that you need a particular brain size to do anything intelligent is completely blown away by this find."
Dr Henry Gee, Nature

Australian archaeologists made the discovery while digging at a site called Liang Bua, one of numerous limestone caves on Flores.
The remains of the partial skeleton were found at a depth of 5.9m. At first, the researchers thought it was the body of a child. But further investigation revealed otherwise.

Wear on the teeth and growth lines on the skull confirm it was an adult, features of the pelvis identify it as female and a leg bone confirms that it walked upright like we do.

"When we got the dates back from the skeleton and we found out how young it was, one anthropologist working with us said it must be wrong because it had so many archaic [primitive] traits," said co-discoverer Mike Morwood, associate professor of archaeology at the University of New England, Australia.

The 18,000-year-old specimen, known as Liang Bua 1 or LB1, has been assigned to a new species called Homo floresiensis . It was about one metre tall with long arms and a skull the size of a large grapefruit.

The researchers have since found remains belonging to six other individuals from the same species.

LB1 shared its island with a pony-sized dwarf elephant called Stegodon, a golden retriever-sized rat, giant tortoises and huge lizards - including Komodo dragons.

Chris Stringer, head of human origins at London's Natural History Museum said the long arms were an intriguing feature and might even suggest H. floresiensis spent much of its time in the trees.
"We don't know this. But if there were Komodo dragons about you might want to be up in the trees with your babies where it's safe. It's something for future research, but the fact they had long arms is at least suggestive," Professor Stringer told BBC News Online.

H. floresiensis probably evolved from another species called Homo erectus , whose remains have been discovered on the Indonesian island of Java.
The ancestor of the small hominid, Homo erectus , may have arrived on Flores about one million years ago, evolving its tiny physique in the isolation provided by the island.
What is surprising about this is that Homo erectus must have made it to Flores by boat. Yet building craft for travel on open water is traditionally thought to have been beyond the intellectual abilities of this member of the human family.

Legendary creatures

Even more intriguing is the fact that Flores' inhabitants have incredibly detailed legends about the existence of little people on the island they call Ebu Gogo.

The islanders describe Ebu Gogo as being about one metre tall, hairy and prone to "murmuring" to each other in some form of language. They were also able to repeat what islanders said to them in a parrot-like fashion.

"There have always been myths about small people - Ireland has its leprechauns and Australia has the Yowies. I suppose there's some feeling that this is an oral history going back to the survival of these small people into recent times," said co-discoverer Peter Brown, an associate professor of archaeology at New England.

If so, the legends might relate real stories of interaction between modern humans and H. floresiensis on Flores. The last evidence of this human at Liang Bua dates to 12,000 years ago, when a volcanic eruption snuffed out much of Flores' unique wildlife.
Yet there are hints H. floresiensis could have lived on until much later on other parts of the island. The myths say Ebu Gogo were alive when Dutch explorers arrived a few hundred years ago and the very last legend featuring the mythical creatures dates to 100 years ago.

But Henry Gee, senior editor at Nature magazine, goes further. He speculates that species like H.floresiensis might still exist, somewhere in the unexplored tropical forest of Indonesia.

"The uniqueness of the human lineage is a substantial foundation of our religion, our ethics, even our science. This find challenges that substantially," said Dr Gee.

Textbook rewrite

Professor Stringer said the find "rewrites our knowledge of human evolution." He added: "To have [this species] present 12,000 years ago is frankly astonishing."

Homo floresiensis might have evolved its small size in response to the scarcity of resources on the island.

"When creatures get marooned on islands they evolve in new and unpredictable courses. Some species grow very big and some species grow very small," Dr Gee explained.


The presence of Stegodon remains - particularly the teeth of juveniles - in the same deposits as H. floresiensis suggests they may have hunted these dwarf elephants. Some smaller animal remains in Liang Bua cave are charred, perhaps by cooking.
Miniature stone tools have been found in association with the hominid remains. They are just the right size for the diminutive H. floresiensis to have made and used. And the tools' sophistication has amazed some scientists given the human's small brain size of 380cc (around the same size as a chimpanzee).

"The whole idea that you need a particular brain size to do anything intelligent is completely blown away by this find," Dr Gee commented.

Because the remains are relatively recent and not fossilised, scientists are even hopeful they might yield DNA. Genetic information from this descendent of Homo erectus could provide an entirely new perspective on the evolution of the human lineage.


Story from BBC

Note: Details of the sensational find are described in the journal Nature.