Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Laboratory >

Hobbits!

subcultureofone

16:53 / 27.10.04

reuters

national geographic

subcultureofone

17:34 / 27.10.04

abc news- more info

09:47 / 28.10.04

With the usual thoughtfulness of my Laboratory posts, I'll simply say; "cool!"

Particularly liked the bit about them hunting 'dwarf stegadons'.

*

12:42 / 28.10.04

This gets us back to the issue of H. erectus managing water travel, which has always been a bone of contention among the homonid specialists. I just dread hearing more from the "aquatic ape" theorists.

As far as the "splitter" "lumper" debate goes, this seems like a reasonable new species-- it's definitely more morphologically distinct than a lot of the other new homonid species advanced by splitters, and we've got a lot more sample to work from than some of the others. Nonetheless I notice some hardcore lumpers are already expressing doubts.

All Acting Regiment

20:08 / 28.10.04

Two thoughts:

1)Emotionally, it's always somehow good to see a new hominid- almost like meeting a relative you haven't seen for ages- which you actually are. I mean for one it shows how adaptable we are.

2) There's talk of scientists going on expeditions to find the Orang Pendek and other formerly crypto-creatures, with the idea basically being that they were the same creature as the one thats just been found and that there might be a whole community of these little people living somewhere deep in the limestone caves and jungles of south east Asia.
I for one hope they don't find them- the reason is that within weeks these people would be being exploited: captured for pets/zoos, killed for sport- I know this sounds like a downer but I am sure there are people out there who would do this.

20:42 / 28.10.04

There's actually a piece in Nature's coverage of the find that gets into just that, comparing the Flores Man to orang pendek.

What's more interesting to me is the thought the guy barely brings up -- orang pendek is from the other end of the archipelago, Sumatra & Borneo, if I'm remembering right. And Flores is a lot closer to Lombok and Bali, which could easily support other isolated hominid communities... if they can only find the remnants.

I love the idea of the tiny elephants and giant rats. I like to think the Lilliputians were riding the elephants. Perhaps racing them. Perhaps even waging war on elephantback.

21:23 / 28.10.04

I know this just shows the depths of my cynicism, but after about five seconds of thinking how cool this discovery is I immediately thought of Piltdown Man.

While the articles I've read do indicate a fasinating antropological find, I question the notion that they are a distinct species, any more than African Pygmies are.

Admittedly I am at best an armchair anthropologist, but the estimate that they lived "95,000 years ago until at least 13,000" doesn't square with the Homo erectus timeline- they dissapeared about 500,000 years ago.

All Acting Regiment

18:59 / 30.10.04

Ah but it had a different physiology, not just a different stature, to us. Pygmies just have a different stature. They're all people though.

Orrin's Prick Up Your Ears

14:01 / 02.11.04

Good old Henry Gee!

"Perhaps it's time for cryptozoology to come in from the cold."

Fascinating to see paleontologists speaking to local peoples and taking their folklore and testimony at face value for once ... the dawning excitement of imaginations clicking off the track of plodding archeological logic and set loose on the possibility that somewhere in the jungles might be communities of living fossils. There must've been some highly unscientific and entertaining conversations around the Flores campfires in recent months! Amazing what a corpse can do, even an 18,000-year-old one.

Don't think Orang Pendek (the 'short man') is the same creature though. The Flores 'Hobbits' sound superficially similar and the height is about right, but I've been on two separate expeditions to the Sumatran jungles looking for the Orang Pendek and all the witnesses we spoke to described something more primitive and far more powerfully built than the delicate Hobbits. No suggestion of tools or language, just brute strength. Most of the (sympathetic) zoologists I've spoken to are of the opinion that it's more likely to be a new species of upright ape. Pongid, not hominid.

However, if it gets us funding for other expeditions, I'm willing to play along and swear blind that I saw Bag End! Sadly, with the rate of deforestation in the Indonesian highlands, whatever it is, the real trick is to find it before extinction does.

23:22 / 02.11.04

Now the real question is, where does this place Mordor?

I suspect it will one day be discovered that all life on earth originated in Australia. Grown in vats that went wild with neglect by alien gods with a sense of humor and fondness for psychedelic abuse. What else could explain marsupiels?

02:08 / 04.12.04

The Hobbits were on All Things Considered today- seems that there's some debate as to whether or not this is in fact another branch of humaity.

From memory-

The remains found were located next to tools that the homo sapiens of the era used. Does this mean there was site contamination? One anthropologist suggests that since only the one skull was found that it may infact be the premains of a homo sapien that suffered from microcephaly. (a "pinhead")

The power of link compells you!

Cheap. Easy. Cruel.

18:14 / 08.12.04

According to one tribal cheiftan in the area, at least one of them was alive three weeks ago. According to this article from Stuff New Zealand, the scientists are going to go to the cave where they were reputed to live. Perhaps they will find signs of recent habitation.

17:29 / 03.03.05

It seems the Hobbits were smarter than we thought.

19:03 / 15.04.05

Sorry for being an arse, but can I remind people when they're starting threads to actually think of them as the start of a debate rather than just drawing stuff to people's attention? If you're referencing another article, can you briefly summarise what it's about as well, and if you could draw out either your reaction to it, or some questions that people might want to debate around, that would be really useful too.

11:46 / 16.04.05

What's worrying is that apparently the bones are now under lock and key. And aren't even being kept by the scientists who discovered them,

[quote]Mike Morwood of the University of New England (UNE) in New South Wales, Australia, and Radien Soejono of Jakarta's Centre for Archaeology led the team that recently published details of the diminutive new species (New Scientist, 30 October, p 8). They agreed that the remains of all seven individuals should be kept at the centre and made available there to any scientist for study.

However, last week Teuku Jacob of Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, sometimes called Indonesia's king of palaeontology, took the remaining bones to his own lab, having already borrowed a skull and jawbone.
[/quote]

I would have thought that they should have been all kept in one place to study so this kind of thing wouldn't happen.

I have to admit I have only read this on the New Scientist website, I haven't got the issue with this in.

*

19:07 / 22.09.05

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.

06:08 / 22.08.06

and the debate gets murkier

how do we tell the real science from the fraud? this is a bizarre case!

23:57 / 20.09.07

now it appears they are a new hominid - as the old ad says, 'it's all in the wrist action!'

hello new human thing!

02:04 / 21.09.07

I wonder if they died out or if some of their genes are still drifting around in our pool.

Hello, cousin hobbit!