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I’ve been too busy for blogging the past three weeks, but I just couldn’t let this one pass by. It’s not quite monkeynews, but that makes it even more fascinating. This one is dynamite!

Archeologists digging on the Indonesian island of Flores have discovered a third species of human, Homo Floresiensis, that could have survived until as recently as 13,000 years ago. In comparison, the last of the Neanderthals are thought to have disappeared from Europe and western Asia around 28,000 years ago.

The skeleton is that of an adult female, only three feet tall with the brain the size of a grapefruit. Despite the small brain size, the archeologists found stone tools in the same cave, and bones of rats, bats and fish that appear to have been cooked from about the same time as the tiny humans appeared to have inhabited the caves.

Flores is thought to have been isolated from the asian continent for over a million years, and species trapped on such islands have a habit of evolving into bizarre shapes and sizes as they adapt to the unique mix of flaura and fauna. Flores itself has in the past been home to giant rats, miniature elephents and huge lizards.

Stone tools discovered from over 800,000 years ago suggest that Homo erectus made it to Flores. The newly discovered hobbit-like species are probably descended from a population that became marooned there. It is suggested that the small stature was a evolutionary adaptation to a low calorie diet and lack of large predators.

Modern humans reached Flores between 35,000 and 55,000 years ago, so would have shared the island with the little people for 20,000 years. Intriguingly, there are detailed stories among the island population of little hairy people called ebu gogo (literally “grandmother who will eat anything”) which have until recently been dismissed as leprechaun tales. Bert Roberts, the archeologist who unearthed the remains, says:

The ebu gogo were short - about a metre tall - long-haired, pot-bellied, with ears that stuck out, walking with a slightly awkward gait, and had longish arms and fingers. They murmured at each other and could repeat words parrot-fashion. They could climb slender trees but were never seen holding stone tools, whereas we have lots of sophisticated artefacts associated with Homo floresiensis. That’s the only inconsistency with the archaeological evidence.

Local villagers say that the last ebu gogo was seen just before Dutch colonists came to the island, in the 19th century, fueling speculation, encouraged by Bert Roberts, that the species could have survived to this day. He plans searches of the remaining rainforest and specific caves associated with the ebu gogo legends.

This story deals another blow to the concept that the human race is somehow unique. When Homo Floresiensis died out 13,000 years ago, assuming that they did, Homo sapiens were left as the only type of human on the planet, a situation probably unprecedented in 7 million years.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 28th, 2004 at 22:36 and is filed under General, Monkeynews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.