Anthropologists are not often giddy with excitement, but the unearthing of the skeleton of a meter-tall female who hunted pygmy elephants and giant rats 18,000 years ago has them whooping with delight the finding of another piece of the puzzle of the origin of the species.
The finding on a remote eastern Indonesian island has stunned anthropologists like no other in recent memory and could rewrite the history of human evolution.
PHOTO: AFP/COURTESY OF ARTIST PETER SCHOUTEN/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Affectionately called Hobbit, Homo floresiensis was found on the floor of a limestone cave on the island of Flores by Australian scientists working with their Indonesian counterparts.
"This is one of the most astonishing discoveries I've seen in my lifetime," bubbled Tim Flannery, South Australia Museum director.
"To imagine that just 12,000 years ago you could have gone to the island of Flores and seen these tiny little creatures less than 1 meter high and weighing 16 kilograms living there is just amazing," he said.
The discover smashes the long-cherished scientific belief that our species, Homo sapiens, systematically crowded out other upright-walking human cousins beginning 160,000 years ago and that we've had Earth to ourselves for tens of thousands of years.
Instead, it suggests recent evolution was more complex than previously thought. And it demonstrates that Africa, the acknowledged cradle of humanity, does not hold all the answers to persistent questions of how -- and where -- we came to be.
Scientists called the dwarf skeleton "the most extreme" figure to be included in the extended human family. Certainly, she is the shortest.
She is the best example of a trove of fragmented bones that account for as many as seven of these primitive individuals that lived on Flores. The mostly intact female skeleton was found in September last year. Details of the discovery appear in yesterday's issue of the journal Nature.
The specimens' ages range from 95,000 to 12,000 years old, meaning they lived until the threshold of recorded human history and perhaps crossed paths with the ancestors of today's islanders.
"The find is startling," said Robert Foley of Cambridge University. "It's breathtaking to think that another species of hominin existed so recently."
What puzzles scientists is that Homo floresiensis was able to do so much with so little brain power.
Mike Morwood, the University of New England anthropology professor who co-led the Flores team, reckoned that with a brain of just 380cm3 the hairy little people of Flores "would have been flat out chewing grass and nuts."
But they were accomplishing much more than that. Morwood believes the proto humans sailed to the island. He points to the evidence that they made primitive tools, hunted pygmy elephants called stegodons and cooked their meat and that of giant rats.
"Language is a given," Morwood said, reasoning that hunting would require at least a primitive form of communication because their elephant prey were up to 500kg and more than a match for one hunter.
He sees Flores as something of a "lost world" isolated from evolutionary currents. It's a view that leads others to suggest that other islands in Indonesia might harvest other primitive human species.
"My suspicion is that there will be many more examples of pygmy humans," Flannery said.
Homo floresiensis is the smallest human ever found. And, since the discovery of Neanderthal remains in Europe 200 years ago, Homo floresiensis is the first new species.
We don't know yet what happened to the little people of Flores but one possibility is that they were wiped out during a volcanic eruption. Flannery believes the likely answer is that the pygmy people were despatched by a later line of Homo erectus, the Homo sapiens.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS