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herewiss13Just went to a fascinating lecture at the UofO by Peter Brown, one of the scientists involved with the discovery of Homo floriensis.
I can't recap the entier hour plus of info, but what struck me hardest was his rebuttal of his earlier position on the species, that "Flo" was an archetype of island dwarfism. Brown no longer believes this evolutionary pressure is sufficient to explain various skeletal features (i.e. very thick, robust bones). Instead, he draws parallels between the hobbits and Australopithecenes (i.e. Lucy). Aside from the skull, the rest of the skeleton is _most_ reminiscent of them, and _not_ of shrunk-down Homo erectus, which was the first image thrown out there. He's not even sure Homo is the right genus anymore. ("coming soon to a scientific paper near you"...this phrase came up a lot, actually...and he couldn't say more because they hadn't yet published. Hands, feet, taxonomy, infant growth patterns, tool comparison, etc. All mentioned briefly and then put off. It was mildly frustrating.)
So rather than a very modern derived H. erectus (20,000 years ago) you're now talking about a very derived near-Australopithecene that exists millions of years (well, 1-2) later than it should...on the other side of the globe.
...and all in relation to very modern tools that Brown would _much_ rather have from from H. sapiens Seriously, he kept bringing up how much they disturbed him and how he hoped to find modern human fossils intermingled at some point with the hobbit bones, just so there'd be an explanation he could stomach.
[problem: Earliest humans in Australia: 50 kya. Earliest stone tools in Indonesia (Mata Menge sp?) very similar to the ones found in association with Hobbits: 800 kya (though no bones of any sort at that date). Earliest hobbit bones/tools (if truly "Hobbit tools") 96 kya]
Personally, I would have liked to hear more about how neuro-architecture could have compensated for the small brain-size. There was a passing reference to a more corrugated forebrain in the endocasts, compared with larger H. erectus but that was it. I understand that he's an anthropologist and not a neuro-anatomist, but it's just a rich field of speculation.
There was also some fun stuff where he griped about how the media had portrayed hobits (he wasn't keen on that nickname, but Nature convinced him that if they didn't come of with a monicker, the press would...and they wouldn't like it at _all_. The rest of the team liked "hobit", Brown feels it carries _way_ too much anthropomophic baggage and was rather partial to "Flo", despite its Victorian Grandmother overtones. He was out-voted.)
He also skewered all the illustrations done by SciAm or Nat'l Geographic (spear chucking despite _no_ spear points or hafted tool evidence at all, etc.) and with that lovely australian accent was quite amusing as he did so.
Still, it was the re-evaluation and integration of new evidence to overturn a previous hypothesis/model of island-dwarfism to something much _stranger_ that really stuck with me. That constant ability to alter opinion is what scientific inquiry is all about.
I can't recap the entier hour plus of info, but what struck me hardest was his rebuttal of his earlier position on the species, that "Flo" was an archetype of island dwarfism. Brown no longer believes this evolutionary pressure is sufficient to explain various skeletal features (i.e. very thick, robust bones). Instead, he draws parallels between the hobbits and Australopithecenes (i.e. Lucy). Aside from the skull, the rest of the skeleton is _most_ reminiscent of them, and _not_ of shrunk-down Homo erectus, which was the first image thrown out there. He's not even sure Homo is the right genus anymore. ("coming soon to a scientific paper near you"...this phrase came up a lot, actually...and he couldn't say more because they hadn't yet published. Hands, feet, taxonomy, infant growth patterns, tool comparison, etc. All mentioned briefly and then put off. It was mildly frustrating.)
So rather than a very modern derived H. erectus (20,000 years ago) you're now talking about a very derived near-Australopithecene that exists millions of years (well, 1-2) later than it should...on the other side of the globe.
...and all in relation to very modern tools that Brown would _much_ rather have from from H. sapiens Seriously, he kept bringing up how much they disturbed him and how he hoped to find modern human fossils intermingled at some point with the hobbit bones, just so there'd be an explanation he could stomach.
[problem: Earliest humans in Australia: 50 kya. Earliest stone tools in Indonesia (Mata Menge sp?) very similar to the ones found in association with Hobbits: 800 kya (though no bones of any sort at that date). Earliest hobbit bones/tools (if truly "Hobbit tools") 96 kya]
Personally, I would have liked to hear more about how neuro-architecture could have compensated for the small brain-size. There was a passing reference to a more corrugated forebrain in the endocasts, compared with larger H. erectus but that was it. I understand that he's an anthropologist and not a neuro-anatomist, but it's just a rich field of speculation.
There was also some fun stuff where he griped about how the media had portrayed hobits (he wasn't keen on that nickname, but Nature convinced him that if they didn't come of with a monicker, the press would...and they wouldn't like it at _all_. The rest of the team liked "hobit", Brown feels it carries _way_ too much anthropomophic baggage and was rather partial to "Flo", despite its Victorian Grandmother overtones. He was out-voted.)
He also skewered all the illustrations done by SciAm or Nat'l Geographic (spear chucking despite _no_ spear points or hafted tool evidence at all, etc.) and with that lovely australian accent was quite amusing as he did so.
Still, it was the re-evaluation and integration of new evidence to overturn a previous hypothesis/model of island-dwarfism to something much _stranger_ that really stuck with me. That constant ability to alter opinion is what scientific inquiry is all about.
