MOSCOW, April 21 - RIA Novosti. A large-scale study of all known remains of the mysterious "hobbits" from the island of Flores has confirmed that these unusual people are descendants of ancient skilled people, and not degenerate Cro-Magnons, says a paper published in the Journal of Human Evolution.
"Our analysis has revealed a clear connection between Hobbits, Homo sapiens, and other primitive hominids. We are 99% confident that they are not related to Homo erectus and later species of humans, and 100% confident that they are not are degenerate Homo sapiens,” said Michael Lee from Flinders University in Adelaide (Australia).
Was there a hobbit?
The meter-tall remains of ancient humans, almost immediately dubbed "hobbits" by the press, were found in Liang Bua Cave on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, and unveiled to the public in October 2004 by a team of paleontologists led by the late Michael Morewood.
Morwood and his colleagues announced their discovery as a new species, named Homo floresiensis. Initially, paleontologists believed that the Floressian people were descendants of Homo erectus, the so-called “Java man,” whose remains were found on the island of Java in the late 19th century.
These people appeared in Southeast Asia about a million years ago, and thanks to the phenomenon of so-called "island dwarfism", as the discoverers of the "hobbits" assumed, they gradually degenerated and turned into "hobbits", whose brains were three times smaller than those of modern Homo sapiens.
On the other hand, the lack of new fossils has led many scientists to believe that the "hobbits" were ordinary Cro-Magnons who became dwarfs due to congenital deformities such as microcephaly, Laron syndrome and cretinism. Only recently did paleontologists find the first evidence that the ancestors of the “hobbits” appeared on the island of Flores at least 700 thousand years ago, and their descendants disappeared 50 thousand years ago, long before man arrived in Indonesia.
Lee and his colleagues claim that "hobbits" actually have an even older ancestor than Homo erectus, having comprehensively studied all the bones and skull fragments of these mysterious creatures known to date.
In Search of the Hobbit
The authors of the article checked whether this is actually true. To do this, they compared the size and structure of 133 different points on the skull, jaws, teeth and bones of the hands and feet of the “hobbits” and all their putative ancestors, and built “family trees” for each combination of them.
As it turned out, the “hobbits” and skilled people were closest to each other - in this case, the tree of their evolution was the most realistic and closest to reality. All other combinations gave rise to combinations that were impossible from the point of view of simple logic or already known paleontological data on the development of human ancestors.
Interestingly, the same data pointed to the possibility of an even more ancient origin of the “hobbits” - according to Lee, the ancestors of the “hobbits” could have separated from the general evolutionary tree of humanity even before the first Homo habilis arose. In this case, the ancestors of the “hobbits” are relatives of australopithecines or other ancient hominids not belonging to the genus Homo.
This discovery, as Lee admits, does not yet allow us to understand where the metaphorical "Hobbitania" is located, the homeland of these mysterious people. It is possible that they actually turned into dwarfs after arriving on the island, but nothing excludes the possibility that the “hobbits” became “hobbits” even before traveling to their new homeland.
Candidate of Biological Sciences V. MUZCHINKIN.
In the fall of 2004, preliminary results of excavations by an Australian-Indonesian expedition on the island of Flores were published. This Indonesian island is located between Java and Timor, south of Sulawesi, where the Asian block of the earth's crust borders the Australian-New Guinea block.
The discoveries made by the expedition in the Liang Bua Grotto became a scientific sensation.
Reconstruction of a pygmy site from the island of Flores.
Stone tools found on the island may have belonged to Floresian "hobbits". This is how the world press, remembering the heroes of Tolkien’s epic, immediately dubbed the ancient inhabitants of the island.
This is what the forest dwarfs looked like, stories about which have been passed on by word of mouth for many generations by modern residents of the island of Flores.
Comparison of the skulls (from left to right) of Floresian Homo, Neanderthal and modern Homo sapiens.
The dwarf stegodon, which could have been hunted by pygmies, is a now extinct relative of the elephant (one and a half meters at the withers).
The Indonesian region is remembered for one of the first anthropological sensations. In 1891, the Dutch researcher E. Dubois found fragments of the skeleton of an ape-man, Pithecanthropus, in Java. The commotion in the press then gradually gave way to the obligatory presence in all school textbooks of a detailed story about the Javanese find. It was discovered that creatures similar to Pithecanthropus - upright, about 170 cm tall, with a kilogram brain, capable of using fire (the oldest fire pits are more than a million years old) and making a variety of stone (and, probably, bone and wooden) implements - were common in the vastness of Eurasia and Africa. Now they are classified as the Homo erectus species.
The skeleton belonged to a normally built adult woman, only a meter tall and apparently weighing 20-30 kilograms. These miniature sizes greatly confuse anthropologists. Of the three currently distinguished species of the genus Homo (Homo habilis Homo habilis, Homo erectus Homo erectus and Homo sapiens Homo sapiens), the found creature, in all respects except size, fits within the limits of the “erectus” species, which includes the Javan Pithecanthropus. But for now, a separate species has been created for him (more precisely, for her) - Homo floresiensis.
The small size of Homo floresianus and especially the small size of his brain inevitably lead to the continuation of a discussion that has been going on for almost two centuries about the importance of such indicators as the size of the brain and the entire body for assessing human capabilities.
Floresian man had a four-hundred-gram brain (judging by the volume of the cranium), the same weight as the brain of an adult chimpanzee and a newborn modern human. The intellectual capabilities of a newborn baby are still difficult to assess. Every year we learn something new about the capabilities of the chimpanzee brain: this brain allows you to operate with two hundred words of sign language, use improvised objects as tools, adopt the skills of members of your social group... So the four-hundred-gram brain of “hobbits” is fraught with more possibilities than it seems at first sight. But can the stone scrapers, cutters and piercings found in the same layer with the skeleton really be considered the products of these particular pygmies, and not other members of our genus Homo? And the next inevitable and still unanswered question: how do the capabilities of the four-hundred-gram brain of Floresians differ from the capabilities of the kilogram brain of their closest relatives and supposed ancestors - Pithecanthropus? After all, they, in turn, find themselves, in terms of brain size, at the lower limit of the normal weight of this organ in modern humans. Everyone remembers the school example with the one-kilogram brain of Anatole France and the two-kilogram brain of Turgenev, writers who were equally successful in creativity.
Body size is easier to understand than brain size. The height of representatives of modern tribes ranges from less than one and a half meters among the Zairian Mbuti (and, possibly, among some groups of Andamanese and Filipinos) to almost two meters of the Central African Watussi-Tutsi, that is, they differ by one and a half times. Within our own species we can also find populations in which short stature is combined with small head size. Then the last reasons to isolate the Floresian pygmies from other local variants of Homo erectus are removed.
The result is a completely similar picture for the species Homo sapiens and Homo erectus: a double scatter in the volume of the cranium and a one-and-a-half scatter in height. In this case, the Floresian find extends the presence of Homo erectus on the historical stage to one and a half million years, from the beginning of the Pleistocene and almost to its end. Our own species, having appeared in the geological record only in the last third of the Pleistocene, almost immediately, judging by the latest data from genetic studies, split into two long-coexisting trunks: the so-called Neanderthals and everyone else. Moreover, for almost its entire history, our species, Homo sapiens, coexisted with the widespread Homo erectus.
Here we move into the field of folklore. Stories about the presence in the area of certain humanoid creatures (large, small, ferocious, peaceful, avoiding contact with people or going towards them), inhabiting mountains, forests or swamps, are common throughout the Old and New Worlds. And what is curious: their descriptions are similar to reconstructions of fossil anthropological finds, with which local residents who talked with folklorists are, as a rule, unfamiliar.
Thus, Bigfoot in eyewitness descriptions resembles Australopithecus or Gigantopithecus. Indonesia also has its own “forest people”. Modern inhabitants of the island of Flores talk in detail about "ebu-gogo". The name translates as "omnivorous grandmothers." These are forest dwellers about a meter tall, long-haired, with rounded bellies, long arms and fingers. They talk to each other in their own language in quiet voices and are capable, like parrots, of repeating the words of the person addressing them. Stone or other tools or weapons were never noticed in their hands. They ate everything raw - vegetables, fruits, meat (including human), hence the epithet “omnivores” (can also be translated “gluttonous”). When people offered food to newcomers from the forest, they ate the treat along with bowls made from pumpkin. Ebu-gogo sometimes ravaged the fields of local residents, people tolerated these antics, but when the forest men stole and ate the baby, they decided to drive them away from their homes. They fled, by the way, in the direction of the Liang Bua Grotto, where the current finds were made. Residents of Flores claim that the last time the voracious “grandmothers” were seen was a hundred years ago. Three hundred years ago, when colonists from Holland first landed on the island, voracious forest dwarfs were, they say, quite common, but now it is impossible to meet them in the forest. Maybe these were the “hobbits” who have survived almost to this day?
But let's go back 18 thousand years ago, at the height of the last ice age, when a significant part of the waters of the World Ocean was pulled into subpolar ice sheets.
With the end of the Ice Age and rising ocean levels, the outskirts of the continents broke up into many islands, and the populations of Homo sapiens that had long taken root here had to move to dry places. The end of the history of the newly discovered species of our genus is hidden, apparently, in the sediments of the last ten thousand years on the southern edge of the present Malay Archipelago.
Captions for illustrations
Ill. 1. The outline of the island of Flores in our time and 18 thousand years ago, when masses of water were collected in huge subpolar ice caps, and the sea level dropped by more than 100 meters. The dotted line shows the modern outlines of the land, the solid line shows the coast during the period of low ocean levels, when it was possible to travel overland from Asia to America, and to sail to Australia on primitive rafts.
Human evolution. Book 1. Monkeys, bones and genes Markov Alexander Vladimirovich
"Hobbits" from the island of Flores
"Hobbits" from the island of Flores
In October 2004 in the magazine Nature a description of a previously unknown species of fossil people was published - Homo floresiensis, who lived on the island of Flores (Indonesia) less than 20 thousand years ago (that is, quite recently, when Neanderthals had already become extinct and sapiens had spread widely throughout the Old World). The discovery was made in the Liang Bua cave. These strange people, nicknamed hobbits for their small stature (no more than a meter), had a tiny brain (about 400 cm 3, about the size of a chimpanzee or even a little smaller) and at the same time made quite advanced stone tools. The authors of the unique find pointed out the similarity of “hobbits” with Homo erectus. In their opinion, the “hobbits” are most likely the crushing descendants of erectus, who settled on the island more than 800 thousand years ago (judging by the finds of tools). This point of view seemed to many experts to be the most justified from the very beginning.
However, other interpretations have also been proposed. Some authors have admitted that Homo floresiensis descended not from erectus, but from more archaic hominids - Australopithecus, the remains of which are still known only from Africa. Others generally argued that the “hobbit” was simply an unusually ugly representative H. sapiens who suffered from severe microcephaly.
A heated discussion has developed around the “hobbits”. I'll talk about it in more detail so that readers can get a general idea of how paleonthropologists resolve controversial issues in the absence of direct evidence.
In April 2006, a meeting of the Paleoanthropological Society was held in Puerto Rico, at which several important presentations were made ( Culotta, 2006). Susan Larson from the State University of New York reported new anatomical details of the skeleton H. floresiensis, confirming the original version of the origin of this species from H. erectus.
The humerus of the “hobbit,” as it turned out, is significantly different from ours. If our head of the humerus is rotated relative to the elbow joint by 145–165 degrees, due to which our elbows are directed back and it is convenient for us to work with our hands in front of us in a standing position, then in the “hobbit” the head of the humerus is rotated only 110 degrees. This feature in itself could complicate weapon activity H. floresiensis, however, it is compensated for by the slightly different shape and orientation of the scapula than ours. Apparently, the “hobbits” could work with their hands as effectively as modern people, but a comfortable hand position was achieved in a slightly different way, and the “hobbits” had to hunch a little while working. But they most likely could not throw objects over long distances.
Larson also studied the skeletons of other hominid fossils and found that the only one with a more or less complete skeleton H. erectus, found in Kenya, the humerus is constructed in the same way as in H. floresiensis. Previously, no attention was paid to this. Larson concluded that the transformation of the shoulder on the way from the first hominids to modern humans took place in two stages, with the “hobbit” and erectus corresponding to the first of them.
In another presentation at the same meeting, William Jungers, Larson's university colleague, described the results of reconstruction of the "hobbit" pelvis. Although early publications reported similarities between the pelvic bones H. floresiensis with those of australopithecus, Jungers discovered a number of advanced characters, which confirms the version of the origin of “hobbits” from H. erectus.
The authors of the sensational find believed that the skeleton they found belonged to a female individual, but later some experts doubted this. Jungers reported that the limb bones of other individuals found near the first skeleton were noticeably smaller in size. This suggests that perhaps this species was sexually dimorphic (men were larger than women). It is possible that the skeleton belonged to a man, and the individual bones of the limbs belonged to women.
Jungers also said that among the bones found there was also a well-preserved foot, which has not yet been properly examined. Its large size is noteworthy: it is possible that the “hobbits” from the island of Flores, like the heroes of Tolkien’s novel, had impressive hairy feet.
In general, as the “hobbits” are studied, the positions of skeptics become increasingly precarious. However, some of them continue to persist. For example, paleoanthropologist Robert Martin and his colleagues believe that the “hobbit” brain is too small to belong to a full-fledged hominid of this size ( Martin et al., 2006). “I'm not 100% sure it's microcephaly,” Martin says. “I’m just saying that his brain is still too small.”
The most compelling argument against the “microcephalic” version is that in addition to the original skeleton, the remains of several more individuals clearly belonging to the same species were discovered in Liang Bua Cave on the island of Flores. As Jungers rightly points out, Martin actually insists that there was an entire village of microcephalic idiots on the island. True, the skull was preserved in only one specimen (LB1), but there are lower jaws, the structure of which suggests that other inhabitants of Liang Bua had a brain no larger than that of LB1.
Homo floresiensis . Flores Island (Indonesia), 95–12 thousand years ago.
It is curious that even after the discovery of Neanderthals, some scientists tried to prove that the bones found did not belong to a special type of ancient people, but to modern people who suffered from mental retardation. It seems that the situation is repeating itself, and the outcome of the discussion, it seems, will again not be in favor of the skeptics.
Shortly after the publication of Martin and his colleagues' commentary, a large international group of archaeologists reported a powerful new argument that Homo floresiensis- not a microcephalus, not a pygmy, and not a hallucination, but a special dwarf species of man.
Along with the bones of nine individuals Homo floresiensis In the Liang Bua cave, the discoverers found numerous stone tools. Skeptics argued that these tools were too advanced to be made by a creature with a brain volume of 400 cm 3, and that in fact they were the products of sapiens - modern people.
The oldest skeletal remains Homo sapiens, discovered on Flores, are 11.5 thousand years old - they are slightly younger than the youngest “hobbit” bones. Along with the bones of sapiens, much more advanced tools with polished blades were found, as well as beads and other artifacts, indicating a fundamentally different (Upper Paleolithic) level of culture.
In addition to the relatively primitive tools of the “hobbits” and the exquisite Upper Paleolithic products of modern people, very ancient tools were found on the island that apparently belonged to representatives of the species Homo erectus, who inhabited the island more than 800 thousand years ago. The bones of the erecti themselves have not yet been found. If the skeptics who consider “hobbits” to be ugly people of the modern type are right, then the tools found with the “hobbits” should be very different from the products of erectus. If the discoverers of the “hobbits” are right, then Homo floresiensis- direct descendants of the erectus that settled the island, and their tools should be similar to each other and sharply different from the products H. sapiens. A study conducted by a group of scientists from Australia, Indonesia and the Netherlands confirmed the second version ( Brumm et al., 2006).
For the first time, ancient tools (several dozen in number) were found in 1994, 50 km east of the Liang Bua cave. In 2004–2005, archaeologists recovered about 500 more artifacts during intensive excavations in the area. In Liang Bua, 3,264 stone artifacts were found along with hobbit bones.
Hobbit skull. Photo from Brown et al., 2004.
Ancient tools come from a layer of lake-river sediments, which in some places is bounded above and below by volcanic layers, which makes it possible to determine the age of the artifacts with great accuracy. The lower volcanic layer is 880 ± 70 years old, the upper one is 800 ± 70 thousand years old. The guns were therefore made between these dates.
The stone industry of the island's first settlers was quite primitive - not far removed from that of Olduvai. Most of the artifacts are made of low-quality material - pebbles of volcanic origin, which were selected directly on the spot, but there are also items made of higher-quality fine-grained siliceous limestone (27 artifacts) and chalcedony. The material for these products was apparently brought from afar.
The technology involved breaking off flakes from the core. To do this, they simply pounded one pebble into another or used a spent core as a hammer. The flakes obtained were mostly small and medium in size. Most of the “products” were abandoned at the production site and were never used. Some (mostly large) flakes were subjected to additional processing - retouching. For example, the edge of a flake could be sharpened by breaking off smaller flakes from it. Five of the tools were processed especially carefully - small pieces were chopped off from them until they got a kind of pointed point that could be used, for example, to pierce holes in skins.
The stone industry of the island's first settlers turned out to be very similar to the products H. floresiensis according to basic qualitative and quantitative parameters. The piercings found among the ancient tools resemble similar tools from Liang Bua, and the spent cores from the two sites are in many cases virtually indistinguishable. Perhaps the only significant difference between the two sets of stone tools is that among the finds from Liang Bua there are 12 artifacts that crumbled under the influence of fire, but this is not observed among the ancient tools.
These results support the hypothesis about the origin H. floresiensis from erectus, which inhabited the island about 800 thousand years ago or earlier. Over hundreds of thousands of years of quiet life on the island among exotic dwarf elephants - stegodons, giant rats and monitor lizards, the islanders were crushed, and their technological development almost completely stopped. The appearance of modern people on Flores - tall Upper Paleolithic hunters with a highly developed stone industry - doomed the small backward people to inevitable death. However, judging by the legends about the little forest people that exist among modern islanders, the last “hobbits” may have become extinct only a few centuries ago.
The discussion did not end there. Soon in the magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Another article from skeptics has appeared ( Jacob et al., 2006), which considered the following arguments.
1. Main distinguishing feature H. floresiensis- small brain volume (about 400 cm3). However, only one skull was found; the bones of other individuals do not provide strong evidence that they too had small brains.
2. The stone tools found along with the bones of the “hobbits” are highly complex. In particular, small blades that were parts of composite tools were found. Only modern people possessed such technologies. The similarity of the “hobbit” tools with the ancient erectus products discovered on the island, according to the authors, is very superficial.
3. In order for a new species of people to form on the island, complete isolation is necessary. However, there is no compelling reason to assert that the archanthropes penetrated the island only once and that there were no further contacts between the inhabitants of Flores and other human populations. It is known about dwarf elephants - stegodons - that they entered Flores at least twice. And if contact between the islanders and other people persisted, how can it be argued that the islanders were truly a separate species? People apparently were able to penetrate Flores multiple times during glacial maxima, when sea levels fell and the straits between the islands of the Malay Archipelago narrowed or disappeared altogether.
4. Flores Island is too small for an isolated population of hunter-gatherers to survive on it for 40 thousand generations. The island's area (14,200 km2) is estimated to be large enough to support only 570–5,700 early humans, while other estimates suggest that the population of large vertebrates would need to number at least 5,816–7,316 adults to have a real chance last 40 thousand generations.
5. Dwarfism in itself cannot serve as an argument in favor of identifying “hobbits” as a special species, since such size variations are widespread in many mammals, including humans. For example, African pygmies are not a separate species at all, and they are not genetically isolated from neighboring tribes.
6. None of the morphological features of the single “hobbit” skull and both lower jaws goes beyond the limits of individual variability characteristic of modern inhabitants of Melanesia and Australia. Even those features that were specifically noted in the original description as “not found in modern humans” (for example, some structural features of the tympanic bone) are actually found among the Australian aborigines and the recently extinct Tasmanians. The absence of a chin protuberance in “hobbits” also does not mean anything, since among the Rampasas pygmies living near the Liang Bua cave and specially studied by the authors of the article, this sign is found very often (see photo on p. 192).
7. The main distinguishing feature of “hobbits” - a small brain combined with short stature - according to the authors, is a consequence of microcephaly. The authors report that microcephaly is usually accompanied by a whole range of other abnormalities, of which dwarfism is one of the most common. The extremely high degree of fusion of the cranial sutures, characteristic of the “hobbit” skull, could be the root cause of a whole complex of anomalies, including the small volume of the brain. In particular, the authors note a pronounced asymmetry of the skull, especially its facial part. This asymmetry goes beyond what is considered clinically normal and suggests that the Liang Bua skull belonged to an individual with severe developmental disabilities.
8. The discoverers of the “hobbits” indicated the structural features of the teeth that distinguish their discovery from modern people. The authors analyze these features in detail and show that all of them are found with varying frequency in modern human populations, and some features indicate the proximity of the “hobbit” to the modern Floresian Rampas pygmies.
9. Considering the structure of the postcranial skeleton (that is, all bones not related to the skull), the authors point to a number of features indicating that the type specimen H. floresiensis suffered from severe developmental defects. The postcranial bones of other individuals attributed to the same species are mentioned only in passing by the authors, noting that “they are generally consistent with the idea that the Liang Bua population was dwarfed” and, most importantly, “these bones say nothing about the size skulls of their owners."
In most anthropology textbooks you can read that the chin protuberance is one of the most characteristic distinctive features of Homo sapiens, by which the jaw of a modern person can always be distinguished from the jaw of a Neanderthal or Pithecanthropus. However, among the Rampasas pygmies from the island of Flores there are individuals lacking a chin protuberance. Photo from Jacob et al., 2006.
Many of the arguments listed (especially the third, fourth and seventh) are, in my opinion, very vulnerable to criticism. Nevertheless, the article was a serious blow to the positions of the “optimists.” Undoubtedly, the entire argument of the skeptics will instantly crumble to smithereens if they manage to dig up another small skull with the same features on Flores. But this has not happened yet.
However, in the last 2–3 years, the “optimists” have clearly begun to gain the upper hand. This is evident from the fact that other anthropologists, who have not themselves studied “hobbits,” are increasingly using Homo floresiensis as a material for comparison and a basis for evolutionary hypotheses. New “optimistic” arguments are also being put forward.
In 2007, “optimists” published an article in Science, in which they drew attention to the fact that until now the discussion has been mainly around the structure of the skull and teeth, although the bones of the limbs of primates can also serve as an important source of information about kinship and group affiliation. In particular, the carpal bones Homo sapiens have a number of advanced features not found in other living primates.
The authors showed that these “human” characteristics are also characteristic of our closest fossil relatives: Upper Paleolithic sapiens (Cro-Magnons) and Neanderthals, as well as Homo antecessor- a species considered close to the common ancestor of Neanderthals and sapiens (see below). Because the Homo antecessor lived about 1.0–0.8 million years ago, the authors believe that this complex of carpal features was formed no later than ( Tocheri et al., 2007). Scientists examined three bones of the left wrist belonging to the type specimen Homo floresiensis(instance LB1). The bones were dug up in September 2003, are well preserved and show no signs of pathology.
It turned out that all three bones do not have the advanced features characteristic of sapiens and Neanderthals, and are in the original, primitive state that is observed in chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, australopithecus and habilis.
The authors used for comparison 252 wrist bones of modern people from all over the Earth, including people suffering from various disorders of skeletal development; 117 chimpanzee bones, 116 gorilla bones, 40 orangutan bones, 19 baboons, four Upper Paleolithic sapiens bones, 13 Neanderthal bones, three Australopithecus bones and one Habilis bone. In addition, they used extensive literature data on various anomalies in the structure of the wrist that occur in modern humans. Scientists have concluded that the primitive traits observed in Hobbit LB1 cannot be the result of known diseases or developmental abnormalities. In their opinion, the progressive features in the structure of the wrist, characteristic of modern humans, appeared between 0.8 and 1.8 million years ago in the evolutionary lineage, including sapiens, Neanderthals and their common ancestor. As for the “hobbits,” they descended from some more primitive hominids, in whom these characteristics were still in their original, “ape” state, like in the Australopithecines and Habilis.
Skeleton of the hand. The carpal bones preserved in the “hobbit” are highlighted (from left to right: scaphoid, trapezoid, capitate).
Unfortunately, the wrist bones Homo erectus- the probable ancestor of the “hobbits” - have not yet been found.
Another portion of “optimistic” arguments appeared in 2009. Study of the endocrane (cast of the brain cavity) of a single skull Homo floresiensis showed that although the Hobbit's brain size was the same as that of a chimpanzee, its structure had undergone significant reorganization. In particular, the size and shape of some parts of the cortex associated with “higher” mental functions have changed. This is not a monkey brain, but neither is it the brain of a modern person suffering from microcephaly. The discovered features help to understand how the “hobbits” managed to have a fairly high culture with such a small brain, in particular, to make stone tools ( Falk et al., 2009). Archaeological data also indicate that modern people who arrived on Flores about 12 thousand years ago may have adopted some stone processing techniques from the aborigines - the “hobbits” (the age of the found “hobbit” bones, according to the latest data, ranges from 95 to 12 thousand years. Most likely, the “hobbits” lived until the arrival of sapiens) ( Moore et al., 2009).
Important facts that shed light on the origin and kinship of the “hobbits” were obtained during the study of the LB1 foot ( Jungers et al., 2009). In some ways, the “hobbit’s” foot resembles a human one: the big toe is adjacent to the rest (and not opposed to them, like in a chimpanzee); the upper part of the arch is reinforced, which allows you to effectively push off when walking; The metatarsal bones are also similar to human ones in a number of ways. But in other respects the hobbit's foot is very different from ours. First of all, she is too big for a person of her height. In terms of relative foot size, the “hobbit” corresponds to chimpanzees and australopithecines, but not sapiens. Primitive features also include very long fingers, except for the thumb, which, on the contrary, is shortened (this also brings the “hobbits” closer not to sapiens, but to early hominids). The hobbit foot is well suited for walking on two legs, but it is poorly suited for fast running. For example, its arch does not have a special springing mechanism characteristic of Homo sapiens. Long fingers could be convenient for a measured step, but would be a hindrance when running.
Traces found in Kenya Homo erectus, whose age is 1.43 million years (see above), show that by that time our ancestors already had a completely modern gait and foot structure. Consequently, the evolutionary paths of the ancestors of “hobbits” and modern people most likely diverged earlier than this date (unless the primitive foot developed a second time in hobbits).
Until now, the most likely ancestors of the “hobbits” were considered erectus, which supposedly penetrated Flores 800-900 thousand years ago and gradually shredded, turning into a special dwarf species of people under conditions of island isolation. New data testifies in favor of another version, which was also expressed, but seemed less probable - about the origin of “hobbits” from more primitive hominids, close to Australopithecus or Habilis. This version, by the way, fits better with the small size of the hobbit brain. The patterns of changes in the relative sizes of the brain and body during the evolution of mammals, including primates, are well studied. Based on these patterns, we can conclude that meter-tall dwarfs descended from sapiens should have a brain volume of about 1100 cm 3, from erecti - about 500–650 cm 3. But the brain volume of LB1 is only 400 cm 3, so in this regard, Habilis and Australopithecus are better suited to the role of the ancestors of “hobbits” than erectus or, especially, modern people.
The problem, however, is that neither Australopithecus nor Habilis ever went beyond the borders of their native African continent - at least no evidence has yet been discovered indicating such a possibility. To get to distant Flores, primitive African hominids would have had to travel a long distance, including through landscapes to which they would hardly have been able to adapt. How did the ancestors of the “hobbits” get to Flores?
In principle, the ancestors of the “hobbits” could have been early representatives of the human race, intermediate between habilis and typical erectus. It was at this stage of development, about 1.77 million years ago, that people first moved beyond the borders of their native African continent, as evidenced by finds in Dmanisi. But the brain volume of people from Dmanisi was 600–650 cm 3 with a weight of about 40 kg (“hobbits” weighed about 30 kg). Calculations based on the above-mentioned patterns show that the people from Dmanisi were still too “brainy” to claim to be the ancestors of the hobbits.
In an unexpected way, hippos helped solve this problem. True, not modern, but fossil dwarf hippos, which relatively recently (a thousand years ago) lived on the island of Madagascar. In conditions of island isolation, hippos, like the ancestors of the “hobbits” and many other mammals that found themselves in a similar situation, began to shrink. At the same time, the volume of their brain, as it turned out, decreased faster than it was “supposed to” in accordance with previously established patterns. Within a mammalian species, brain volume typically varies in proportion to body volume raised to the power of 0.25 or less; for groups of closely related species this indicator ranges from 0.2 to 0.4. In other words, body volume usually changes much faster than brain volume. That's why relative The brain size of dwarf forms is usually larger than that of large ones. However, in the case of a rapid decrease in body size under conditions of island isolation, this figure, as it turned out, can approach 0.5. This means that insular dwarfism can lead to abnormally rapid brain shrinkage ( Weston, Lister, 2009). If we extrapolate this pattern to the people from Dmanisi and the “hobbits,” it turns out that the former could well be the ancestors of the latter. The resulting reduction in the brain is comparable to what was observed in Madagascar hippos.
Duration of existence and presumed relationships of fossil hominids. The vertical axis shows time in million years ago. Solid arrows show more or less precisely established family ties, dotted arrows show hypothetical ones. Two possible origins shown Homo floresiensis - from early erectuses and from habilis. According to the drawing from Lieberman, 2009.
Under the pressure of new facts, many experts, who until now doubted that “hobbits” are a special kind of people, and not a degenerate dwarf tribe of sapiens, are reconsidering their views. Among them is Daniel Lieberman from Harvard University. According to Lieberman, the most likely ancestors of the “hobbits” today should be considered the early erectuses, close to the people from Dmanisi, however, the Habilis cannot be discounted. It is possible that the early representatives of the human race (Habilis, early erectus and the like) were much more diverse, and their area of distribution was much wider than we know today ( Lieberman, 2009).
From the book The Newest Book of Facts. Volume 1 [Astronomy and astrophysics. Geography and other earth sciences. Biology and Medicine] author From the book Anthropological Detective. Gods, people, monkeys... [with illustrations] author Belov Alexander Ivanovich From the book Evolution author Jenkins Morton From the book Tropical Nature author Wallace Alfred RussellTHE MYSTERY OF THE ISLAND OF MADAGASCAR In ancient Rome, lemurs were called harmful shadows, ghosts of the dead. These restless ones wandered at night, vainly seeking peace in this world, and with their mere appearance they sent madness upon people. When the first Europeans set foot on the island. Madagascar and
From the book The Newest Book of Facts. Volume 1. Astronomy and astrophysics. Geography and other earth sciences. Biology and medicine author Kondrashov Anatoly PavlovichGALAPAGOS ISLANDS Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands in 1835 during his expedition around the world on the HMS Beagle. There he came up with the idea of natural selection. The Galapagos Islands get their name from the Spanish word galapago, meaning turtle; sometimes they were also called
From the book Reading Between the Lines of DNA [The Second Code of Our Life, or a Book Everyone Should Read] author Spork PeterThe Hummingbirds of Juan Fernandez Island as an Example of Variation and Natural Selection The three species of hummingbirds of the Juan Fernandez and Mas a Fuera Islands have some highly remarkable characteristics. They form a special genus Eustephanus, one species of which occurs both in
From the book The Most Unusual Animals author Berdyshev Dmitry GennadievichWhich islands are in the top ten largest in the world? The ten largest islands in the world are the following (area in square kilometers in parentheses): Greenland (2,175,600), New Guinea (792,500), Kalimantan (734,000), Madagascar (587,000), Baffin Island (507,500) ,
From the book In the Footsteps of the Past author Yakovleva Irina NikolaevnaWhat does the name of the Chinese island of Taiwan have in common with the names of cities: Icelandic Reykjavik, Indian Diamond Harbor, Mexican Ensenada and Finnish Lahti? Chinese "wan", Icelandic "vik", English "harbour", Spanish "ensenada" and Finnish "lahti"
From the author's bookWhat is the second (unofficial) name for the Fiji Islands? Even in the early years of the 19th century, sailors avoided Fiji due to the fact that the population of the islands was famous for its belligerence and cannibalism. This is where the second (unofficial) name came from -
From the author's bookCentennial Islands It is obvious that a healthy lifestyle contributes most decisively to reaching old age. Even Jeanne Kalman's smoking does not change anything about this. On the contrary, the fact that this unhealthy habit could not harm her emphasizes the extraordinary
From the author's bookWonders of the island of Madagascar The kingdom of Madagascar is the only island zoogeographic region of the planet. It lies entirely on the islands belonging to the Mascarene, Seychelles, Amirante and Comoros archipelagos. Its name is kingdom
From the author's bookMOUSE BEAVER AND OSTRICH OWL FROM THE ISLAND OF CUBA It is interesting that the history of the fauna of the mainland island of South America, as if in miniature, was repeated on the real island lying north of it - on Cuba. Southern ungulates, although very timidly, nevertheless moved across the Isthmus of Panama to
ALL PHOTOS
In Indonesia, a team of scientists, after ten years of intensive searches, discovered the remains of the ancestor of an ancient species of people - Homo flores, nicknamed the "hobbit" for his dwarf stature (by analogy with the creatures invented by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien). The sensational discovery is reported by the journal Nature.
The latest findings show that the process of decline took place much faster than previously thought - the size of the found remains is much smaller than that of the species Homo erectus. This led scientists to suggest that its ancestor approached the size of the “hobbit” in just 300 thousand years.
In 2003, a team of Australian professor Mike Morewood discovered the remains of unusual dwarf creatures on the island of Flores. The ancestor of modern people was dubbed a “hobbit” - by analogy with Tolkien’s characters “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings”. There were suggestions that the discovered creature was a representative of an unknown breed of hominid.
For four years, there has been controversy in the scientific community over the findings. Some scientists believed that the bones belonged to pygmies, whose descendants still live on the island. Others were of the opinion that these were the remains of a special species of people who lived here 10-120 thousand years ago at the same time as Homo sapiens. A version has also been put forward that the remains belong to people who suffered from microcephaly. However, in 2007, scientists announced that the Indonesian "hobbit" is a separate species of human.
It was found that the "hobbit" is a representative of a side branch of ancient human ancestors, which appeared before Homo sapiens and Neanderthals formed the modern type of wrist. All three species had a common ancestor that lived between 1 million and 500 thousand years ago. "Hobbits" are descended from a species that migrated from Africa and separated from the main line of evolution before the common ancestor of modern man and Neanderthal evolved from it.
Stone artifacts comparable to similar African finds were discovered near the remains of the “hobbits” on the island of Flores. This confirms the hypothesis that the first hominids, who mastered the technique of stone processing and the use of stone tools, had a primitive type of wrist. The modern type appeared between 1.8 million and 800 thousand years ago, which made the manufacture and use of tools more convenient.
Professor Mike Morwood died in 2013, and Australian paleontologists continued excavations on Flores Island. According to The New York Times, in addition to the remains of the ancestors of the “hobbits,” 149 stone tools allegedly made 700 thousand years ago were also discovered.
Man of Flores ( Homo floresiensis) is an extinct species of dwarf people. Representatives of this species were very small in stature, which is why they were also given the name “hobbits.” Initially, it was even planned to give the new species the name “Homo hobbitus”.
The remains of Homo flores were found on the island of Flores, Indonesia. In the Liang Bua cave, which was once inhabited by this man, many bones were found that are of great interest to paleoanthropologists studying the problem of human evolution. According to rough estimates, the age of the finds ranges from 13 to 95 thousand years. The growth of this species was very low and was approximately one meter - from 1.04 to 1.09 m. Also, Homo flores had a small brain size - 400 cm3, which is even less than that of a modern chimpanzee, and three times less than in modern man. However, despite the small size of the brain, Homo floresiensis was able to make tools from stone and also used fire.
Judging by scientific research, Homo flores is a subspecies of Homo erectus "". Also, many scientists agree that the “hobbit” became a descendant of Pithecanthropus, which lived in Southeast Asia. As a descendant of , who was engaged in making tools from stone and probably knew how to make and maintain fire, Homo floresiensis adopted these abilities, but was greatly reduced in height (Pithecanthropus had a height of 1.5 meters). Scientists associate such a strong decrease in growth with the island isolation of this species, when over millennia of living in a small island, the subspecies of Homo erectus became much shorter than its ancestors. As evidence, scientists also cite real cases where even representatives of Homo sapiens became smaller during island isolation.
Homo florescanus bones and reconstructions:
Liang Bua Cave, where Man of Flores lived
- In contact with 0
- Google+ 0
- OK 0
- Facebook 0
