Face to Face With The Real Hobbit! An Unexpected Revelation!

reply to post by Hefficide


I think many who studied this have wishful thinking. The amount of evidence is far too little to say it's an entire race. It could very well be an anomaly and lends more to that logic. While I see there are differences one can't merely explain away it still doesn't prove anything at all.
To me this is just another defect in our genetics shining through.

reply to post by skepticconwatcher


So... the disparity in brain volume between a Pygmie homo sapiens and a homo floresiensis matters not? There is a considerable difference here to be addressed. Enough so that even experts who support the claims of a homo sapiens categorization state that this particular individual must have suffered from some mutation or disease - as the brain size ratio simply does not add up.

In short, if these were Pygmies, they were very, very sick ones.

~Heff

Thanks for posting this Heff! I have always loved this little guy and was excited to see this thread on him.

I remember a few years back when they first discovered it and I don't remember if it was a documentary or an article I saw it on, but there was a local history of the hobbit in that area of Indonesia.

Here is an article from Archaeology.org describing the local legend.

The local tradition for H. floresiensis is potentially significant. Villagers in Flores say that up until around 150 years ago, there were small, three-foot-tall hairy "people" who used to steal food from them. Known as the ebu gogos (literally "the grandmothers who eat anything"), they were tolerated by islanders until they stole a baby and ate it. Whether the ebu gogo is pure myth or an accurate recollection of H. floresiensis is at present unprovable. "The folklore material raises the real possibility that H. floresiensis actually survived until sometime in the nineteenth century," said excavation member Bert Roberts, a geochronologist at the University of Wollongong who conducted interviews with the villagers earlier this month. "Indeed, there has to be a remote possibility that they still survive today in some remote jungle area of the island."

I think there is a lot of truth to be found in traditions and tales of locals. If they have a tradition of these little guys and science has found their remains, then I for one am convinced.

Nice find!

~OkieDokie

Perhaps the Hobbit/LOTR universe did exist at one point and Mount Doom got revenge?

Great, now we're cheated out of hanging with Gandalf.

reply to post by skepticconwatcher



Seems to me. Well, and the researchers who have studied these finds.
You see, none of the scientists who object to the idea of this being a new species simply say that this was a pigmy. The most common claim is that there is a neurological disorder due to the fact that this person had a very small cranium. But there have been paleoneurologists dismiss these objections. When you combine that with tie differences seen in the wrist bones, for instance (which resemble those of a chimpanzee instead of modern man), the idea of this being a modern pygmy is soundly rejected.

Great thread!
This is ATS at its best...
These little guys obviously have something to teach us.....I am wondering if Slays thread on the migratory possibilities in that area has any bearing on this find?
In a nutshell the water level of the oceans was such that interisland travel between the asian continent and Astalia was perhaps possible about the time these little guys were alive....
Perhaps travel from Australia, where pygmies existed, and the island where these skeletons were found was easier and very likely....??

Not that i say they australian pygmies just that there is a possibility of them being related somehow...??
any takers?

It's debatable whether HF actually belongs to the genus homo.

This from a very good site with lots of info about the peoples of the southwest pacific and southeast Asia, including hobbits and negrito people of the pacific(pygmies).

Homo floresiensis is not a "miniaturized modern Homo sapiens". Small-statured humans (African pygmies, Negrito) reach their small size through curtailed growth during puberty when the brain has already reached full size, giving a completely different ratio between brain size and stature from the unique ratio found in the Hobbits (ref. Lahr M.M. et al., 2004; Brown P. at al., 2004)). Like Homo sapiens, Homo floresiensis was an obligatory biped, i.e. their normal way to walk was on two legs just as it is among humans. The thickness and proportion of the skull, shape of the teeth, flexion evident at the skull base, are all traits of the genus Homo. Unfortunately, we do not know ho

w they communicated with each other, i.e. whether they had language or not

The site
www.andaman.org...

It is one of the most concise anthropology sites there is . Has lots of info on archeology and anthropology of the pacific basin and the new world.

reply to post by stirling


Inter-species breeding perhaps?

Originally posted by stirling
Great thread!
This is ATS at its best...
These little guys obviously have something to teach us.....I am wondering if Slays thread on the migratory possibilities in that area has any bearing on this find?
In a nutshell the water level of the oceans was such that interisland travel between the asian continent and Astalia was perhaps possible about the time these little guys were alive....
Perhaps travel from Australia, where pygmies existed, and the island where these skeletons were found was easier and very likely....??

Not that i say they australian pygmies just that there is a possibility of them being related somehow...??
any takers?

No homo florensis is not related , at all , to modern pygmies. I'm looking for the article that postulates HF is really an austrolopithicene.
Here's very good discussion on pygmies,
anthropogenesis.kinshipstudies.org...
Also at no time in history has one been able to walk from Asia to Australia or flores for that matter.
Webers line.

He drew Weber's Line which encloses the region in which the mammalian fauna is exclusively Australasian. Weber's Line is an alternative to Wallace Line. As is the case with plant species, faunal surveys revealed that for vertebrate groups, except for birds, Wallace’s Line was not the most significant biogeographic boundary. The Tanimbar Island group, and not the boundary between Bali and Lombok, appears to be the major interface between the Oriental and Australasian regions for mammals, and other terrestrial vertebrate groups. Thus, for many invertebrates, and birds and butterflies, this interface is better represented by Weber’s Line than Wallace’s Line.

Max Weber

en.m.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by Night Star


Nah, their names were more likely x!blar, and x!ina

reply to post by Hefficide


Pre-human ancestors with a case of dwarfism!

Not only were Homo floresiensis dwarfed in size when compared to other Homo genera, but other organisms on the Indonesian Island of Flores experienced evolutionary dwarfism. This occurs when animal populations are confined to an island; and now they are colloquially referred to as "hobbits" lol

It's likely that Homo floresiensis is a distinct species.

reply to post by Hefficide


heff, nice thread. I just have to wonder if the nose in the reconstruction is still too aquiline for that area.

Also, it raises the possibility of interbreeding with homo sapiens. As you know, Homo Sapiens has interbred with other hominids.

In southeast asia , there are a whole lot of people with extremely low stature. You just have to wonder.

Then, there's ORANG PENDEK: a suspected hominid like bigfoot roaming Indonesia, particularly Sumatra. They say it is the strongest possible candidate among cryptids by many magnitudes that has a chance to be proven to actually exist.

This topic and thread has been chosen to be discussed by the ATS LIVE crew this Saturday between 6-9pm pst as part of this weeks Turbo Topics segment.


LOW BANDWIDTH STREAM NOW AVAILABLE - We now run a 32kbps stream for those of you with slower connections. You can connect to the low bandwidth stream by clicking here.

www.shoutcast.com...

We are still running at 256kbps through the ATS Player, and there are also options to listen via other players on our relay site at www.illustrial.net...


For more information and past shows, be sure to check out the ATSLive Show Threads Here.

Hope you'll listen in!
Johnny

reply to post by JohnnyAnonymous


is this part of promoting the movies?

Originally posted by Night Star
Fascinating! But...did they have furry feet and names like Frodo and Bilbo?

Seriously, great find and a great read!

Oddly enough...they DID. There were stone inscriptions to that effect in Layer C, Quadrant 2.

Originally posted by IEtherianSoul9
reply to post by Hefficide

 

Pre-human ancestors with a case of dwarfism!

Not only were Homo floresiensis dwarfed in size when compared to other Homo genera, but other organisms on the Indonesian Island of Flores experienced evolutionary dwarfism. This occurs when animal populations are confined to an island; and now they are colloquially referred to as "hobbits" lol

It's likely that Homo floresiensis is a distinct species.

edit on 12/12/2012 by IEtherianSoul9 because: (no reason given)

Yep. There were also numerous cases of Island Dwarfism affecting wooly mammoths as well. Several islands along the Pacific Coast of the US, St. Paul Island off of the Aleutians, and Wrangle Island in Russia. In fact, the one's on Wrangle Island didn't go extinct until 1700 BC

Yeah they have one of those alive today on a T.V. show.

Danny Devito on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia!

his hominin is remarkable for its small body and brain and for its survival until relatively recent times (possibly as recently as 12,000 years ago). Recovered alongside the skeletal remains were stone tools from archaeological horizons ranging from 94,000 to 13,000 years ago.

Like with the giants, this species was probably wiped out from the FLOOD.

From what I understood Tolkien, drew his stories on fables that he considered based in fact.

With evolution being what it is there isn't 1 defining factor in what causes or shapes its processes, there are numerous factors behind it, be it a species gradually over time changing to suit the habitat its living in, or to be more sexually attractive to a mate, or changing to suit environmental changes i.e climate change or rise and fall of sea levels, or gene mutation or just survival of the fittest, they all have as much an impact on evolution as any of the others.

For instance if we are to believe the cradle of life theories where humanity as is (i.e homosapiens) evolved in Africa from one common ancestorial species, it stands to reason at some point through cell mutation or some such device (Albinism for example) that blacks and whites evolution diverged into 2 separate lines.

A part of it comes down to what is seen as acceptable or the norm to the majority, so through-out history if a group or sub species if you will were/are looked upon as different, seen as abnormal, ostracized etc and cast out of society and went to live together forming their own communities, as i believe happened with Albinism and in this case Dwarfism, and still does in certain parts of the world (see vid), they would in-turn pass those genes to their offspring and so on creating a (what seems to historians) different race and lineage.

Take this video for example (ignoring the comedy element, although i love an idiot abroad lol), will future archaeologists think that these were a different species, a new undiscovered hobbit clan??



I know its a tourist attraction, just used to exemplify a point.

or this...




Are they really a separate species or were they just a community segregated for being different, which in-turn either died out or in Albinisms case flourished i.e modern white.



Same thing with the myths and legends of giants, if all the tall people in the world decided to go live somewhere together, then they would pass the tall genes on and eventually be classed as a separate species, then say us "norms" killed them off because we were scared they were different, future historians/archaeologists would probably think they were a different race altogether (which is probably actually what happened in the case of mythical giants) as they do with all the different hominid species they have found, Neanderthal DNA for example is found nowadays in the modern human genome so they not so much as died out but interbred.

Its all Eugenics at the end of the day, and as we've seen with dogs there is no one "class" of dog there are multiple variations in size, shape and colour, but they are still all the same species, just as with homonids.

That's the thing with history, if you weren't there you won't truly really know, its all subjective and conjecture.

Homo florensis is not a modern human, the physiology makes it clear.

Homo floresiensis is not a "miniaturized modern Homo sapiens". Small-statured humans (African pygmies, Negrito) reach their small size through curtailed growth during puberty when the brain has already reached full size, giving a completely different ratio between brain size and stature from the unique ratio found in the Hobbits (ref. Lahr M.M. et al., 2004; Brown P. at al., 2004)). Like Homo sapiens, Homo floresiensis was an obligatory biped, i.e. their normal way to walk was on two legs just as it is among humans. The thickness and proportion of the skull, shape of the teeth, flexion evident at the skull base, are all traits of the genus Homo. Unfortunately, we do not know how they communicated with each other, i.e. whether they had language or not.

The discoverers of Homo floresiensis at first thought that their finds were dwarfed descendants of Javanese Homo erectus and part of an endemic island fauna. The species' relative brain/body size is extreme - even outside the range of the Australopithecines - and a result of their extreme miniaturization.

While it is relatively easy to say what the "Hobbits" are not,it has proven very difficult to say what they are. There is material here for decades of scientific feuding.

Homo floresiensis differs considerably from modern human populations and from modern chimpanzees (ref. Morwood M.J. et al. 2005. "Further evidence for small-bodied hominins from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia." Nature 437/3:1012-1017)

Moreover,

Limb proportions (humerus/ulna to femur) of Homo floresiensis compared with other human, pre-human and ape populations:

1 (green): global sample of modern human population

2 (grey): modern African pygmies

3 (yellow): Andamanese negrito

4 (orange): chimpanzee (Pan paniscus)

red asterisk: Homo floresiensis

black cross: Australopithecus afarensis (extinct, lived in Africa 5 to 1 million years ago)

Femur and humerus shaft robusticity in Homo floresiensis compared with other human, pre-human and ape populations:

Endocranial range (brain size) and Body height ratio for major groups of the genus Homo:

1. Homo sapiens

2. Erectines (Homo erectus etc.)

3. Australopithecines

4. Homo floresiensis

(Chart adapted from Lahr M.M. et al., 2004).

And a comparison of brain topology

The shape and highly convoluted frontal lobes of a Homo floresiensis brain (below left shown superimposed on the skull) indicate advanced cognition. Not a trace of microcepahly. The Hobbits were intelligent, but to judge from the shape of the brain, it was a non-human intelligence.

The two brains on the right below show the difference in shape between the Floresian brain and a microcephalic (pathologically small-brained, cretinous) Homo sapiens. They have very little in common (ref. Balter M., 2005). Followers of the "Hobbit Cretin cult" please note.

Comparative body heights of three adult modern Homo sapiens and a restoration of an adult Homo floresiensiss to scale.

The source all of the above.


www.andaman.org...