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Hobbits in our evolution.

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posted on Sep, 20 2007 @ 11:07 PM
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I hope that this goes here. Just thought this was very interesting. But hobbit sized skeletons, more apelike then human, have been found in Asia.

news.nationalgeographic.com...



posted on Sep, 21 2007 @ 11:12 AM
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I wouldn't say that they are part of our evolution. The article clearly states that these people existed at the same time as modern humans.
Nice find though, very interesting.
I wonder how these hobbit like people came to be extinct.



posted on Sep, 21 2007 @ 01:36 PM
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The article's from 2004, and has been talked about here before. They're not direct human ancestors, but are humans.

HOWEVER... this is as good a thread for it... there was a huge fight in the scholarly/archaeological/anthropological world about whether these were a separate species or a deformed human or something else. The jury's now in, and they're a separate species.

You can see how bitter the argument was:

For some though that interpretation is just too incredible. Robert Martin at the Field Museum of Chicago argued in a paper last year that the Hobbit's grapefruit-sized brain was simply too small compared with its body to be a scaled-down human species. He also said that tools found with the fossils were too advanced to have come from a creature with such a small brain. Meanwhile, Robert Eckhardt at Pennsylvania State University argued last year that Flores, the Indonesian island on which the Hobbit was found, was too small to support a population of hunter gatherers without immigration from other islands. That would mean it was not genetically isolated and so could not have evolved into a separate species. He criticised other researchers' willingness to get caught up in the hype and sniped that, "critical faculties were suspended on the part of many people."

www.guardian.co.uk...

This was particularly pleasing to me, since I've been on the "they're a separate species" side. Martin's argument of a "deformed human" didn't make any sense -- humans with deformities that severe don't live to be 30 years old (the estimated age of the Hobbit woman) without good modern medical care.



posted on Sep, 23 2007 @ 11:15 AM
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I found this very intresting, thanks for the good infomation Bryd. Ill look round some more for infomation on it.

ProTo FF



posted on Sep, 24 2007 @ 07:32 AM
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Pygmies anyone? Just wondering what the more well informed on the subject might have to say about the similarities and differences between these skeletons and pygmies.



posted on Sep, 24 2007 @ 07:58 AM
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I just really wish that they would drop the 'hobbit' from the story description. It's a flash word used to garner public attention and PR. Which makes me wonder, would this find have been a non-event otherwise? We've found other branches on the homo sapien tree before without much general public attention. But OMG Hobbits!! turns it into a Media Event.



posted on Sep, 24 2007 @ 08:04 PM
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Originally posted by resistor
Pygmies anyone? Just wondering what the more well informed on the subject might have to say about the similarities and differences between these skeletons and pygmies.


I don't think they are too like pygmies. I guess there is a lot of cross-overs with the ape still with these folks. Teh wrist bones on the show I was listening too was discusses as being more ape then human.

I just find it very interesting.



posted on Sep, 25 2007 @ 02:04 PM
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Its more than just the flash word that is gaining attention. Sure, the public only responds to "Hobbit". But for the intellectual set the point is that we now know of at least 3 morphologically distinct homonid species alive on earth 20,000 years ago.




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