Scientists Discover Ancient 'Little People'

roger

Penultimate Amazing
roger
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Headline from the Washington Post
These "little people" stood about three feet tall and had heads the size of grapefruit. They co-existed with modern humans for thousands of years yet appear to be more closely akin to a long-extinct human ancestor.
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I won't quote the entire article due to copyright issues, but the species lived about 18,000 years ago on an island in the Java sea, went extinct about 10,000 years ago. They speculate that they migrated to the island, and then evolved into a dwarf species due to limited resources on the island.

It's a very interesting article, go read it!
 
Remains of seven people. A family. Not quite the same thing as a species.
Still, human palaeontology has built bigger stories on scantier data.

I'll be interested to see if more information emerges on this.
 
I am starting to really loathe Google ads. One of the Google ads for this article, when I viewed it, was a link to a creationism page on a fundament-alist website called everystudent.com. 2nd law of thermodynamics, missing links, the usual crap.
 
I read the CNN article.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/10/27/dwarf.cavewoman.ap/index.html

It refered to the specimen as "being the size of a hobbit".

Interesting since hobbits are fictional so I really don't know the size of a hobbit.

This is pretty interesting, though:

"It is arguably the most significant discovery concerning our own genus in my lifetime," said anthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University, who reviewed the research independently.
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There really isn't enough information about the specimen, though.
 
I'm amused to note that at this moment, these two headlines appear one atop the other at CNN.com:

* Study: Americans growing taller and wider

* Scientists find bones of 'hobbit-sized' ancient humans
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Coincidence?
;)
 
The BBC's story is marvellously speculative:

The fact that little people feature in the legends of modern Flores islanders suggests we might have to take tales of Leprechauns and Yeti more seriously.
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But Henry Gee, senior editor at Nature magazine, goes further. He speculates that species like H.floresiensis might still exist, somewhere in the unexplored tropical forest of Indonesia.
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Now, that would be cool. And also raises some interesting philosophical questions.
 
The CNN article is better, in that it better covers the contraversy as to whether these remains belong in the Homo genus or not. Once again, the science writing at the Post gets a rating of "ehh".
 
quote:
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The fact that little people feature in the legends of modern Flores islanders suggests we might have to take tales of Leprechauns and Yeti more seriously.
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quote:
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:rolleyes:

JamesM wrote:



And also raises some interesting philosophical questions
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Umm....like what?
 
Huntsman said:
That depends.

I'd have to say no. More money couldbe made putting them in side shows and teaching them to do tricks.
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You're probably kidding here but, It'd be slavery if they are as smart as us wouldn't it? I say let them come to the modern world if they want to and only if they want to; assuming they are even still around. We're getting ahead of ourselves now aren't we?
 
Beyond the question of zoos and sideshows, are they legally competant? Can they enter contracts? Commit crimes? If not, then what are they? Animals? Wards of the state, as if they were developmentally disabled (assuming they are not as intelligent as modern humans which could be true or false)?

That's not even considering the tizzy churches would be in... do they have souls? must they be saved? What happens if the state (whichever it is) decides they aren't competant legally, but some church still wants to convert them?

Would we try to protect their culture and limit their contact with the outside world? Is that paternalistic?

If we did try to preserve their culture, what access to medical treatment would we give them?

An ethical minefield.
 
Of course I was kidding.

Unless they can make lots of money. Then, I dunno ;)

However, I doubt they'd be as smart as us, simply because the brain size fo a species is a fairly reliable indicator of intelligence. A brain that fits in a grapefuit sized skull just doesn't have the capability to be as advanced, at least not according to what we currently know. My bet is that they were more likely on the level of some of the chimpanzees or gibons, something along those lines.

Of course, this is all WAS nad WAGs on my part :)
 
Huntsman said:
Of course I was kidding.

Unless they can make lots of money. Then, I dunno
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It's becoming clear I need to take this place a lot less seriously. I'm trying, I really am. See, I made one joke earlier in the thread. I get points for that, right?
 
Zombified said:
It's becoming clear I need to take this place a lot less seriously. I'm trying, I really am. See, I made one joke earlier in the thread. I get points for that, right?
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My fault, I've been on a sarcastic/take nothing seriously kick for the past week or so.

I think it's the change in weather or something.

Or, it could just be that I'm a smart-a$$. Always that possibility :)
 
Huntsman said:
However, I doubt they'd be as smart as us, simply because the brain size fo a species is a fairly reliable indicator of intelligence. A brain that fits in a grapefuit sized skull just doesn't have the capability to be as advanced, at least not according to what we currently know. My bet is that they were more likely on the level of some of the chimpanzees or gibons, something along those lines.
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We already have dwarfs, and small brain pans (kids). So far as I know, though, their heads are usually disproportionally large compared to the body. What is the usual size range of a functioning human mind?


Off to google...
 
Huntsman said:
My fault, I've been on a sarcastic/take nothing seriously kick for the past week or so.
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That's not directed at you... I really do need to take things less seriously....
 
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