The prehistoric world of tiny people who hunted dwarf elephants, hamster rats, Komodo monitor lizards and even dragons is amazing. This scenario is more reminiscent of science fiction, such as Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Lost World, than science fact.
However, recent finds from a distant Indonesian island could change everything. The mystery of Flores Island, located between Sumatra and East Timor, has been the subject of much debate in recent years.
In September 2003, an international research team led by R. P. Soeyono from the Indonesian Archaeological Center and Michael Morwood from the University of New England in Armidale spent a long time excavating a large limestone cave called Liang Bua.
At 20 feet, they found the intact skeleton of a 30-year-old woman. Archaeologists thought they were the relics of a hominid species, but he was only 3 feet tall. There were other bones nearby, and so far the remains of nine individuals have been found.
Using radiocarbon and thermoluminescent dating methods, it has been established that the oldest is approximately 94,000 years old, and the latest is 12,000 years old.
Along with the bones of hominids, the remains of fish, frogs, snakes, turtles, hamster rats, birds and flying mice were found in the cave, as well as larger animals such as small species of stegodon (extinct dwarf elephants) and Komodo monitor lizards.
Studying fragments of charred rock and charred bones of the layer where the hominid skeleton was located, scientists came to the conclusion that the dwarfs of the Flores Island knew how to handle fire. Another important find found in the cave were rather intricate stone tools, including small blades that could be attached to a wooden shaft. Some of the stone tools were found in the immediate vicinity of the stegodons, which means the Floresian dwarfs hunted them. The research team published materials about their incredible findings in October 2004 in the scientific journal Nature.
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The conclusion they made after studying the Floresian dwarfs was incredible: scientists announced the discovery of a new species of dwarf people, which was named the Floresian man (homo floresiensis). They suggested that this species existed on the island in parallel with modern humans. The skeleton received in the scientific community the nickname Little Lady Fleur (or LB1), and the name of the species - hobbits - was borrowed from the book of JRR Tolkien "The Lord of the Rings".
All individuals were about 3 feet tall. They had long arms and heads the size of a grapefruit. These two-legged creatures had a very small brain (it made up a third of the brain of a modern person, which is even slightly smaller than that of a chimpanzee). Floresian dwarfs made sophisticated tools and hunted miniature elephants. They lived in the same period as people of the modern type who actively populated the surface of the Earth.
The researchers concluded that the Floresian humans were not the dwarf form of modern humans. They were descendants of Homo erectus and descended from the East European Neanderthals, which were supplanted by the Cro-Magnons about 30,000 years ago. Homo erectus also disappeared immediately after the arrival of modern humans in these territories.
The question arises: how did scientists determine the size of the Floresian man. According to one theory, the island of Flores was isolated and until recently, only certain species of creatures lived on its territory that managed to get to it. These animals subsequently became the object of unusual evolutionary processes, as a result of which some turned into giants, such as Komodo monitor lizards (which still exist today), and others into dwarfs (such as stegodons).
Some scholars believed that the Floresian man was a descendant of Homo erectus, who lived on the island of Flores 840,000 years ago. Leading an isolated lifestyle, Floresian people gradually turned into dwarfs, experiencing the same mutational processes as local elephants. The dwarfism seems to be due to the scarcity of resources on the island of Flores.
The Floresian man is recognized by wide scientific circles as an absolutely unexpected, but very important discovery in modern history. This new member of the genus homo could change our understanding of human evolution. For example, we tend to believe that a person needs a large brain to manufacture complex tools.
However, the miniature brain that Lady Fleur possessed refutes this claim, which means that scientists must analyze the facts deeper before drawing conclusions about the intelligence and mental abilities of our ancestors with small brains. One of the discoverers of Floresian man, Dr. Michael Morwood, hypothesized that the dwarfs even had a primitive language with which they communicated while hunting elephants and large lizards. However, other researchers disagree. They note that chimpanzees and even wolves can hunt together, but they have not developed the ability to speak.
The Flores Island finds also disprove the conventional wisdom that modern humans were the only wanderers on Earth after the Neanderthals died out 30,000 years ago. Floresian dwarfs survived until the appearance of the first Cro-Magnons and, unlike most other representatives of the human population, existed for quite a long time in parallel with modern humans.
This means that two different human species, Homo sapiens and Homo floresiensis, lived on Earth at the same time. Although the oldest modern human remains found on the island of Flores are only 12,000 years old, both species must have existed on the island at the same time.
The reaction of the scientific community and history buffs was as unpredictable as the discovery itself. Chris Stringer, head of anthropology at the Natural History Museum in London, said, "Many researchers (myself included) dispute these claims," and added that he was not surprised by anything about Floresian dwarfs.
He also argued that long arms could only indicate that the Floresian man spent a lot of time in the trees: "Perhaps if there were Komodo monitors around you, you would also want to climb a tree with your children in search of safety."
And today there are many opponents of the conclusions drawn from the results of the study of finds from the Liang Bua cave. The famous Polynesian paleontologist Teuku Jacob said that LB1 was not a representative of a new species at all, but belonged to the Australo-Melanesian race of a modern human and its age is approximately 1300-1800 years.
Jacob and some other prominent researchers believed that the bones actually belonged to modern humans (homo sapiens), a dwarf with a brain defect called microcephaly (a pathological disorder characterized by a small head and brain size and often associated with mental development problems). In support of this theory, the anatomist Matsii Henneberg stated that the LB1 skull is almost identical to the Cretan microcephalus specimen.
However, Peter Brown, associate professor at the University of New England in New South Wales, who worked on the Nature article, disagrees with this explanation. He argued his point of view by the fact that a small number of people with similar disorders survive to adulthood, and the skulls of microcephalics have a number of specific features, but none of them was found in LB1.
Brown also noted that since all the remains found in Liang Bua Cave show signs of dwarfism, it is difficult to assume that the entire population suffered from microcephaly.
In early 2005, an independent team of experts led by Dr. Dean Folk of the University of Florida began studying the LB1 skull. The results of the study were published in the journal Science in March 2005. Scientists have compared the three-dimensional image of the LB1 brain with the heads of other species: chimpanzees, modern humans (including modern dwarfs), microcephalics with Homo erectus.
Then they compared with primitive humanoid creatures such as Australopithecus africanus and Ethiopian paranthropus (Paranthropus aethiopicus), as well as with modern gorillas, and came to the conclusion that the LB1 brain is absolutely not like the brain of dwarfs or microcephalics, but has something in common with the Homo erectus brain and that "this is indeed a new species of anthropoid." However, these results did not convince those who claimed that Dr. Falk examined the skull with signs of microcephaly. Thus, the discussions continue.
It is possible that the question of the origin of Floresian people will be clarified after DNA analysis. The relatively small age of the skeletal material, which is undoubtedly genuine, gives hope for success. However, high temperatures are known to negatively affect DNA, which means that the tropical climate of Indonesia greatly reduces the chances. It is likely that new finds and more complete skeletal materials from Liang Bua will allow DNA analysis to isolate this component in LB1.
Nevertheless, scientists do not lose hope: if it is ever possible to extract the DNA of a Floresian human, a new understanding of the course of human evolution may arise.
As for the fate of the dwarf inhabitants of the island, it is associated with the eruption of one of the Indonesian volcanoes located near the Liang Bua cave (12,000 years ago), which destroyed the local population of Floresian people and most of the unique wildlife of the island of Flores.
Perhaps some of the Floresian dwarfs survived in other parts of the island. It is curious that the legends of the modern inhabitants of the island of Flores tell in detail about the little hairy people who lived on the island. Locals call them ebu, which means "gluttonous grandmother". The signs of these little men were about 3 feet tall, long arms and fingers, which is also characteristic of the Floresian man. They muttered something to each other in some primitive language and, like parrots, could repeat what the villagers said.
Apparently, the last time he was seen on the island was in the 19th century. before the arrival of the Dutch colonists. Of great interest is the connection between the Floresian man and the inhabitants of Sumatra, where, according to some sources, three-foot hominids called orang-pedek lived. Zoologists have cataloged the images of the mysterious great apes that they observed in western Sumatra in the Kerinsey Seblat Park over 150 years ago.
In addition, footprints and hair were obtained, which probably belonged to this creature. Researchers working on the Flores Island finds argued that the Sumatran orangpendek may have been a surviving Floresian human. The editor-in-chief of Nature magazine, Henry Guy, agreed with this version and even went further in his conclusions.
He argued that the discovery of the Floresian man, who managed to exist for so long and survive until recently (in terms of geology), “increases the likelihood that there is a grain of truth in the stories of other mythical humanoid creatures such as the Yeti … Today, incredible creatures, which are extracted from the depths of the earth, is studied by cryptozoology."
It cannot be denied, as the researchers believe, the possibility of detecting a living specimen of a Floresian human, or ebu, since there are still many mammals unknown to science on the territory of Southeast Asia. Bert Roberts and Michael Morwood are convinced that the surviving rainforests and caves on the island of Flores associated with the ebugo stories have yet to find hair samples or other traces, and possibly even living representatives themselves.
They believe that the remains of the skeletons of other, no less strange species of the genus homo are waiting for their discoverer in other isolated corners of Southeast Asia. So, the extinct species of the genus homo, such as the Floresian man, who survived until relatively recently and remained unknown until 2003, are clear evidence that there are still many blank spots in our understanding of the history of mankind, much more than we could imagine. …
Author: B. Houghton
Source: "Great secrets and mysteries of history"