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Meanwhile in Middle Earth…
By Linda | March 26, 2008
A pair of caves on the South Pacific island of Palau has yielded thousands of bones, including the skull of an extinct three-foot-tall people. Excavated in 2006 and 2007, these remains belonged to a race that lived between 2,900 and 1,400 years ago as evidenced by radiocarbon measurements.
The Palau find has fueled much debate within the archaeological community on the relationship the new fossils bear to the previously discovered Indonesian species, Homo floresiensis (named for the island of Flores where they were discovered). Palau lies about 750 miles northeast of Flores.
No one disputes that the Palau fossils are Homo sapiens, but there is plenty of debate over whether this designation fits the Indonesian finds. The new fossils do exhibit many, but not all, of the unusual skeletal traits reported for Homo floresiensis individuals—commonly referred to as “hobbits”.
Some archaeologists theorize that Homo floresiensis and the Palau people are actually the same species. They argue that the hobbits became “island adapted” and suffered from a congenital growth disorder resulting in their smaller brain size and other physical deformities. Others firmly believe that hobbits are an entirely different species from the Palau people.
Both sets of fossils share comparably small statures, large teeth oriented at unusual angles, reduced chins, and small faces. Preliminary estimates based on cranial and facial fragments suggest that brain sizes of the Palau individuals fell at or just below the bottom of the normal range of modern human brain sizes. Hobbit brains were chimpanzee-sized.
Although the debate rages on, scientific testing of the fossils will continue to provide clues to this intriguing mystery.
Skulls of Homo floresiensis & Modern Man
Topics: In the News, Nature, Science Factoids, The Petri Dish |
