Liang Bua (Flores) excavations to be re-started this year

[Daryl Habel]

Breaking news.

From BBC today, a report that the Australian-led team which excavated Liang Bua and discovered the hominin remains from which they erected the new species Homo floresiensis has been granted permission to re-open excavations in the cave from the Indonesian government.

Archaeologists who found the remains of human "Hobbits" have permission to restart excavations at the cave where the specimens were found.
Indonesian officials have blocked access to the cave since 2005, following a dispute over the bones. But Professor Richard "Bert" Roberts, a member of the team that found the specimens, told BBC News the political hurdles had now been overcome..... "It's now a matter of getting everything organised so we can start digging again," said Professor Roberts. "You've got to get there in the dry season; in the wet season you can hardly drive to the site and when you are there, there are puddles of water all over the floor - so it's got to be dry to sensibly dig holes."....(more)

Apparently, the excavation of Liang Bua will resume later this year.  Full story from BBC at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6294101.stm

Dar

[lagarvelho]

Dar:

I'm begiinning to wonder if reopening the place will really settle the controversy?
Anne G

[trehinp]

Just received on NEWSWISE:
 
"Anthropologist Confirms ‘Hobbit’ Indeed a Separate Species"

Description
"After the skeletal remains of an 18,000-year-old, Hobbit-sized human were discovered on island of Flores in 2003, some scientists thought that the specimen must have been a human with an abnormally small skull. Not so, said Dean Falk, a world-renowned paleoneurologist and chair of Florida State University’s anthropology department, in Tallahassee, Fla.."
 
Click here for more

Not being a specialist of this domain, I felt that this might be of interest, but I don't know...

Yours sincerely.

Paul

[lagarvelho]

Paul:

This news is of great interest, all right, and I've read the various reports that have come out since yesterday, including the one which tells of a "chamber" beneath the Liang Bua cave.  However, I'm getting fairly cynical that these announcements will "solve" anything about the "hobbits", including their status as species.  Each side has pretty much taken rather rigid positions in this debate, from which nothing short of a paleoanthropological earthquake will move them.  Reopening the site may help, particularly if they find more "hobbits", but I'm not at all sure they will.  As for other islands. . . .well, I think the whole thing has gotten so out of hand that the best thing to do at this point is just wait to see how things develop.
Anne G

[Daryl Habel]

This news is of great interest, all right, and I've read the various reports that have come out since yesterday, including the one which tells of a "chamber" beneath the Liang Bua cave. 

Perhaps not everyone here is aware of the news report of a lower chamber at Liang Bua, so for those folks, the story is from The Australian.news.com CLICK HERE

This "chamber" is located at the bottom of a 23-meter-long sinkhole, and has only recently been surveyed.  The news is that a separate Australian-Indonesian team led by Australian National University (ANU) paleoclimatologist Mike Gagan will investigate the lower chamber, alongside the renewed excavations by the Morwood-led team in the 'upper' chamber.  The news report, while informative to some extent, is preliminary, and there are questions left unasked about some of what is reported.  They've only surveyed the top 5 cm (2 inches) of the lower chamber, and, among other unanswered questions, there's no indication how the bones and stone tools they found are dated an estimated 32-80 ka. 

Dar

[Manystones]

I hope I have posted this in the right place.

More from the on-going debate regarding the "Hobbit"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7004525.stm

"Careful study of the "Hobbit" fossil's wrist bones supports the idea that the creature was a distinct species and not a diseased modern human, it is claimed.
Matthew Tocheri and colleagues tell Science magazine that the bones look nothing like those of Homo sapiens; they look ape-like."

[pierfig]

   Some logic
        the archeologists found the remains of 3 FOOT-TALL " ADULT " female with a brain roughly one -third the size of a contempory human. Just imagine the harsness for the life during these times, if they were really diseased with some retardation they would have many difficulty to survive. there was a pitiless natural selection and the group can not feed 3 handicappeds convict by the nature.
       So i think there is many chances that these 3 women were a new specie
   excuse me i have impediment in my speech                 C B

[lagarvelho]

pierfig:

It is quite possible that they *are* a species, but it is not certain.
Anne G