Mini Human Species Unearthed

[trehinp]

Here is an interesting finding published today in Scientific american.com :

<<In what is being hailed as one of the most spectacular paleoanthropological finds of the past century, researchers have unearthed the remains of a dwarf human species that survived on the Indonesian island of Flores until just 13,000 years ago. The discovery significantly extends the known range of physical variation in our genus, Homo, and reveals that H. sapiens shared the planet with other humans much more recently than previously believed.>>

Click here for more

There is a full article on the subject in Nature on this apparently exceptional discovery. The tools found on this site are quite extraordinary too.

See also the interview of one of the authors which gives more details :
Read the interview

Has anyone else heard about this ?

Paul

[caldararo]

This is a sad day in the annals of Anthropology.  When I first saw the news item I thought it was a Holloween joke.  I was shocked when I read Stringer's comments.  Imagine that someone with his stature in Anthropology would consider a small person to be a different species.   Dogs of different sizes are still able to produce viable young and are considered the same species.  Can you put yourself in the shoes of a contemporary dwarf reading Stringer?  Obviously they are not fully human simply due to their size, according to Stringer.  I wonder if Stringer ever took a course in biology or zoology after reading this.  Does he not understand scaling?  Small people require small brains, women have smaller brains on average than men, but I hope Stringer would consider them still part of our species.  Further, these people (I consider on first read of the article, that they are fully human - AMH) were using what appear to be Upper Paleolithic tools and expressing all the aspects of culture we consider to be necessary to define our species.  I am therefore waiting Stringer's new definition.  Finally, even nanocephalic dwarves (less than 400cc) can learn language and have bodies with human proportions.  Why do we have this 19th Century idea still around that if something looks the slightest bit different it must be a new species?  Whatever happened to critical thinking in anthropology?  I hope we hear from Ralph Holloway on this.

Niccolo Caldararo, Ph.D.
Dept. of Anthropology
San Francisco State University
cald@sfsu.edu

[lagarvelho]

Niccolo:

Nope, it's not a joke, Halloween or otherwise.  I don't know what this "mini human" is, but like you, I noticed the press and others had rushed in and named it Homo floriensis.  Without even pausing for breath.  Which makes me wonder :  what is going on?  Are the discoverers totally desperate?
Anne G

[trehinp]

I noticed the press and others had rushed in and named it Homo floriensis.  Without even pausing for breath. 

I agree with Anne's comment, there may be a rush in publishing results prematurely. That was the reason of my question.

I read again the interview of Peter Brown by Kate Wong in Scientific American. He refutes the size factor as an indication of a new specie. He puts forward other anatomical features than size, which I will not dwell upon as I’m not a specialist.

With regard to the article and the interview published in Scientific American, even as an active antidiscrimination advocate myself, I didn’t find those texts really offending. Of course, there is always the journalistic hype, even for a serious magazine as Scientific American. Some of the questions were more offending than the answers by the researcher.

I haven’t read Stringer's comments though, and they may indeed be offending. Are these comments available on the web ?

Let’s hope that clarifications will be available on this subject.

Paul

[Daryl Habel]

I haven’t read Stringer's comments though, and they may indeed be offending. Are these comments available on the web ?

Hi Paul,

Stringer's comment is online at:

CLICK HERE

It's part of a special web presentation from nature.com news at:

CLICK HERE

If you're interested, contact me by personal e-mail, I can return with both Nature articles (referenced on the nature.com news website) in pdf attachments.

Cheers,
Dar

[trehinp]

Thanks Dar,

My interest here lied more in the advanced stone tool making skills that this group of human beings seem to have possessed than in the biological and anatomical details of the fossils. I count on specialists of this field to tell me if these Florea Island men were indeed not AMM or if we just have a variation in the size, like with Pygmies for example.

If they are, as proposed by the articles, not AMM but closer to Ergaster, then a lot of the theories based upon cognitive evolution, claiming that AMM brain functions were indispensable for producing advanced stone tools, would fall apart.

Actually, the fact that Neanderthal, who is not an AMM, did possess quite a lot of these tool making capabilities is already a counter example to the evolutionary psychology claim of a necessary late cognitive revolution to explain these capabilities (Klein and Edgar, Mithen, Tatterssall)

Again, if the publications about those smaller men are correct, they would certainly have had superb cognitive capabilities.

This puts forward once more the fundamental question of what makes us, AMM, so different from our predecessors ergaster or of our cousins Neanderthals?

Paul

[skwirl42]

We can hope that they are able to extract some DNA and do a comparative analysis with both H. erectus and H. sapiens. Although morphologically they appear to have many characteristics that are archaic, so they may still fall under the heading of H. erectus.

But the clear indicator for species-hood is the ability to produce viable offspring, and unfortunately we can't test that here. So whether it's a new species or not is moot until we have a better understanding of DNA, and can determine whether or not interbreeding could have taken place.

Personally, though, with the time differential between the first evidence of civilization on the island (c 800,000 BP), and the next influx of Homo (sapiens, c 11,000 BP), I think there would have been time to speciate. In fact, they show some adaptations that would have been crucial to survival, and yet aren't present in erectus. The very large molars, for one, probably due to an early need to eat much plant food. Also the evidence that they may have spent much of their time in the trees, due to longer arms, but were still capable of walking upright.

I don't see why it's so difficult to accept that a) there was another species in the group Homo, b) they may have come into contact with H. sapiens and c) they had similar cognitive abilities to H. sapiens, while maintaining a smaller brain case.

True, brain size is often correlated with cognitive capacity, but we don't comprehend the functioning of the brain enough to declare that more is always better.

James

[anthrostudies]

I added LB1 to my matrix, and I got some interesting results.

According to the results from this matrix, LB1 links Asian erectus and ER-3773 with steinheimensis in the sequence of Asian erectus including Solo 6, ER-3773, LB1, cepranensis (including Arago alongside Ceprano and Daka) and then a three way division into Steinheim, Sambungmacan with Atapuerca AT-SH-CR and a lineage where Petralona then Kabwe diverge from Saldanha and Bodo.

Dmanisi and OH9 are outside this lineage altogether. I get a nice result, where the above erectus lineage is the first to seperate after ER-3773. Of the rest there is the sequence of OH9, neanderthaloids, Dmanisi then moderns. (Although the probable hybrid Predmost 3 apears as a neanderthal, related to Shanidar 1, maybe reflecting the possible existence of a  hybridisation zone in West Asia and Eastern Europe, and supporting the ring species concept).

I think that LB1 has helped me to clear up my dendrogram, rather than confuse Homo relationships. From these results I can conclude that LB1 is an unusual erectine, and not at the grade of OH9 or Dmanisi. The archaic features of LB1 are most likely to be reversals.

[lagarvelho]

anthrostudies:

I'm just assuming that "floriensis" is a late, and unusual, type of erectus. . . because I *really* have trouble believing in all these "species".  However, erectus is a genuine human species which appears to have spawned intermediates and offspring. . . such as H.(sapiens)sapiens.  Etc.  Your measurements(if that's what they are), are interesting, to say the least.  And it would be even more interesting to see what their DNA might be like.
Anne g

[anthrostudies]

anthrostudies:

I'm just assuming that "floriensis" is a late, and unusual, type of erectus. . . because I *really* have trouble believing in all these "species".

Well like race and subspecies, species lacks a fixed definition. so I think it mignt not be useful to argue about what is a species, but its important to notice the distinctiveness of floresiensis.

However, erectus is a genuine human species which appears to have spawned intermediates and offspring. . . such as H.(sapiens)sapiens. Etc.

I think this depends on the definition of erectus as a grade or lineage, and also on the degree of regional continuity between populations. In my older dendrograms I found only Asian erectus to be true erectus, as a lineage, and this changes things in that the erectus lineage is now more inclusive - but not of moderns, although this doesn't rule out regional contributions I find that the main lineage to moderns is seperate.

 Your measurements(if that's what they are), are interesting, to say the least.  And it would be even more interesting to see what their DNA might be like.
Anne g

I agree, but these aren't measurements but characters, followng the Ceprano matrix. It seems from this that the presence of certain unexpected features in LB1 doesnt support early Homo affnities.

[trehinp]

Just for info,

The very serious journal "Le Monde" in France publishes a full page on the subject of the "Flores men" in its issue dated Sunday october 31/ Monday November 1.

It is accompanied by a nice graphical representation locating this "Flores man" (actually a woman) on the human evolution tree.

For those of you who might be interested I could scan this graphical representation.

Paul

[lagarvelho]

Paul:

If you'd be willing to do this, I, for one, would be very interested in seeing what Le Monde did.
Anne g

[trehinp]

Anne,

Sorry to use the forum to contact you, the e-mail available on the member list doesn't seem to work properly.

I tried to send you the copies of "Le Monde Article" on Flores men, without success twice...

Apologies for other forum members...

Paul

[lagarvelho]

Paul:

YOu can contact me at lagarvelho@hotmail.com, for now.
Anne g

[Daryl Habel]

All,

I held back hoping John Hawks (a Palanth member) would post this here, but since he hasn't, I'll post the link to a few comments (questions and answers) he posted at his site, which is well worth a visit.

The first, posted 10/29/2004 is:
CLICK HERE

and the second, with more thoughts, posted about a week later 11/02/2004 at:
CLICK HERE

These are permanent links posted on Dr. Hawks' website/weblog at:

http://johnhawks.net/weblog

I'm a bit disappointed that, in view of the tremendous amount of news coverage accompanying this discovery, as well as the tremendous amount of discussion that it has generated on other paleoanthropology-related fora, that there is so little comment or discussion here.

Dar