In Nov, the news broke that Australian and Indonesian anthropologists discovered the homo florensensis I enthusiastically wrote about it, then failed to post. Duh…
Since then there has been ANOTHER huge evolutionary discovery also.
Fossil find may be the father of us all
It’s all very exciting. (At least I think so)
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They found a whole new species of humans now called Homo florensiensis, which evolved from Homo Erectus, which are what we the Homo Sapiens came from. So a distance evolutionary cousin of ours that we did not know existed before, who was alive in the same time frame we were.
With this find, our theories in evolutionary biology remains unchanged, as they are a subspecies -a dwarfed version of our ancestors. A previously not imagined meandering off the evolutionary trail, especially in this recent time frame.
This is so so huge! The best analogy, this is like reading something in a sci-fi novel. It could happen, your professor wouldn’t laugh in your face if you ask a question like "Is it possible?" but there is no proof it ever existed. So no point seriously thinking about it. Except now you have it for real. So then, there is a reconfiguring the idea what we have of human evolution. Not because it shatters any theories, just that it adds a whole new dimension to it.
Anthropologist says new skeleton discovery most significant in a 100 years. (bit of an exaggeration, but yes, it’s really big).
Also interesting is this is another major palaeontological find named after a pop culture phenomenon of the time. This one is "Hobbit" and the other most famous one would be "Lucy" the anthropological "Eve" the oldest upright walking fossil found at the time. She was called Lucy as in "Lucy in the Sky of Diamonds" and the scientist (johanson) was listenning to the Beatles while studying the fossils. So yes, the purported mother of us all is named after a LSD trip of John Lennon.. how 1974 is that?
Lost Tribe of Little People
By Kristen Philipkoski
10:00 AM Oct. 27, 2004 PT
Wired Online
Scientists are shocked to learn that human remains found in Indonesia in 2003 belong to a previously unknown miniature human species that lived on a south Asian island just 18,000 years ago.
The full-grown female human was barely a meter tall, with a skull the size of a grapefruit. The discovery is proof, the researchers say, that human species in the recent past are much more diverse than previously thought.
The archeology world is agog. Researchers previously believed that people with such a small brain and body last walked the Earth 3 million years ago.
"I would have been less surprised if my colleagues had found an alien spacecraft," said Peter Brown, an associate professor of archaeology at Australia’s University of New England.
"On small islands it is common for animals larger than a rabbit to shrink, while very small mammals get bigger," Brown said.
But this is the first such incident noted in a human species, showing that humans are subject to the same evolutionary processes as all other mammals.
While the Homo florensiensis remains dated to 18,000 years ago, the research team has not ruled out that the small human species may have survived on the island as recently as the 1500s. This is supported by local folk tales.
The stories suggest that the little people lived in caves, and villagers would leave food in gourds outside for the hobbit-humans, according to Richard Roberts of the University of Wollongong and co-author of the study.
"Legend has it these were the guests from hell," Roberts said in a statement. "They’d eat everything, including the gourds."
Continue Reading: Lost Tribe of Little People
New human species discovered
By JENNY DENNIS: Mecury News
October 28, 2004
SCIENTISTS from the University of Wollongong have stumbled across skeletal remains of a new human species of hobbit-like proportions. The skeleton was nicknamed "hobbit" by the excavation team and at first was assumed to be that of a child.
The population of little hominids raises images of a lost world of "little people" that co-existed with modern humans until relatively recently.
The scientists have pieced together an image of a hairless, dark-skinned dwarf species with a head the size of a grapefruit, sunken eyes, a flat nose, large teeth and virtually no chin.
"It is a new species of human who actually lived alongside us, yet were half our size," said Professor Mike Morwood.
"They were the height of a three-year-old child, weighed around 25kg and had a brain smaller than most chimpanzees."
Even so, they used fire, made sophisticated stone tools and hunted giant rats and a primitive type of elephant known as Stegodon.
He said the clear implication was that they were intelligent and almost certainly had language.
Read Full Story: http://illawarramercury.com.au/articles/2004/10/28/1098667867341.html
Little people’s modern way with tools
Leigh Dayton, Science writer
October 29, 2004
The Australian
THE new-found mini-people of Indonesia’s Flores Island may have swapped tool making tips with modern humans.
The claim came yesterday from Mark Moore, the stone tool expert with the international team who discovered the new creature.
Commenting on the finding that the two species probably shared technology, anthropologist Paul Tacon said: "The discovery (that they shared technology) throws into question what it really is to be human."
Dr Tacon, an anthropologist with Sydney’s Australian Museum, said scientists must now re-evaluate the methods they use to define archaic and modern people.
According to Mr Moore, a University of New England doctoral student, the little people were as handy with scrapers, anvils, points and assorted stone implements as their modern successors.
"They made tools in a very specific way and you find it all the way through time — past the extinction event — and into the modern era," said Mr Moore. He analysed 6000 tools from one section of the dig, that ranged in age from 90,000 years to 6000 years.
In parts of Europe and the Middle East, archaeologists have found that when modern people appeared in an area, resident Neandertal people copied their tools.
"Perhaps there’s something like that going on here with modern humans and hobbits copying each other’s technology," Mr Moore suggested.
Given that modern people used the ancient tool kit, Mr Moore said it was possible they had mimicked the mini-people. But he said the newcomers used the tools differently. But finding the line between the two is "very tricky", Mr Moore acknowledged.
Full Article: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11220313%255E2702,00.html
Nature Magazine, the publication that put out the original paper of the find is online and has a special section on the flores persons.)
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 
Very interesting. I’ve caught snippets of these finds on the radio recently.
You know, George Bush’s administration has been forcing national parks to distribute literature stating such things as the Grand Canyon was formed by the great flood, as in Noah’s flood, alongside scientific literature. It’s also pressuring public schools to teach creationism alongside evolution as a “competing” anthropological theory.
I swear this is not my country …
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Y.e.s.i.t.is.
f.o.u.r.m.o.r.e.y.e.a.r.s.
t.h.a.n.k.y.o.u.r.g.o.d.f.o.r.t.e.r.m.l.i.m.i.t.s.
y.a.n.
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i read an article countering the hobbit discovery… saying these skeletons belonged to sick/deformed humans and they weren’t actually a different breed from us.
hmm…
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I am going with this theory. Discoveries are always disputed for a while as there are always different schools of thought, some people don’t believe in evolution too.
The anthropolgists are saying they are “not” a different “breed” from us. They are saying they ARE the same breed, simply dwarfed. So a smaller version of homospians. There are plenty of proof that this happens to other animals. Humans simply following the same pattern. In fact there are some humans in the Amazon where a group of Brazillian sciencetist claim are so “Deformed” that they are no longer human. Noam Chomsky used it as an example for a piece, but most people think that study were more for political reasons of saying that some people are so poorly malnutriconed that they are changing. The size difference in humans has always been large, much bigger than most found in the animal kingdom.
I suppose if one agrees with the theory then these people are deformed, these homo floresis would also be.
The most compelling argument I would say these finds is that the people are in proportion throughout their bones, “Deformity” generally means something is out of proportion, so the head is much bigger or hands shorter etc.
🙂
Yan
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AUSTRALOPITHECUS AFARENSIS (LUCY)
I just wanted to say that it is cool that the mother of us all is named after an LSD trip of John Lennon’s. I’m speaking of “Lucy”, the anthropological “Eve”, the oldest upright walking fossil found at the time. She was called Lucy as in “Lucy in the Sky of Diamonds” and the scientist (johanson) was listenning to the Beatles while studying the fossils. So yes, the purported mother of us all is named after a LSD trip of John Lennon.. how 1974 is that? You ask?
Please! I’ll do the thinking for you on this one just to set the record straight. Yes, it is most likely that John Lennon came up with this song through a vision acquired while recreationally using LSD. In fact the vision he acquired came from a drawing that his son, Julian Lennon, made, in school. The drawing his child came up with in 1967 (during the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper era) depicted a woman, riding high in the sky among clouds and scenery below. John Lennon asked his son “Who is that woman in the sky?” and the child replied, “That’s Lucy.”
Now if you know the story of John Lennon’s troubled childhood, widely published, he lost his mother at a very young age. So his son in this drawing was trying to subconsciously express on some level his view of his own mother, Cynthia Lennon. The kid was putting his mother up high on a pedastal in the drawing, then gave it to his father, who most likely was thinking oppositely at that time of his life when he was changing so drastically.
John Lennon, in his Sgt. Pepper-era (Summer of Love era, i.e. summer of 1967) heavy acid taking period, took his son’s drawing into his hand, and saw “Lucy” in the sky on several subconsious levels. These levels, in my opinion, indicated the mother of his son Julian Lennon expressing the greatness of his own mother that his father John could not see; and mirrored the expression of John losing his own mother, Mrs. Julia Lennon. Therefore, he was seeing all mothers in this innocent child’s drawing, put up high in the sky, so to speak, with respect.
So the LSD coursing in his veins helped transform all of this input into a fantastically imaginative and mind-blowing expression of flowery psychedelia… invoking Julian Lennon’s own mother, Cynthia, (which John was in the process of leaving for Yoko) and his father John Lennon’s acid tinged stream of thoughts which resulted from viewing it.
Yet the resulting piece of recorded music is vague enough, despite its magical origins, to subconsciously be about mothers in general.
What a GREAT CHOICE for a name!!!!!!!!!!
The music and the ideas are timeless and generation-free!
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