“Hobbit” ancestor discovered
A handful of 700,000-year- old bones lays to rest the debate over whether the diminutive hominin was a distinct species.
After more than a decade of debate over whether the “hobbit” — the remains of a tiny hominin discovered in Indonesia in 2004 — was a distinct species, scientists have unearthed a new collection of bones that suggests it was.
When the hobbit was first discovered, researchers estimated the remains to be about 12,000 years old, which would mean the creatures overlapped in time with our own species. That timing prompted some scientists to conclude that the remains were from a diseased member of Homo sapiens rather than from a separate species. A subsequent analysis published in March this year that used more precise dating methods suggested the hobbit actually lived 60,000 to 100,000 years ago.
But the new find, a jawbone and six teeth found at Mata Menge, just 70 kilometres from the Liang Bua cave where the previous bones were discovered, pushes the timeline for these meter-tall creatures back much further. The new discovery, summed up in a pair of studies published in Nature, suggests they lived more than half a million years earlier than previously thought. That bolsters the theory that they were a distinct species, Homo floresiensis.
But researchers would need bones from the hominin’s body to be absolutely sure the fossils are from the hobbit’s ancestors, says archaeologist Gert van den Bergh from the University of Wollongong.
Meanwhile, a separate discovery published in the Journal of Archaeological Science has narrowed the time gap between the disappearance of Homo floresiensis and the arrival of modern humans.
Researchers at the University of Wollongong and Indonesia’s National Research Centre for Archaeology found evidence that early humans likely were using fire at Liang Bua between 24,000 and 41,000 years ago. Since there’s no evidence of Homo floresiensis ever using fire, the cooks were most likely modern humans, say study leader Mike Morley of the University of Wollongong.
If so, those ancient fireplaces would be the earliest evidence of modern humans in Southeast Asia.