HOBBITS ARE NOT US

We have previously reported on the 2003 discovery of the so-called ‘hobbit’ bones on the Indonesian island of Flores [ FT236:20, 246:18, 252:18, 347:12]. These beings ( Homo

floresiensis) averaged 1.1m (43in) in height, and were originally assumed to be early humans, Homo sapiens, who had evolved in isolation on the island leading over time to them experiencing ‘insular dwarfism’, a phenomenon in which animals that live on an island over time tend to shrink, like the 1.2m (4ft)-tall mammoths that developed on the island of Crete. But now a detailed study and analysis of the remains by the Australian National University has concluded that they were not part of the direct human chain at all. “We found that if you try and link them on the family tree, you get a very unsupported result. All the tests say it doesn’t fit,” said the study’s leader, Dr Debbie Argue. The researchers’ analysis, much more comprehensive than anything attempted previously, indicates that Homo

floresiensis could have branched off the line from a common ancestor in Africa more than 1.75 million years ago. “The hobbit genus is very archaic indeed,” Argue stresses, and may have been a sister lineage strand to Homo habilis, a very early human precursor, and not to Homo erectus, the early ancestor of modern humanity. Another of the researchers, Professor Mike Lee, stated: “Homo floresiensis occupied a very primitive position on the human evolutionary tree. We can be 99 per cent sure it’s not related to Homo erectus and nearly 100 per cent chance it isn’t a malformed Homo sapiens.” Phys.org, 21 April 2017; Smithsonian Smart News, 25 April 2017.