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The smallest human species ever known appears to
be descended from Homo erectus. Recent excavations on
the remote island of Flores in the Indonesian archipelago, near the islands
of Bali and Java, have uncovered the fossil skeletons of ancient humans no
bigger than a 3-year old child of today. Considerably smaller than pygmies
of the African rain forest, these are the tiniest humans ever discovered.
The initial discoveries of an adult skull and partial skeleton were made
in September 2003 in the Liang Bua Cave on Flores, by a team of
archaeologists and paleoanthropologists from the Indonesian Centre for
Archaeology in Jakarta, led by Michael Morwood of the University of
New England in Armidale, Australia.
These researchers, announcing their discovery in Nature (28 Oct. 2004),
have concluded that the skeletons, which contain a mixture of primitive and
advanced anatomical features, probably evolved from a Homo erectus
population which reached Flores by 840,000 years ago, as previously reported
by Morwood and his colleagues (1998). Similar to the reduction of other large,
ancient animal populations who moved to island settings, the extreme isolation
of the island exerted evolutionary pressures resulting in dwarfism in the
humans. The new finds represent a completely new species of humans, which
has been named Homo florensiensis after the island on which they were
found.
The miniature humans had only a chimp-size brain (about 1/3 the size of modern
humans), but still had the mental capability to produce a varied tool kit,
including blades, perforators, and points, which appear more sophisticated
than those made by Homo erectus. Despite their small size, the archaic
Flores people were able to successfully hunt primitive dwarf elephants called
stegodons, showing a certain degree of communication and planning. The cave
sediments in which the skeletons were found also contained evidence of hearths,
and the bones of giant rodents and Komodo dragons. Even more amazingly, Homo
florensiensis appears to have been present on Flores from 95,000 BP until
as recently as 13,000 years ago. The existence of a more primitive species
of humans at the same time as modern Homo sapiens is changing scientists’
perspective on the variation and adaptability of the genus Homo.
References: Brown, P. , M. Morwood, et al, Nature, 28 Oct. 2004; Morwood,
M. et al. 1998. “Fission-track ages of stone tools and fossils on the
east Indonesian island of Flores.” Nature 392: 173-176.
This article appears in the Recent Finds in Archaeology section, Vol.4 No.1 of Athena
Review.
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