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Ancient Bones of Small Humans Discovered In Palau

Posted by kdawson on Tue Mar 11, 2008 01:34 PM
from the making-a-hobbit-of-it dept.
Science
seattle-pk writes to let us know about the discovery in the Pacific island nation of Palau of thousands of human bones, some quite diminutive. The find is likely to rekindle the debate about how to classify the remains found on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003. "Some of the bones are ancient and indicate inhabitants of particularly small size, scientists announced today. The remains are between 900 and 2,900 years old and align with Homo sapiens, according to a paper on the discovery. However, the older bones are tiny and exhibit several traits considered primitive, or archaic, for the human lineage."
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[+] New Hominid Species Unearthed in Indonesia 588 comments
Radical Rad writes "ABC News is reporting that anthropologists have found the skeletal remains of seven hobbit sized hominids. The population may have been wiped out by a volcanic activity 12000 years ago or according to local legend may have lived up until the 1500's living on in caves and eating food the villagers would leave out for them. Also found were bones of giant lizards and miniature elephants. CBS also has the story." National Geographic and the BBC have good stories.
Submission: Ancient Bones of Small Humans Discovered in Palau by seattle-pk (1252976)
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  • Remnants (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jeremiah Cornelius (137) * on Tuesday March 11 2008, @01:34PM (#22720202) Homepage Journal
    From the third age...

    • Perhaps... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Roger W Moore (538166) on Tuesday March 11 2008, @02:20PM (#22720868) Journal
      ...although I also hear that they found an ancient road apparently made from unusual yellow bricks as well as a strangely built ruins of a wooden tomb which only seems to contain the upper half of a female skeleton.

      • Re:Perhaps... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by paganizer (566360) <thegrove1NO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Tuesday March 11 2008, @03:35PM (#22721742) Homepage Journal
        Thats just barely more weird than what they have found in the area. I mean seriously, that is a totally freaky-deaky area.
        One of the lesser things is Palau money beads; they have found these beads, which were used as currency by the islanders, in burial sites that are from 600-900AD. The Exact Same type of bead can be found in Roman Jewelry of the Republican period.
        Other finds of these beads on surrounding islands gives a little validity to the idea that there was an ancient Micronesian Kingdom that had Pohnpei as it's capital, and included Flores (um, Bree to slashdotters).
        Some of the big stone disc money found on yap has been proven to have come from from Palau. It was on Yap that evidence was first found of an ancient Alphabet & writing system; examples of it have since been found on The Marianas, Palau, Pohnpei & Kosrae.
        And Pohnpei is perhaps the freakiest place of all. out in the middle of nowhere there are gigantic ruins of an immense stone city called Nan Madol, built out of gigantic magnetized crystalline basalt and carbon dated to at least 200BC. There are man-made tunnels honeycombing the area.
        After that you get into the areas influence on HP Lovecraft, Japanese Platinum Coffins, underwater cities at the end of some of the tunnels, etc.
        But hearing that there are remnants of an unknown subspecies of man, or even a separate branch, in that area isn't very surprising.
        Finding an actual yellow brick road there wouldn't even surprise me that much.

        • Re:Perhaps... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by ozmanjusri (601766) <aussie_bob@ho t m a i l.com> on Tuesday March 11 2008, @08:54PM (#22724332) Journal
          And Pohnpei is perhaps the freakiest place of all. out in the middle of nowhere there are gigantic ruins of an immense stone city called Nan Madol, built out of gigantic magnetized crystalline basalt and carbon dated to at least 200BC. There are man-made tunnels honeycombing the area.

          Actually, I'm going to Pohnpei in September.

          And while Nan Madol is fascinating, it's not really all that mysterious. There's plenty of documented history [janeresture.com] to both it's construction and use.

          The culture and myths of the area are interesting too.

          Legends tell us that in that era two species existed, Arem (humans) and Sioat (another, less intelligent life form). The Sioat became extinct due to cannibalism, leaving the Arem species.
          http://www.prel.org/products/paced/apr04/re_democracy.htm [prel.org]

          I wonder if the Sioat were smaller as well...

  • So... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Corpuscavernosa (996139) on Tuesday March 11 2008, @01:37PM (#22720258)
    ... midgets (or little people if you prefer) existed many years ago?

    • Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Drooling Iguana (61479) on Tuesday March 11 2008, @01:53PM (#22720516)
      Of course. They were created along with the mountain and the trees.
      • Haha funny you mention that. Whatever your origin-of-life stance is, the point of my parent post is how is this article news? I mean anthropology can be interesting and all, but this seems like an underwhelming crossover into "news for nerds." This isn't earth shattering news for anyone, whether evolutionist or creationist.
        • I mean anthropology can be interesting and all, but this seems like an underwhelming crossover into "news for nerds."
          No, but it makes for some good flamewars, which is a source of amusement to the slashdot mods.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by LithiumX (717017)
          It may not be earth shattering, but if there was a species (or subspecies) in the Homo line that could be defined by a radically different form (ie tiny size below anything seen in modern times), that would be interesting.

          The human lineage is mostly made up of multiple snapshots, most of whom are probably no direct relation to anyone alive (ie any random Homo skull dug up is more likely than not part of a lineage similar to ours, but not precisely the same). Finding new populations is always fascinating
        • What? After the H. Florensis controversy? Gee, it's only the biggest fight in anthropology since the Piltdown Man. How is finding another population of diminutive archaics dated to modern times not huge news? Are you maybe not aware of the ramifications of a 3 foot high, tool making sapian who appeared to swing from branches? (not to be read as a statement of fact, the jury is still out)

          I mean, I can understand you might not be too interested, but most people with an interest in physical anthropology will

        • Everyone knows Aulë [wikipedia.org] created the dwarves! To say otherwise is blasphemy!
      • Hey thank you for your comment. I was definitely not trolling even though I knew the troll mod would be forthcoming. I did find TFA very interesting although I didn't find it to be especially earth-shattering...
  • Look up the Bog people. There is an exhibit on them at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles. They were all tiny people. Plus the Bog actually preserved their bodies as well.

  • The luck o' the Irish! (Score:3, Funny)

    by sm62704 (957197) on Tuesday March 11 2008, @01:49PM (#22720442) Journal
    Glory be, Leprechans found in the South Pacific just before Saint Patrick's Day! I wonder if they found any whiskey bottles or Guiness there as well? And pots of gold?

    I'd link me latest wee journal (Sane Patty's Day) if the bloomin' mods wouldn't mod me offtopic. Oi'll drink to yer health tonight! Cheers!

    -mcgrew

  • alpha build.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by rucs_hack (784150) on Tuesday March 11 2008, @01:51PM (#22720484)
    Silly everyone.

    These are just the pre-alpha build humans that god made while he was in the preliminary human creation development cycle. Height wasn't increased until Homo-Sapiens RC-1.

    I mean really, if you're going to go poring over dev code, you've got to expect some pretty weird stuff.

  • No word in the article... (Score:5, Informative)

    by jd (1658) <[moc.oohay] [ta] [kapimi]> on Tuesday March 11 2008, @01:54PM (#22720560) Homepage Journal
    ...as to whether there's any effort to use archaeological DNA extraction techniques to solve the mystery. Earlier Slashdot stories have covered extracting DNA from bones, teeth and (best of all) hair. If the DNA is roughly human and includes evidence of the genetic defect causing the suspected form of dwarfism, then the bones are human. If the DNA can't be sequenced that thoroughly, but the mtDNA shows bones definitely human are direct descendents of bones of uncertain origin, then the bones of uncertain origin cannot be a distinct species. I can understand there being concern over DNA extraction (which tends to be very destructive) when there's very little material, but that's no longer the case. I can also understand concern when there were very few labs capable of the work, but there is such a glut of DNA companies these days that many are barely surviving and are cutting jobs.

    Yes, the work costs money and research grants tend to be minimal, but if the researchers in either camp really wanted answers, they'd find the money. Complicating things further, research funding tends to be proportional on papers published and/or cited. Arguing over the facts gets multiple papers published. Getting hard data gets one paper published. Ergo, it not only costs money now to get hard data, there are costs in the form of reduced funding later. The "best" outcome, from the perspective of the various departments and groups, is therefore to never resolve anything but to continually discover just enough to be able to keep publishing. Vroomfondle would be proud.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Jens Egon (947467)
      As I understand it, there is little chance of recovering DNA traces in the tropics, too hot for presevation.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by jericho4.0 (565125)
        You are right that the conditions that these bones were found in (hot, damp cave by the sea) are probably among the worst you could store DNA in, given a big enough sample, modern (and expensive) techniques might be able to pull something out. At least small amounts of DNA have been sequenced from material that was considered useless a few years ago.

  • how small? (Score:4, Informative)

    by KillerCow (213458) on Tuesday March 11 2008, @01:55PM (#22720574)
    Single page, ad free version [nationalgeographic.com]

    And the money shot (missing for the summary):

    The smaller, older bones represent people who were 3 to 4 feet (94 to 120 centimeters) tall and weighed between 70 and 90 pounds (32 and 41 kilograms), according to the paper.
  • Wow, I guess Sam found out.
  • island flora and fauna undergo size changes to either gigantic sizes not seen on the continent (for example, the komodo dragon), or to diminuitive sizes (the pygmy rhino, for example). it's called the island rule [pbs.org]

    there's no reason then to be surprised that this effect works on human beings as well. as it is, modern malay and austronesian peoples living on southeast asian islands are generally a little smaller than people from the mainland (generally... the dayak people of borneo are quite tall). and their migrational wave is very recent in human history. so this size change tirck is very easy and quick to pull off

    many people who find news of these hobbit sized archeological fossils in flores and now in palau (just a quick jump from mindanao in the philippines) will be even more suprised to find out that tiny ancient remnant people are very much alive in the philippines: the aeta

    in the big islands of the philippines and other big southeast asian islands there are remnants of melanesian peoples like you see on papua new guinea, deep in the mountains, in tiny, nearly extinct groups that fiercely resist contact and integration into modern society. these people were there long before the austronesian people overwhelmed the coast and eventually everywhere else except the isolated mountains where they cling to existence

    the aeta on luzon [wikipedia.org]. these people are quite tiny

    and yes, you can find still living remnants and historical recollections of these ancient tiny dwarf peoples even on japan, taiwan, thailand, and mainland china [cwo.com]

    Very similar groups of Black people in Asia reside in relative small numbers in the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean north of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and in northern Malaysia and southern Thailand in Southeast Asia. In Thailand they are commonly called Sakai. In Malaysia they have been called Orang Asli (Original Man). Pejoratively they are known as Semang, with the connotation of savage. It is very unfortunate that the contributions of these small Black people to monumental high-cultures characterized by urbanization, metallurgy, agricultural science and scripts remain essentially unexamined.

    The presence of diminutive Africoids (whom Chinese historians called "Black Dwarfs") in early southern China during the period of the Three Kingdoms (ca. 250 C.E.) is recorded in the book of the Official of the Liang Dynasty (502-556 C.E.). In Taiwan there are recollections of a group of people now said to be extinct called "Little Black Man."

    "They were described as short, dark-skinned people with short curly hair....These people, presumably Negritos, disappeared about 100 years ago. Their existence was mentioned in many Chinese documents of the Ching Dynasty concerning Taiwan."

    Similar groups of Black people have been identified in Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia, and it seems almost certain that at one time a belt of Black populations of this type covered much of Asia.


    so if one were to extrapolate to even smaller islands, to even further back in time, it is not surprising at all to imagine entire islands of hobbit sized people on islands all over southeast asia. really not surprising at all. all since wiped out though, a long time ago. if one studies the history of the haast eagle or the moa on new zealand (island giants) after the maori arrived, one gains an appreciation for how fragile island ecosystems are that most every zoologist possesses. and, by extension, how fragile island peoples are, culturally and genetically (disease and such) when contact with the wider world is established

    however, this whole notion of separate species is rather doubtful. they probably were entirely homo sapiens. if one understands that smallness in size is not a very hard trick to pull off genetically for any creature to evolve quite quickly and comprise very little genetic change, then one can see tiny island people in man's recent past is not very strange at all

    • ...is that the reasons for the different species claim are that the brain cavity shows differences from those found in diminutive humans and that the tools found are more advanced than might be expected from human brains scaled down to the same degree. Neither of these are convincing or definitive, but they are suggestive that this isn't simply the Island Rule or one of the genetic conditions identified as causing dwarfism. One of the problems with the research limiting itself to structure and form is that
      • you can talk about modern malays showing somewhat smaller size due to the island rule, and the earlier remant negrito populations throughout southeast asia representing an earlier wave of migration, showing an even greater island rule effect

        then there is no reason to postulate an even earlier wave, or waves, of homo sapiens or earlier human relatives, showing an extreme island rule effect in terms of their body size, now all since extinct. perhaps one can say that southeast asian islands represent the last
    • That's interesting... what about Samoans?

    • island flora and fauna undergo size changes to either gigantic sizes not seen on the continent (for example, the komodo dragon), or to diminuitive sizes (the pygmy rhino, for example). it's called the island rule

      I read the article you linked to, and it was very informative. It also makes intuitive sense that a relatively small isolated population of any species could tend to change size over time. In large populations, such as those on continents, the large number of individuals will keep the average sizes relatively constant barring any significant evolutionary pressure to change sizes. In the small populations on isolated islands, random "mutations" to be larger or smaller are much more likely to significantl

    • as it is, modern malay and austronesian peoples living on southeast asian islands are generally a little smaller than people from the mainland (generally... the dayak people of borneo are quite tall). and their migrational wave is very recent in human history. so this size change tirck is very easy and quick to pull off

      That's not exactly compelling. Minor size differences can happen in a generation, just due to differences in nutrition. Without DNA evidence that genetic changes are entirely the cause, it

  • "The remains are between 900 and 2,900 years old and align with Homo sapiens..."

    That has to be a typo. Did they miss the word "thousand" before the word "years" perhaps?

  • In other news, "Lucky Charms originated in Palau about 1,000BC."

  • genetic isolation... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rogue Haggis Landing (1230830) on Tuesday March 11 2008, @02:21PM (#22720882)
    I think that this doesn't really have anything to do with the Flores skeleton. TFA says that the bones would appear to be within the species Homo sapiens, and don't have the small brain size of the Flores find. There are oddities beyond the height (small eye sockets, some lack chins), but apparently nothing really out there. From TFA:

    The early Palauans' limited diet, combined with a tropical climate, absence of predators, a small founding population, and genetic isolation, may have produced "these very odd features and very small body size," Berger said.

    TFA also notes that there were no big animals to exploit on the island, and apparently no fishing until much later. So it really seems like just a regular human population that was small and isolated and changed in odd ways, rather than a distinct species or anything like that.

  • So... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Dancindan84 (1056246) on Tuesday March 11 2008, @02:55PM (#22721262)

    The smaller, older bones represent people who were 3 to 4 feet (94 to 120 centimeters) tall and weighed between 70 and 90 pounds (32 and 41 kilograms), according to the paper.
    They found a grade 5 classroom?

  • They are JAWAS!

    Utinni!

  • It's just proof that (Score:3, Funny)

    by RealErmine (621439) <`commerce' `at' `wordhole.net'> on Tuesday March 11 2008, @03:23PM (#22721606)
    It worked! The Debigulator worked!

  • Cave featured in upcoming "Bone Detective" episode (Score:5, Informative)

    by snowwrestler (896305) on Tuesday March 11 2008, @03:35PM (#22721740)
    I was just visiting some friends who are living in Palau and we went right by this cave on a snorkeling trip. One of the friends is a PA (physician's assistant) and recently served as the medical support for a crew shooting an episode of the Discovery show "Bone Detective." One of their sites was this cave.

    The archaeology and anthropology of Palau is poorly researched and there is little known about the ancient cultures that lived there. My wife is an anthropologist who works at the Smithsonian and had trouble finding much material on Palau to read before travelled there.

    The archaeology may also be endangered. On a sea kayaking trip in Nikko Bay, off the island of Babeldaob, we visited another cave that was known to have bones in it. But the bones were gone, and there was evidence of a hasty digging project in the floor of the cave. It was definitely not a research dig--no gridlines, no brushes or sifts, just a big hole that had clearly been dug with a shovel. We speculated that the recent attention had inspired some people to collect antiquities to sell. Hopefully that does not accelerate.

  • Skull not bones (Score:4, Insightful)

    by edwardpickman (965122) on Tuesday March 11 2008, @06:26PM (#22723328)
    The point is not bone size but skull shape. The Flores skull is exactly the same as a Homo Erectus with the exception of brain size. The brain size doesn't match proportions of either humans or Erectus. It's possible that Flores broke off from the family tree before Erectus. The disease theories don't take into account all the skull differences. I've seen lots of Erectus skulls and that was my gut reaction the first time I saw it. It looks like an Erectus child except it's an adult skull. No one has explained the differences in the teeth and that can't be caused by brain disease let alone brow and face differences. Pygmies look like regular humans. Flores didn't.

    • I really don't see what your complaint is. Modern humans have existed for about 200,000 years. So they've narrowed the possible time period to 1% of that range and you're not impressed?

      The range "900 to 2900 years" seems large because 900 years seems a lot more recent than 2900 years. But when you compare with the actual range it could have fallen in it's actually pretty narrow.

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