Slashdot Log In
Scientists Hope To Settle "Hobbit" Debate
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jan 30, 2007 12:45 AM
from the little-men dept.
from the little-men dept.
Several readers wrote in with news of the debate around the identity of an ancient woman whose diminutive skeleton was found on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2004. Fox News reports that Australian scientists have discovered a subterranean chamber that may contain DNA proof that will settle the question of whether "the Hobbit," as the specimen is called, actually is a representative of a new branch of the human family, or not. The find's discoverers named the putative new race Homo floresiensis. Others in the anthropological field question this identification, arguing that the meter-tall Hobbit was a modern human who had something wrong with her. In a paper just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, with one of the original discovery team as co-author, researchers say they have compared the Hobbit's skull to those of modern humans with various ailments such as microcephaly, and that the Hobbit is different.
Related Stories
[+]
More Evidence For Hobbit Sized Species 327 comments
GogglesPisano writes "CNN.com reports that scientists digging in a remote Indonesian cave have uncovered a jaw bone that they say adds more evidence that a tiny prehistoric Hobbit-like species once existed." From the article: "The discovery of a jaw bone, to be reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, represents the ninth individual belonging to a group believed to have lived as recently as 12,000 years ago. The bones are in a wet cave on the island of Flores in the eastern limb of the Indonesian archipelago, near Australia."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Trolls too... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Trolls too... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: Trolls too... (Score:4, Insightful)
Is that the syndrome that makes guys buy humongous pickup trucks and drive 20mph faster than the flow of traffic?
Parent
Re: Trolls too... (Score:5, Funny)
Bah, real men drive six-wheeled armored cars.
With a great big gun sticking out the front...
Parent
Great but... (Score:4, Funny)
hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe she just hobbitually ate a poor diet.
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pretty shire that's the case.
Parent
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Mod Parent Up (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Me being cynical (Score:4, Insightful)
Right -- they're the ones that don't get the publicity or funding. Come on, how boring is that -- that the meter-tall body was just an abnormal human? Wouldn't it be so much *cooler* if there were a whole race of these!
Re:Me being cynical (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, unfortunately science is decided based on empirical observation, not whose theory is cooler.
Parent
Re:Me being cynical (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Me being cynical (Score:5, Insightful)
Most notably, a few of those arguing against it have tended to do so for religious, and not scientific reasons, which is always a huge warning sign that their opinions should be treated with caution.
Skepticism is a good trait to have - but when you are irrationally skeptical to the available evidence, to the point of closemindedness than you are no better than somebody who is overly gullible.
For a relatively balanced opinion on the debate surrounding LB1, you could go to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis). Perhaps after reading that, you could reserve the snark and unwarranted insult of the investigating scientists, and actually learn a little about how science is conducted.
Parent
Teh Effin Summary (Score:4, Informative)
Get with the answers already! (Score:3, Insightful)
If this represents a new species of human, and given how recently this species is shown to have lived, then whole textbooks on the subject will likely need rewriting. I find it quite exciting, and I'm not even an anthropologist.
As an aside, I'm also quite interested to see what the bible-thumpers eventually come to make of all of this.
Re:Get with the answers already! (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: Get with the answers already! (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, lots of them already dismiss Neanderthals and older species as humans with arthritus. Some make the blanket claim that the whole lineage represents just two species, cleanly divided into humans and apes.
I was amused to hear an anthropologist offer the same argument against this specimen...
Parent
Punctuated Equilibrium (Score:5, Informative)
>"The idea is that basically, instead of species evolving slowly over time into new species, speciation can occur rapidly (on a geological time scale) and then the new species will remain relatively stable until the next quick burst of change."
That is a good summary. Your other comments are rather off the mark, particularly the idea that there is no advantage to a "half-fin half-leg" and so on. Given that you don't have a background in biology, that's understandable. A good explaination of the theory is here [talkorigins.org] at the talk.origins newsgroup site. A less techinical one is here [wikipedia.org] at the Wikipedia site.
Parent
And who is going to direct this research? (Score:5, Funny)
Kevin Smith
George Lucas
Allan Parker
Steven Spielberg
Ridley Scott
Beorn(who?)
or CowboyNeal?
Hmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
In relating to another species or race humans will do one of the following:
Given that white people like me only started taking black people seriously about 50 years ago I can only assume that the neanderthals would be considered a sub-human slave species like cattle, dogs, etc.
Perhaps we wiped them out because they were too smart to be enslaved with the technology of the time.
Parent
National Geographic settled this last year... (Score:4, Informative)
"Subterranean chamber" (Score:4, Funny)
QED.
Re:I for one... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent