Ancient Bones of Small Humans Discovered In Palau

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."

genetic isolation...

[Rogue Haggis Landing]

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.

Re:Perhaps...

[paganizer]

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:No word in the article...

[jericho4.0]

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.

Re:So...

[Whiteox]

According to the author linked with my sig, Floriensis may be remanents of the Badui people.
Knowledge of the Badui peoples were common among some Indonesian tribes.
If you look, check out the article on Javanese Mystical Tradition for some background info.

Re:Perhaps...

[ozmanjusri]

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...