Hobbits' Brains Shrank Due To Remote Home 190
Hugh Pickens writes "The 'hobbits,' dubbed homo floresiensis, caused a worldwide sensation when they were discovered five years ago, when some scientists claimed that the 18,000-year-old human-like fossils found on the Indonesian island of Flores represented an entirely new species. Now researchers at the Natural History Museum in London believe that the creatures' small brains could have developed to reduce the creatures' energy needs, crucial for surviving in an isolated area with limited resources. 'It could be that H. floresiensis' skull is that of a Homo erectus that has become dwarfed from living on an island, rather than being an abnormal individual or separately-evolved species, as has been suggested,' says palaeontologist Eleanor Weston. 'Looking at pygmy hippos in Madagascar, which possess exceptionally small brains for their size, suggests that the same could be true for H. floresiensis, and the result of being isolated on the island.' Although the phenomenon of dwarfism on islands is well recognized in large mammals, an accompanying reduction in brain size has never been clearly demonstrated before."
Alaska's pretty remote... (Score:5, Funny)
Does that explain Sarah Palin?
Re:Alaska's pretty remote... (Score:4, Funny)
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Most people will mis-speak once or twice on any topic, myself and you included.
For most people anyways, what separates a one-time gaffe with ignorance is the frequency of the mistake.
You can draw a hard line on the matter and TRY to equate the two... but that's pretty incredible.
United States of Canada (Score:2)
No, but it explains the "we've hit 57 states, and have one more to go" Obama.
Perfectly reasonable: 47 states and 10 provinces [wikipedia.org].
Re:Evolution Determines Intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only are you a racist, but you're clearly an uneducated one as well. Africa is the most genetically diverse area in the world. Making the sorts of sweeping statements you did, regardless of whether they're racist or not, indicates that you actually have no fucking clue about human evolution.
Re:Evolution Determines Intelligence (Score:4, Insightful)
Insects are pretty diverse. None of them are very big. Not much variation in number of legs either.
Thus it would appear that diverse doesn't mean "covers the entire scale on every possible variable". Therefore it does not at all refute GPs post.
Re:Evolution Determines Intelligence (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think you quite understand what genetic diversity means in this case. In this case it means that making claims about Africans as if they were a homogeneous group is ludicrous. We're talking about several distinct populations in sub-Saharan Africa that have more genetic distance between them than every other single human population in the world. Even if there were some populations in Africa that were genetically predisposed to be less intelligent (and there's no evidence whatsoever for that), that would hardly reflect on the other major genetic lineages in the area.
So yes, genetic diversity plays directly against "black people are dumber" sorts of racists. There is no "black" race to begin with, save as a ethno-cultural artifact.
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I did, and I will again. You have an incredibly diverse number of populations in Africa, in genetic terms. It's much more diverse than anywhere else on the planet (as the Out of Africa theory predicts). To say "Africans are genetically predetermined to be dumber than everyone else" is completely moronic, considering that there is no singular African lineage, but a number that go very very deep in time. Even if you could, say, make a claim that one group is somehow genetically more likely to produce less
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Look at Japan. It has a tiny fraction of the natural resources of Africa. Yet, the Japanese people created the 2nd-richest nation on the planet.
My history may be way off but:
Didn't the Japanese move there recently (evolutionary timescale) from the mainland? There wouldn't be enough time for evolution to make an equivalent difference. Modern (same timescale) cultures can offset a lack in resources easily. After overcoming that hurdle, a small land mass can be a blessing for a country's development. One example is how much better their connectivity is because they don't need to span a country the size of the US.
Are both ends of the spectrum the b
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Give the guy an "Informative!" (I'm fresh out.)
But I'm disappointed that you posted as an AC. Don't want your karma burned by all the Palin-haters?
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I love Palin. I think she's stupendously (unintentionally) funny.
But I fucking hate misinformation, so I would have modded him up. It's like the "Al Gore says he created the Internet" misinformation meme. Can't stand it.
People seeing the world how they want to instead of how it is. Laughing at the things too ridiculous to be real. In fact, not real. This believe-what-you-want thinking needs to be crushed before humanity can truly have hope.
At least... that's what I believe.
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Palin stated that "You can see Russia from parts of Alaska" which is a true fact. She did not state "I can see Russia from my house"
The joke, though, is that she believed that this fact made her qualified to handle the type of foreign relations work that's done by the federal government.
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Well, Mr.AC
I am going to ignore your obvious racism. I am also not going to comment on things I don't know enough about to even speculate. I am simply going to put this question to you. I am going to ignore Africans vs. Rest of the world stuff too because its not related to the topic.
On what basis do conclude a smaller brain implies less intelligence, particularly in creatures within the same genius?
Perhaps a smaller brain is simply more compact, the article was talking about it being smaller for reasons
small brains the result of (Score:5, Funny)
over consumption of ale and pipeweed?
Small Brains (Score:2)
Well at least you'll be less attractive to zombies when you have smaller brain...
Island brain? (Score:4, Funny)
Rather like the British then?
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Culturally and genetically, Britain is an mix of French, Dutch, Nordic, Celt... and Pastun.
In the context of extreme genetic isolation, perhaps better examples would be the Royal Family... or the Welsh.
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There's quite a bit of Basque blood in there too, apparently. But Pashtun? Where did that come into the picture?
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No, but i've been to Afghanistan.
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Shitloads of foreign "aid" workers.
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That may or may not be true. But the Basques are not Gaelic.
Studies of Y-chromosome genes (in this case, the R1b group) seem to show that something like 75% of British people have ancestors who came from Basque country.
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Rather like the British then?
Or Hawaiians or Japanese. (Oh, wait, Japanese were on the small side until the US came in after WW2.)
Seriously, though: maybe if H. Erectus had developed fire, axes, knives and archery, and "humaniformed" the land with huts and agriculture, then they would have been able to produce enough energy to "stay large".
Anyway, humans have only been on Britain 5,000 years, and modern Brits have a lot of Angle, Saxon, Norman and Viking, which is only 1,500 years old, none of which is lon
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I believe it's closer to 15,000 years than 5,000.
And the British were quite short until relatively recently (of course everyone else in the world may have been too, for all i know).
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And the British were quite short until relatively recently (of course everyone else in the world may have been too, for all i know).
Antebellum furniture was quite small, compared to modern furniture.
Maybe "we" started to grow when refrigeration and wealth allowed us to eat more meat?
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Antibiotics in milk and growth hormones in meat may have had something to do with it, too.
And of course, British people have grown phenomenally since the channel tunnel was built - maybe something to do with not really being an island any more?!
18,000 - amazing (Score:5, Informative)
An 18,000 year old specimen of Homo Erectus would indeed be an amazing find if true. They were thought to have died out a little less than a million years ago. Thus, 18k is a huge leap. Also, being 18k old may mean that we can extract DNA from it or another like find, and learn more about Erectus, and maybe someday even recreate one ("Erectus Park"). Homo Erectus was a very successful species of proto-human (relatively speaking) and probably the first proto-human to spread deep into Europe and Asia.
Re:18,000 - amazing (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not sure that inviting the public to come see Homos in 'Erectus Park' would get you the visitors you are looking for. ..
You're hired! (Score:2)
No, but IT departments everywhere will be clamoring to hire the new race of dim-witted cavemen who will apparently, literally, work for less peanuts.
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An 18,000 year old specimen of Homo Erectus would indeed be an amazing find if true.
That seems like kind of a leap of interpretation. Dr. Weston's statement acknowledges that the "hobbit" is H. floresiensis, so when she says "could be that of H. erectus" (considering the 18,000year date) I think we're talking about the former being a descendant of the latter, not a sub-species.
Re:18,000 - amazing (Score:4, Informative)
Why are you so surprised? They have been speculating that H. floresiensis might be a dwarfed H. erectus almost since they found it. And it was clear even in the initial description that it was very recent.
Anyway, even if you could clone H. floresiensis, you would get, well, H. floresiensis, not H. erectus.
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T
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All of these newfangled AJAXy 'enhancements' look like they were coded by a braindead codemonkey who just found jQuery.
Explains why it's slow, incompatible, and so forth. (jQuery has many cross-browser issues, though not as many as Prototype. Because of the 'powerful' chaining style, though, it's nigh impossible to debug. jQuery and Prototype make JavaScript a write-only language - much like perl)
Don't believe me?
Go look at the markup and code...
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TV and the movies (Score:2, Troll)
Incidentally, I agree with BadAnalogyGuy up there; with no competition and limited resources you would expect expensive brains to be evolved out. Cats, for instance, conserve resources in part compared to dogs because they have brains with some of the "higher level" functions reduced. However, I didn't mod him up because I strongly object to the term "retards". It's unpleasant, and insulting to people
Re:TV and the movies (Score:5, Insightful)
I strongly object to the term "retards".
By treating the term retard as offensive, you are only feeding into its offensiveness. Retard means slow. If retard has any negative connotation at all, it is because being mentally slow is something that is inherently undesirable, and no matter what window dressing you do to it, the window dressing will always become an insult.
If you had any depth to you, you would be more focused on trying to emphasize to as many people as possible that being a retard is not something worthy of being hated or abused. The word retard is not harmful at all, and it never will be. It is how people react to people who are retarded. When you focus on something as shallow as a word, you are hurting retards worldwide by misdirecting public attention from their cause.
The 'Hobbits' are retards. And so are you for getting butthurt over the word retard.
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Right. Like they're totally going to notice.
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So if I called you a retard in front of your little sib (or whatever) how do you think he/she would feel knowing that you are smarter than them? Pretty small right?
Still seems silly to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Still seems silly to me, when you start renaming actual medical conditions just for fear of hurting the emotions of someone even worse off. Should we also stop calling autism autism, just because someone even more autistic out there could feel unhappy about it? Should we stop calling asthma asthma, just because some people are even more crippled by it?
The real insulting part in your example would be your using that term as an inherent insult, instead of a medical condition. _That_ is what ends up annoying those who genuinely have that condition.
But when you get to the point of actually using the euphemisms even for the actual disease, something tells me that you're missing the whole point.
Part of speech (Score:2)
Should we also stop calling autism autism, just because someone even more autistic out there could feel unhappy about it? Should we stop calling asthma asthma, just because some people are even more crippled by it?
I think it's the part of speech. Contrast "a retard", "a retarded person", and "a person with retardation." Likewise, in the autism spectrum, contrast "an Aspie" with "a person with Asperger's", at least until such people reclaim [wikipedia.org] "Aspie".
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Google "euphemism treadmill".
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Hmm, maybe it's just me, but I never thought "aspie" was an insult or heard it used as an obvious insult.
Slashdot (Score:2)
Clearly demonstrated in this article's blurb (Score:5, Insightful)
How does "some researchers believe" equate to "clearly demonstrated"? I think whoever wrote that blurb has experienced brain shrinkage!
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I think those researchers must have read Galapagos [wikipedia.org].
I think it's unlikely that the trait that allowed us to survive so many other environments would be selected against in a challenging environment.
not a new species? (Score:4, Interesting)
""It could be that H. floresiensis' skull is that of a Homo erectus that has become dwarfed from living on an island, rather than being an abnormal individual or separately-evolved species, as has been suggested," says palaeontologist Dr Eleanor Weston.
Could someone explain why this wouldn't be a new species, even if it is an adapted homo erectus? isn't that how new species are formed? where is the "species" line drawn?
Re:not a new species? (Score:4, Informative)
>where is the "species" line drawn?
theoretically, when populations no longer interbreed. Note that the populations may still be fertile together, as long as they don't naturally and normally interbreed. They may be too far apart, or they may have very different mate attraction strategies that are not interesting to the other group.
This definition, like many in biology, is in practice rather blurry, especially in plants and extinct organisms.
In this case, I agree that saying an island dwarfed type of H. erectus *is* H. erectus seems silly, but then I am not a biologist.
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That definition might make Slashdotters a different species.
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"where is the "species" line drawn?"
Where convenient. See evolution.
i think the aeta are pretty interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
while they aren't hobbits, they are similarly ancient, diminuitive peoples of southeast asia whose history may be instructive of how succeeding waves of human and proto-humans competed with and replaced each other. based on the experience of the aeta, i wouldn't be surprised if the last flores hobbit died at the sharp end of a homo sapien's stick
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negrito [wikipedia.org]
essentially, ancient remnant isolated melanesian populations in largely malay and thai areas across indonesia, malaysia, the philippines, and thailand. the malays took over the coastal areas over time, and now the aeta live in tiny mountain tribes. they also existed in china until recently. han and malay peoples just either outright exterminated them, outcompeted them, or genetically intermarried and swamped them out of existence
http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-hercules/the-black-african-foundation-of-china-honouring-the-aboriginal-black-people-of-china/ [africaresource.com]
in the philippines, the aeta famously came to light after the eruption of mount pinatubo, and this isolated group of peoples, probably living on the mountain isolated for hundreds if not thousands of years, were suddenly driven into the modern world
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/11/11/MN206799.DTL [sfgate.com]
the island of negros in the philippines gets its name from the spanish who found large numbers of aeta who lived there, at one time. now the island is almost completely malay
the dutch hurried along the process of the supplanting of the aeta with more cooperative malay slaves by genocidally emptying some strategic spice islands because the aetas proved uncooperative in the profitable nutmeg trade:
Controversy (Score:2, Informative)
"Both of these papers show things that could not have evolved or been a plastic response within our own species," George Washington University paleoanthropologist Bernard Wood told The Scientist. Wood, who was not involved with either study, added that the papers raise important questions regarding the evolutionary origins of H. floresiensis that only further research can answer.
While they certainly agree with the diminuative size being related to reduced energy needs they suggest that it is not just a reduced example of homo erectus.
In the other Nature paper, William Jungers, a paleoanthropologist at Stony Brook University in New York, and his coauthors compared the Hobbit foot to the few existing feet in the fossil record. "You just don't see complete feet until you get into Neanderthal," Jungers told The Scientist. "The fossil record of feet is surprisingly meager." If H. floresiensis was in fact a dwarfed H. erectus, the species would have had to amass primitive features after its ancestor had already evolved more modern skeletal characteristics. "It's asking a lot for evolution to backtrack like that," Jungers said. "Is it possible? I guess, but there's no precedent.".
Of course all of this analysis is ve
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DNA mutation rates are not fixed. They need to be calibrated against the fossil record, as well as a bunch of other stuff. DNA evidence is not the magic definite science you seek.
The problem with bats was the lack of early fossils. Morphological studies with a good fossil record can be pretty reliable. It is not just conjecture--morphological studies include predictions which can be tested.
Ok (Score:2)
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Tolkien's Hobbits did not have pointed ears.
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I picture a fairly human figure, not a kind of 'fairy' rabbit as some of my British reviewers seem to fancy: fattish in the stomach, shortish in the leg. A round, jovial face; ears only slightly pointed and 'elvish'; hair short and curling (brown). The feet from the ankles down, covered with brown hairy fur. Clothing: green velvet breeches; red or yellow waistcoat; brown or green jacket; gold (or
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I stand corrected. I believe there is nothing in The Hobbit or LotR about pointed ears, and I was unaware of this letter.
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But I read months ago... (Score:2)
...that the whole "different species" theory was completely debunked. Seems the editors did not notice this. Which is quite a feat, considering that they most likely posted it themselves here on Slashdot. ^^
Makes sense (Score:5, Funny)
This makes a lot of sense. A large part of what appears to have encouraged the increase in reasoning ability of human beings has been our complex social interaction. On an island with a small population the social interaction would be simpler and thus less reasoning would be required.
A monkey can make a spear and hunt for food, it takes a human being to figure out that when your girlfriend is telling you about her problems she just wants to complain about it and doesn't actually want you to help create a solution.
Could someone explain the "brain case" argument? (Score:4, Interesting)
I took Human Evolution in college. I really liked it. But there is some phallic fascination with brain case size as being a important factor in approximating intelligence.
We have parrots that are as intelligent as 4-year olds. We have bears that are dumber. We have cephalopods that have a lot of intelligence in a few cm^3. Brain case volume to me, does not seem to have a determining factor in intelligence.
The density of brain matter would seem to be relevant as we look at brain function in terms of neural complexity. As density increases required volume decreases. And since to soft tissue survive, we have no idea of neural density. It seems that neural density would be a much better proxy for intelligence - particularly when looking in the same genus. (As opposed to cephalopods which have an entirely different brain morphology)
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But there is some phallic fascination with brain case size
Naw. Those researchers are just dickheads.
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Have you read Dawkin's "The Ancestor's Tale?" There's a tremendous amount of discussion on this issue, and it's one of the most fascinating books I've ever read.
You're right. The proper measurement is brain mass, not size. Unfortunately it's difficult to measure mass of soft tissue in fossils. Typically, there is a linear relationship between log(body mass) and log(brain mass). Humans and dolphins are the real outliers to the line, with primates outlying to a lesser extent. The animals we think of as
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I think that brain energy needs in relation to the rest of the body's energy needs should be considered, and this is related to brain case size.
Humans' gestation, childrearing, nuclear family, tribe-based society, etc. all essentially stem from our huge brains. Our entire society served to support helpless babies- and our babies had to be born so young as to be helpless so that their huge heads didn't kill their mother during childbirth. Even with the early birth, we still require a fontanelle so our head c
Vegetarianism (Score:2)
I know him (Score:2)
Isn't he the lead designer for Duke Nukem Forever?
I call bullshit (Score:2)
Bullshit. Either they'd be unable to stand up or their poor little necks would snap.
Dangerous to draw strong conclusions yet (Score:2)
The "hobbits" represent a divergence from established models of Human evolutionary history. There are huge egos and invested in keeping things as they are. Conversely, there are careers to be made by getting people to believe something new.
Because of this, new people are going to overstate the likelihood that these little people represent a missing line, and established people will come up with all kinds of tenuous arguments saying that they are NOT.
You can't believe either side. Let them duke this out f
Hobbits probably own species, not just shrunken (Score:3, Informative)
The discovery and debate over the "hobbits" Homo floresiensis is fascinating.
It appears that the hobbits are a unique species and not a shrunken version of Homo erectus based not so much on brain size, but on different and more ape-like body parts including feet, wrists, hips, and shoulders. The NYTimes has a couple [nytimes.com] of stories [nytimes.com] on this.
Bad grammar in TFA. (Score:2)
Argh, that came from TFA (and there's no way to comment on TFA). It should be "The homo floresiensis, dubbed 'hobbits'.."
From the definition of dubbed:
b: to call by a distinctive title, epithet, or nickname
Re:To our retarded brethren (Score:5, Funny)
I have found this phenomenon localized in my community. It's called Wal-Mart.
Re:To our retarded brethren (Score:5, Funny)
No, the species living in wall mart tend to be much larger. It's the opposite phenomenon.
Re:To our retarded brethren (Score:4, Funny)
No, the species living in wall mart (sic)tend to be much larger. It's the opposite phenomenon.
The species that lives in Wal-Mart has an overly-large body with a severely undersized brain. Kinda like the Brontosaurus (or whatever they call that dinosaur these days).
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The world is full of retards (ATM you're modded -1 Troll). apparently it is possible to be a complete retard and even use the tubes!
Of course it is, how else do you explain the level of discourse on every Internet message board and chat site ever?
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Well, duh!
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Re:Bunk (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bunk (Score:4, Funny)
Have you seen soccer moms driving SUVs? My theory is that, much like gold fish, these maternal females grow proportionally to the vehicles' cabin size.
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Shit. I'm trading in the Yukon for a Smart Car.
Re:Bunk (Score:4, Informative)
Have you watched episodes of Big Brother or Survivor?
No, I haven't, because brains shrink when watching inane "reality" shows.
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Single handedly storming into the hostile encampment, threatening their leader with a gun to ask for their help was an excellent plan. Who could have possibly seen that one going badly?
Their using short-hand (Score:5, Insightful)
Their should be "they're" (Score:3, Informative)
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What they mean is that selective pressure due to critical energy needs favored successively smaller brained individuals who were more able to effectively survive and have fertile offspring. Over the course of many generations, this led to small brains.
This is what happened to the Koala [wikipedia.org].
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Humans typically like to explore and spread out. To the point where we'll brave extreme environments to find the oasis or to set up a colony on the other side of said environment. Animals would have very little motivation to cross a desert.
Its possible that this particular species found their way onto an island and 'settled down'
evolution is effectively goal-oriented (Score:3, Interesting)
That goal is survival. OK, it's anthropomorphizing to call it a "goal", as if there were thought or desire involved, but that's of no importance. Survival (long term Nth generation) is effectively the goal.
The relevant error is to think that the survival goal of evolution must somehow coincide with the qualities that we humans desire or respect. No way! If passionate religion or inability to comprehend birth control make it more likely that you have surviving descendents in the Nth generation, then those tr
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Well, apart from trivial things like being less likely to starve during a famine, I agree - nothing at all. Well I suppose there's probably a reduction in cooling requirements too. But hey, if you say Jesus wanted them to be small, then how can I disagree?
Now you need to use your imagination
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but we are attempting to reproduce via mitosis. We'll call it "human forking". It simplifies things.
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That's just his 'split personality' talking.
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Why not? Island dwarfism and island gigantism are well know phenomena, even if we don't really understand why they happen.
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The theory makes perfect sense. Over time if some were born smaller, they need less food. Since food is already scarce, they'll have more food to share with their family since they need less themselves. Better nourishment gives yo
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Well of course it's mutations, but I would suspect that, considering that hominid evolution shows a clear trend towards larger cranial capacity, there must have been some very severe selective pressures on this particular species which caused a very profound reversal of that trend. Evolution simply isn't a bunch of random alleles accidentally "working" for an environment.
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Extreme cases can also cause aggrevated swelling of the brain as it's shrinkage puts more pressure on the neurons.
Hurry. It looks like you don't have a moment to lose.
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Um, the term "Hobbits" has been applied to this species almost from the beginning and by almost every news source. This is a valid scientific discussion and if you have a problem with the term "Hobbits", take it up with the scientists, don't blame Slashdot.
In conclusion, you are a filthy whiner and good riddance.
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It would have to be pretty damned ancient, because even the Australopithecines (starting around 3.5-3.7 million years ago) had a fairly modern leg and foot structure, and I can tell you right now there's no evidence that they spread out of Africa, and most certainly zero evidence that any previous hominids did.
I don't see why this is a very compelling argument for H. floresiensis descending from some pre-H. erectus population. That's like saying whales didn't descend from land-bound mammals because they ha