A commentary in the latest issue of Nature theorizes that the Hobbit Human could have descended from a more ancient pre-human group called Australopithecus, of which the 3.2-million-year-old skeleton “Lucy” is the most famous representative. Lucy might have to share the spotlight with the Hobbit, though, if the theory is proven to be correct.
A quick refresher: The Hobbit Human, aka Homo floresiensis, was a 3 1/2 foot tall species with huge feet that lived on the remote Indonesian island as early as 13,000 years ago.
The prevailing theory has been that the Hobbit was a member of our family tree, belonging to the genus Homo and having descended from a population of Homo erectus that made its way to the island and shrunk in stature over evolutionary time due to the “island effect.” (Because islands are relatively closed communities, evolution tends to lead to smaller forms.) Remains for a handful of Hobbits were found with stone tools and bones of a pygmy form of the now-extinct, elephant-like Stegodon.
Renowned paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer from the Natural History Museum in London questioned some parts of this theory.
In his Nature commentary, Stringer wrote that the tiny brain of one of the excavated Hobbits as well as its body shape and individual bones “look more primitive than those of any human dating to within the past million years.”
The Hobbit jaw and chin are “most like those in pre-human fossils more than 2 million years old,” Stringer wrote.
The Hobbit therefore shares traits with Australopithecus. This presents a real mind blower.
We’ve tended to assume that only Homo sapiens left Africa, interbred with locals in Europe and Asia (like Neanderthals and Denisovans), resulting in today’s non-Africans.
But what if other species, like Australopithecus, also left Africa, made it to places like Indonesia, and successfully settled there until more recent times? The plot thickens.
Read more at Discovery News
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