Shall a
theory about HUMAN EVOLUTION needs to change??
My name Peter
Paka (originally from Flores island of Indonesia) received so many
emails questioning me with the new found ancient human species on
my beloved homeland "Flores Island". Msn.com opens my
mind and brain to start reading the hot news about this articles.
It kept me first minutes spent to think and not to believe since I
was at the school learned that the most ancient human fossils are
only found in Java and other part of the world. But today, Henry
Gee of Nature magazine and Professor Chris Stringer of London's
Natural History Museum have strongly recommend scientists to
analyze and rewrite the history of human evolution. My friend Paul
Boleng who was a guide conducting the several scientist into Liang
Bua have been told that the information he gave me before now
become the world's new.
With this new
human species found not far from our Flores houses, It may raise a
question SHALL A THEORY ABOUT HUMAN EVOLUTION needs to change????
3FT TALL (90 CENTIMETER-TALL)
Scientist on their press conference said the ancient adult female
skeleton measures 3ft tall or 90cm tall found in a cave is
believed 18,000 years old. It smashes the long-cherished
scientific belief that our species, Homo sapiens, systematically
crowded out other upright-walking human cousins beginning 160,000
years ago and that we've had Earth to ourselves for tens of
thousands of years. It wakes up our mind that AFRICA, the
acknowledged cradle of humanity, does not hold right answer on
question of how - where - we came to be.
"This finding really does rewrite our knowledge of human
evolution," said Chris Stringer, who directs human origins
studies at the Natural History Museum in London. "And to have
them present less than 20,000 years ago is frankly
astonishing."
Shortest member of human family
Scientists called the dwarf skeleton "the most extreme"
figure to be included in the extended human family. Certainly, she
is the shortest.
She is the best example of a trove of fragmented bones that
account for as many as seven of these primitive individuals that
lived on the equatorial island of Flores, located east of Java and
northwest of Australia. The mostly intact female skeleton was
found in September 2003.
Scientists have named the extinct species Homo Floresiensis, or
Flores Man, and details appear in Thursday's issue of the journal.
The specimens' ages range from 95,000 to 12,000 years old, meaning
they lived until the threshold of recorded human history and
perhaps crossed paths with the ancestors of today's islanders.
Flores Man was hardly formidable. His grapefruit-sized brain was
two-thirds smaller than ours, and closer to the brains of today's
chimpanzees and transitional pre human species in Africa than
vanished 2 million years ago.
Yet Flores Man made stone tools, lit fires and organized group
hunts for meat. Bones of fish, birds and rodents found near the
skeleton were charred, suggesting they were cooked.
All this suggests Flores Man lived communally and communicated
effectively, perhaps even verbally.
"It is arguably the most significant discovery concerning our
own genus in my lifetime," said anthropologist Bernard Wood
of George Washington University, who reviewed the research
independently.
Discoveries simply "don't get any better than that,"
proclaimed Robert Foley and Marta Mirazon Lahr of Cambridge
University in a written analysis.
Questions over classification
To others, the species' baffling combination of slight dimensions
and coarse features bears almost no meaningful comparison either
to modern humans or to our larger, archaic cousins.
They suggest that Flores Man doesn't belong in the genus Homo at
all, even if it was a recent contemporary. But they are unsure
where to classify it.
"I don't think anybody can pigeonhole this into the very
simple-minded theories of what is human," anthropologist
Jeffrey Schwartz of the University of Pittsburgh. "There is
no biological reason to call it Homo. We have to rethink what it
is."
For now, most researchers have been limited to examining digital
photographs of the specimens. The female partial skeleton and
other fragments are stored in a laboratory in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Researchers from Australia and Indonesia found the partial
skeleton 13 months ago in a shallow limestone cave known as Liang
Bua. The cave, which extends into a hillside for about 130 feet
(40 meters), has been the subject of scientific analysis since
1964. Fenced off and patrolled by guards, it is surrounded by
coffee farms.
Older stone tools and other artifacts previously found on the
island suggest that Flores Man is part of a substantial archaic
human lineage.
"So the 18,000-year-old skeleton cannot be some kind of
'freak' that we just happened to stumble across," said one of
the discoverers, radiocarbon dating expert Richard G. Roberts of
the University of Wollongong in Australia.
Peculiar environment
But the environment in which Flores Man lived was indeed peculiar,
and scientists say it probably contributed to the specimen's
unusually small dimensions.
Researchers from Australia and Indonesia found the partial
skeleton 13 months ago in a shallow limestone cave known as Liang
Bua. The cave, which extends into a hillside for about 130 feet
(40 meters), has been the subject of scientific analysis since
1964. Fenced off and patrolled by guards, it is surrounded by
coffee farms.
Older stone tools and other artifacts previously found on the
island suggest that Flores Man is part of a substantial archaic
human lineage.
"So the 18,000-year-old skeleton cannot be some kind of
'freak' that we just happened to stumble across," said one of
the discoverers, radiocarbon dating expert Richard G. Roberts of
the University of Wollongong in Australia.
Peculiar environment
But the environment in which Flores Man lived was indeed peculiar,
and scientists say it probably contributed to the specimen's
unusually small dimensions.
Millennia ago, Flores was a kind of a looking-glass world, a
real-life Middle-earth inhabited by a menagerie of fantastical
creatures like giant tortoises, elephants as small as ponies and
rats as big as hunting dogs.
It even had a dragon, although they were giant lizards like
today's carnivorous Komodo dragons rather than the
treasure-hoarding Smaug described by novelist J.R.R. Tolkien in
his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
Artifacts suggest that a big-boned human cousin, Homo erectus,
migrated from Java to Flores and other islands, perhaps by bamboo
raft, nearly 1 million years ago.
Researchers suspect that Flores Man probably is a descendant of
Homo erectus that was squeezed by the pressures of natural
selection.
Dwarfism in nature
Nature is full of mammals - deer, squirrels and pigs, for example
- living in marginal, isolated environments that gradually dwarf
when food isn't plentiful and predators aren't threatening.
This is the first time that the evolution of dwarfism has been
recorded in a human relative, said the study's lead author, Peter
Brown of the University of New England in Australia.
Just how this primitive, remnant species managed to hang on is
uncertain. Inbreeding certainly would have been a danger. Geologic
evidence suggests a massive volcanic eruption sealed its fate
12,000 years ago, along with other unusual island species like the
dwarf elephant species, stegodon.
Now, scientists are more puzzled by the specimen's jumble of
features that appear to be borrowed from different human
ancestors.
Clues from the skeleton
This much is clear: Its worn teeth and fused skull show it was an
adult. The shape of the pelvis is female. The skull is wide like
that of Homo erectus. But the sides are rounder and the crown
traces an arc from ear to ear. The skull of Homo erectus has
straight sides and a pointed crown, they said.
The lower jaw contains large, blunt teeth and roots like
Australopithecus, a prehuman ancestor in Africa more than 3
million years ago. The front teeth are smaller and more like
modern human teeth.
The eye sockets are big and round, but unlike other members of the
Homo genus, it has hardly any chin or browline.
The rest of the skeleton looks as if it walked upright, but the
pelvis and the shinbone have primitive, even apelike features.
Bones from the species' feet and hands have not yet been found.
Delicate artifacts found in the cave were described as
"toy-sized" versions of stone tools made by Homo
erectus. They suggest that Flores Man retained intelligence and
dexterity to flake small weapons with sharp edges, even if its
body shrunk over time.
"I've spent a sleepless night trying to figure out what to do
with this thing," said Schwartz. "It's a mind-blower. It
makes me think of nothing else in this world."
Even more speculative is whether Flores Man met with modern
humans, and what might have happened.
Folklore experts have reported persistent legends of little people
living on Flores and nearby islands. Islanders called the creature
"Ebu Gogo" and say it was about 3 feet tall.
THANKS TO EVERY SCIENTIST WHO INVOLVED IN THIS DISCOVERY
Where
is it located?
Flores island lies between
East of Bali and North of Australia. It is a neighbor island of
Timor and few miles from the new state (Timor Leste).
click
here to
view may of flores island
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