Probably the most exciting paper I’ve ever handled at Your Favourite Weekly Professional Science Magazine Beginning With N was this one – on Homo floresiensis, a diminutive and very peculiar hominin from the island of Flores in Indonesia. The creature was very primitive – in many ways, a throwback to hominins that lived more than three million years ago. But the surprise was that it survived on the island until around 14,000 years ago, when a volcanic eruption appears to have done for most of Flores’ unique, fairy-tale fauna, in which the wee folk cavorted with giant monitor lizards and pygmy elephants.
The story caught the public consciousness like nothing else I’ve ever been involved with. In scientific terms, the ‘Hobbit’ was the cause of much drama and controversy. First, the creature lived well into modern times, when modern Homo sapiens was already widespread in the region. How could this strange species have remained so isolated, for so long? Was it, perhaps, not a new species, but a weird offshoot of Hom. sap., crippled with some kind of rampaging microcephaly? Perhaps the most interesting idea of this kind was that the Flores hominins were the result of endemic cretinism. On the other hand, or possibly foot, the Flores hominins still look way too odd, even to be diseased humans.
And rather than being dwarfed versions of Homo erectus, the most parsimonious solution, it seems increasingly likely that Homo floresiensis represents an earlier – and completely undocumented – exodus from Africa. And what with entirely new species of hominin being discovered simply from their DNA, it is becoming clearer that the history of human beings on this planet was much richer and more varied than anyone suspected.
Could this be good news for yeti hunters? In principle – yes. If Homo floresiensis existed until almost modern times before becoming extinct, the idea that strange hominins might remain to be discovered in remote parts of the world doesn’t seem quite so outlandish. That’s not to say that every – or any – rumour about yetis, sasquatches and so on should be any less subject to scientific scrutiny than any other discovery. Extraordinary claims being what they are, extraordinary evidence will be required.
And yet the rumours persist, particularly from the Indonesian archipelago, which is, in essence, one great limestone plateau, its many islands riddled with caves, many of them unexplored. And I know I should probably keep this under my hat, but I’m afraid that if I do, my head might burst, which would be especially bad news for my hat. The cryptozoology grapevine is beginning to buzz again. Something about a cave on an island called Halmahera. Of remains preserved, Pompeii-like, in an ash fall from Dukono, an active volcano at the northern end of the island. The eruption is dated reliably to 1550. And the remains? They aren’t human. Oh no, precious, not very human at all.
Oh I know I know! (raising hand agitatedly):
A missing link!
Kindly sit down, Professor B.
Dang. Probably a fetching lemur then. Although a Yeti would be my favourite.
Did you say ‘kvetching’ or ‘retching’?
Dude! You have a multituberculate from 1550?? And you didn’t tell me?
In other news, I think I have a photo of the famed Eastern Oklahoma Sasquatch.
please send photo of sasquatch.
Grrl has been hearing these rumours too, but her crowd was more interested in the bones of the large accipiter that were found there. You don’t think we’ve been lied to all these years?
Indubitably.
I had a DNA swab a few years back for Nat’l Geographic. They couldn’t figure it out–definitely not H. sapiens or Neanderthal. Maybe I’m of floresciensis background? After all, Omaha is a remote part of the world…
You could be the fabled Hesperopithecus – a fossil tooth found in the US that was thought to be a hominid. Unfortunately, close examination found that the tooth actually came from a pig. But perhaps you’re the real deal?
I still remember working on the story (and all the graphics etc!) but best of all was having the chance to talk to you about it over lunch, so I really understood what an important find it was. I remember you saying how it gave a good basis for there being more non-human finds out there… see, you were right all along, of course!!
of course!!
Henry, you say H. florisiensis aren’t human, but you also refer to them as “people.” I usually regard “people” as a subset of “human,” but in fact “person” is a remarkably fluid word as used in the United States and no two… Americans… use it the same way. I’m honestly curious what it means to you or in the UK in general. Is there some subset of hominins that are people? Are dogs “people” too? Is there some kind of use-of-speech that might distinguish “people” from “critters”?
I’m confused too…
“Are dogs “people” too?”
Well, DUH.
Of course dogs are people.
Are chickens people? Or just mammals? Or do I need to give up on a taxonomic model and go for a psychosocial one?
It’s a valid point, and one I’ll need to explore quite seriously soon as I am writing a book that concerns just these issues. Using the term ‘hominin’ cuts through the knot, but might seem too technical for some. ‘Human’, I think, strictly refers to Hom sap. ‘People’, though, is somewhat nebulous. It could refer to all humans, or, in literature especially, a particular group of humans, or even a tribe of creatures that aren’t human, especially if they are referring to themselves. I’m sorry if I’ve been vague. I promise to do better next time.
The Beast has suggested that dogs are low enough to be people. I’m agnostic on this point, at least whilst he’s sat on my lap.
(note to self: cut Beast’s claws soon. Or buy a box)
I know some people who are remarkably inarticulate.
Also, I ‘spect it’s just a chupacabra. Again.
Is NASA involved? Sounds like their type of announcement. Are you changing your name to IronCrox?
I wonder if they have discovered relicts bones of sirens on the beach in Cromer?
¿There is some rumour?
People are people, so why should it be, you and I should get along so…
Yup. People are people. The farmer and the cowman should be friends (Anne, you, of all people, living in Oklahoma, should know this….)
Of course this would be more realistically exciting were it not April 1. Fooled me once, won’t be fooled again. What a terrible thing it is to waste one’s mind.
Just because it’s 1 April doesn’t mean it can’t be true. I once wrote a newspaper article about a very wacky paper in which archaeologists showed that the paintings in caves such as Lascaux were concentrated in parts of the cave system that had particular acoustic properties. The newspaper titled my piece something like ‘cavemen whistled while they worked’. As a kind of double bluff, asked the newspaper to publish it on 1 April, which they did – and one relative went to his grave swearing that it had been a spoof.
OK then. So when does this revelation come to light? Mr Editor? Without breaking embargo of course….
If I told you, I’d have to kill you.
By dispatching the unfrozen caveman/lemur to feed me arsenic? Apparently I can handle that. Wait, I must be from another planet….
Nothing so sophisticated. When I grew up my mother kept chickens. Slaughter was always fraught, not least for the chicken, as our guide to home poultry-keeping instructed us to ‘pull the chicken’s neck to its greatest extent’ and then ‘pull it nine inches further’. Finding this baffling, my mother asked a friend, a very experienced countrywoman, who said that the best way to kill a chicken was to hit it hard over the head with a brick.
like this then:
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o163/aliraqi/March2009/World%20pix/13-3/brick-head_1365634i.jpg
Yup. Very like that.
The question that it is necessary to be made is of where devils : ¿come in that instant the man appeared in the earth?. it is necessary to also wonder, “…….and like the human lineage how appeared” ?
Finally all are rumours.
Never a truer word, Alejandro!
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