Hobbits and House Elves (the fossil evidence)

[bluesqueak]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" 
<justcarol67 at y...> wrote:
> 
> --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "bluesqueak" 
<pipdowns at e...>
> wrote:
> > 
> > Looks like they may have found evidence of the 'little people'. 
> > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3948165.stm
> > for a report on hobbit sized hominids - interestingly, the 
remains 
> > date back only 18,000 years, which is co-existent with modern 
humans.
> > 
> > Pip!Squeak
> 
> 
> Carol:
> Unfortunately the skeleton has a chimp-sized brain, smaller than 
> that of homo habilis, which died out two million years ago and 
> made only the most primitive stone tools. Homo Floresiensis sounds 
> like some sort of australopithecine that outlived its time but 
> with shorter arms and more humanlike body proportions. How could 
> such a creature make the tools found with this partial skeleton? 

You most certainly know more about it than I do, since I've only 
taken one college level course on Human Evolution, but I'm not quite 
sure why brain size is the limitation; doesn't current psychological 
theory argue that it's the number and quality of connections made 
within the brain that's the deciding factor? 

I think the Nature article speculates that Floresiensis is a 
dwarfing of Homo Erectus, which was a tool user. If we are dwarfing 
a tool user (due to limited food supply), we have to consider that 
the individuals who were small, but retained the ability to make 
tools, would be the ones with the greatest evolutionary advantage.

Carol:
>Most likely they were made
> by the modern humans that lived in the area at the same time.
> 

The paleontologists who were there doing the actual excavating 
appear to be of the opinion that the tools are associated deposits. 
That's what they argue in the formal Nature article, anyway.

Carol:
> What bothers me most is that the articles are extrapolating from 
> one skeleton to a whole species 

This is quite normal in paleontology, isn't it? Australopithecus 
africanus was named from one fossil - further specimens weren't 
found for another ten years. Australopithecus boisei was named from 
one skull -not even a complete fossil (the skull differences were 
large enough that it was very clear it was a new species). Again, 
other boisei specimens were found later - but the new species was 
extrapolated from the first fossil found.


> Carol:
> To return to our hobbit-sized skeleton, could this new *partial*
> skeleton be a midget born to normal-sized people, which happens now
> and could have happened then? Or is the find misdated? A child
> misidentified as an adult? But still, the location and the brain 
> size are suspicious. Maybe it's a hoax. 


Another Piltdown man? But it's the Natural History Museum in London 
announcing Floresiensis; I don't think they could ever live down 
authenticating a *second* Piltdown. 

Carol:
> I can see a
> pygmy species evolving from Java man but I can't see creatures 
> with a chimpanzee-sized brain creating sophisticated tools. 
> Habilis didn't. The much larger Erectus didn't. Neanderthal and 
> early Homo Sapiens(e.g., Cro-Magnon) did, but Neanderthal's brain 
> was even larger than ours, if not quite so sophisticated in terms 
> of capacity for spoken language.

Again, I think you're making the wrong assumption. You're assuming 
that Floresiensis evolved *into* a tool user - whereas the argument 
is that Floresiensis evolved *from* a tool user. And we really have 
no idea how that might work; not the foggiest. 

Correlating physical brain size with the making of artifacts is also 
slightly dangerous; consider birds, with their tiny bird brains, 
making very very sophisticated nests. 


> Carol:
> Note that parts of this post are facetious, as signaled by the tone
> and grammar, but I do get tired of the media treating every
> paleontological find as revolutionary (and every dinosaur as a 
bird's
> ancestor), and it's misleading to bring in legends and fiction in
> relation to scientific discoveries. 


Why? In this particular case, I would think that bringing in legends 
(and fiction based on legends) is extremely relevant. If the dating 
is accurate, Floresiensis co-existed with H.sapiens sapiens. *If* 
(big if) this dwarfing occured elsewhere, then the legends are based 
on real history. 

Further, those legends might suggest where to look for the evidence. 

Pip!Squeak