Hobbits and House Elves (the fossil evidence)

[justcarol67]

> > 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? 
> 
Pip!Squeak:
> 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.
<snipped and moved>
 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 again:
First let me note that the post you're responding to was written after
I had only read the initial post and the accompanying article, as well
as skimming associated articles in the popular media playing on the
"hobbit" nickname given to the fossil by its discoverers. I hate the
media hype and the misconceptions it causes. I started out as a
skeptic, but you'll see from later responses that I spent a great deal
of time finding and reading more legitimate responses to the find--I
couldn't access the Nature articles themselves, only the abstracts,
but you'll see the links I posted to the articles I found most
persuasive and interesting. (A few scientists are leaping to
conclusions or hypothesizing based on too little data, but others are
more cautious and professional.)

That said, let me answer your points more directly. Homo Erectus was a
tool *user*, certainly, and is known to have *made* crude tools--also
to have *used* fire without necessarily knowing how to kindle it. But
the tools described in the article appear to be more sophisticated
than any species other than Neanderthal or Homo Sapiens Sapiens (us,
including Cro-Magnon) could have created. If you look at the so-called
Oldowan industry (Homo Habilis) or Acheulean industry (Homo Erectus)
and compare them with the Mousterian (Neanderthal) tools, much less
the various levels of Cro-Magnon culture (Aurignacean, Solutrean,
Magdelanian) you'll see the huge, almost inconceivable difference,
that brain size and brain sophistication bring. The austalopithecines,
whose brains were chimp-sized, used tools on the chimpanzee level.
They weren't much larger than Floresiensis. The brain-to-body ratio of
Floresiensis may be somwhat greater than that for the
australopithecines, maybe more like that of Homo Habilis (a third
larger, and a giant leap for mankind), but still that's surprisingly
small if they're descended from Erectus. It's as if the brains shrank
*more* than the bodies. And Erectus, as I said, was not a
sophisticated tool maker. It was another great leap from him to, say,
Heidelbergensis, the apparent common ancestor of Neanderthals and
Cro-Magnon, and from Heidelbergensis to us.

Also, of course, there's the matter of complexity. Your tiny-brained
bird knows how to make a nest (as no human could) but that knowledge
is programmed into its genes as instinct. The mammalian brain is
larger and more complex than the reptile (or bird) brain; the primate
brain provides additional sophistication; but the human brain is far
more complex, especially the cerebrum, which allows rational thought
and the development of speech and writing. (I personally think that
Erectus had some primitive form of speech, since Broca's area has been
detected even in one specimen of Habilis, which preceded Erectus, but
given the brain size and structure, the small size of the spinal cord,
and the placement of the larynx, it must have been limited. How, then,
could such a creature create tools of any greater complexity than the
hand axes of the late Erectus peoples in Africa, Asia, or Europe?)
 
> Carol earlier:
> >Most likely they were made by the modern humans that lived in the
area at the same time.
> > 
Pip!Squeak: 
> 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 again:
As I understand it, they don't know of any contemporary modern humans
who might have made the tools, but they haven't ruled out the
possibility. There is, after all, only one partial skeleton and a
handful of bones from other skeletons. It's all very preliminary. I'm
not saying it's impossible that the little people made the tools, but
their brain size and their putative ancestry suggest that other
possibilities should be considered.

> Carol earlier:
> > 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 again:
Point conceded. It *is* the usual practice, though some scientists
will hesitate to assign a name until they're sure of the genus, at
least, and have checked the specimen against other known species. I
don't know if you're aware of the confusion surrounding Homo Habilis
and Homo Rudolphensis or Homo Erectus and Homo Ergaster, and that's
only touching the surface. But I wasn't thinking of that when I made
this point. I was still thinking in terms of a possible hoax or error
(a child, a midget, or whatever) and I thought they ought to hesitate
before going out on a limb. I'm convinced now that I was wrong; it's a
genuine and mysterious find--like Boisei, which was wholly unexpected,
 but unquestionably new. As for Australopithecus Africanus, people
thought the little skull was that of an ape. The genus was and is
controversial--people are trying to put the gracile and robust
australopithecines in separate genera. So it's not a simple matter.
But if you hesitate to name a fossil, to place it in a known species
or give it a new name, someone else will name it--which happened to
Richard Leakey when he hesitated to name what's now known as Homo
Rudolphensis. He now thinks it should have been Homo Habilis; others
are arguing that it's an australopithecine! (I think OH62, the tiny
female "habilis" with the long arm to leg ratio, which in any case was
miscalculated, is probably an australopithecine, but Habilis became a
catch-all category because of the absurd belief that you can have only
one gracile hominid species in the same area at the same time. If you
can have two sapiens species, Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon, why not true
Habilis and some more apelike descendant of Africanus?)

> > Carol earlier:
> > 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. 
> 
> 
Pip!Squeak:
> 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. 
> 
> 
Carol again:
We do, after all, have the African pygmies, which somehow seem to have
been left out of these articles. But I think it's misleading to
associate this discovery with legends of little people just as it's
misleading to associate Homo Erectus with the Yeti or Diplodocus with
the Loch Ness monster. It's also misleading, to change the subject
slightly, to say that birds evolved from dinosaurs, as if all
dinosaurs from T-Rex to Stegasaurus had bird descendants. One species,
or at most, one genus, evidently evolved into birds. I just don't like
the loose understanding of evolution that's promoted by the media, and
I get tired of each discovery supposedly causing us to rethink
evolution, especially human evolution. (Remember the fuss over
Australopithecus Garhi? If that's a direct human ancestor, I'll eat
the Sorting Hat.) I dislike cladistics, too. I think it leads to
misconceptions about the number of possible species that can coexist.
Floriensis will cause some rethinking on that subject, and for me
that's cause for celebration.

So, many thanks to whoever posted the link to the original "hobbit"
article. I was planning to spend the day balancing bank statements,
paying bills, and generally doing all the unpleasant odds and ends
that I've been putting off for about a month. Instead, I made the
acquaintance of a little near-human creature I had never imagined existed.

Carol